Back in the swing politically

Bassist Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra has surfaced periodically since the late ‘60s as a vehicle for his reactions to shifting social and political currents. The ensemble’s initial recording in 1969 was his response to the angry partisanship of the Vietnam War era; “Ballad of the Fallen,” in 1982, dealt with the Central American policies of the Reagan years; “Dream Keeper,” in 1991, responded to the presidency of George H.W. Bush and the Persian Gulf War conflict.

So given the current political environment, it’s not surprising that the Iraq war and the reelection of George W. Bush has triggered yet another revival of the LMO. Haden brought the ensemble to the Jazz Bakery on Monday to perform music from their CD titled “Not In Our Name,” released earlier this year.

Although each of the various LMO installments have had differing personnel (only Haden and pianist-arranger Carla Bley have performed on every album), they have consistently included sterling lineups. Monday’s program featured first-rate solo contributions from, among others, alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon, trumpeter Michael Rodriguez, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes and pianist Alan Broadbent. The music, which ran from Haden’s original “Not In Our Name” and Pat Metheny’s “This Is Not America” to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” (superbly played in an arrangement for wind instruments) and an expansive medley based on “America the Beautiful” that also included passages from Ornette Coleman’s “Skies of America.”

Though Haden clearly intended to use the LMO as an instrument of protest, the music, with its frequent wide-open spaces for improvisation, was often more intriguing as straight-ahead jazz. Altering familiar American themes with dark dissonances and occasional disjunct rhythms makes a point, but it’s too obvious a point -- and one which is far distant from such telling jazz tracts as Charles Mingus’ “Fables of Faubus,” Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and Max Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite.”

The true protest aspects of jazz have always had more to do with its nature as revolutionary music than the specificity of any single political perspective. What kept coming to mind Monday had less to do with the LMO’s performance than with Haden’s vital work in the Ornette Coleman Quartet of the ‘50s and ‘60s, one of the most culturally, artistically and -- in its own way -- politically transformative music ensembles of the 20th century.