Disclaimer: Please read this after watching to experience the film in its intended form.
All My Friends Suck at Music: Free Improvisation at and around Hampshire College isn’t a documentation of what was happening at Hampshire College in Fall 2024. It aims to capture the not-often offline free improv community of Hampshire county in the three months we filmed. We do not try to create any kind of narrative in this documentary or put all of our subjects into the same box.
More than an act of documentation, this film wants you to go outside and learn about the individuals in your community. This film wants you to engage with the artists in your community because no matter where you are and what you do, you can count on the fact that there are strange people creating strange music nearby. There’s no reason to not become engaged except your own comfort and xenophobia.
The only thing that free improv artists have in common is improvisation because it isn’t free. We aim to show what these artists do without framing them in any particular way. We don’t want to put their individual practices on a pedestal. All we want to do is show how these artists interact in their community and what they play.
We spoke to Jon White about his individual backstory and appearances because we wanted an example of the perspective that an improviser can have. However his perspective is not the only one, and each of the the musicians featured have their own backstory and relationship to their art. Jon’s story is an example of the fringe communities that often end up in scenes like this where they feel comfortable expressing their identities freely.
In our project we aim to capture the aesthetics of DIY improv culture and the practice of living semi-online. We include an interview with Jon White that was executed over Instagram and purposefully exclude who it is with to disorient the viewer. Some of the feeling of free improv is disorientation and part of that is lost when we explain the film beforehand, thus the disclaimer at the start of this text. There is no definite beginning or end, it is just a series of events and sayings.
The creators of this documentary have been living in free improv for two to ten years. Jerome and Mila are members of the PEAT club that plans shows at Hampshire College. PEAT shows are often places where free improv musicians come together to play.
PEAT Instagram: volatile_invisible_baby_events