Charlie Haden's Progressions.

• Author: Lewis, Andrea
• Position: Critical essay

"I really don't stay in categories," says Charlie Haden. "I follow the beauty of music and where it takes me."

During a career that has spanned nearly seven decades, bassist, composer, bandleader, producer, educator, and jazz pioneer Charlie Haden has won Grammys and numerous other awards for his eclectic and virtuosic music. He has also been an outspoken political artist and activist throughout most of his lengthy career. In 1968, Haden formed the Liberation Music Orchestra, a large jazz ensemble that became the vehicle through which Haden expressed his progressive views, including opposition to the Vietnam War. "I think that every person who is dedicated to the arts is a sensitive human being," Haden tells me during a phone interview. "When things aren't the way I think they should be, I always voice my concerns."

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In 2005, the Liberation Music Orchestra released Not in Our Name in response to the policies of the Bush Administration. "It's just horrible what's going on," Haden says. "I don't even like to think about it, but I have to because it's right before me every day."

Not in Our Name is a thoughtful and complex album whose centerpiece is a haunting medley of American music. Beginning with a harmonically twisted rendition of "America the Beautiful," the medley also visits "Lift Every Voice and Sing," "Skies of America," and other familiar American tunes. The musical patchwork is skillfully woven together by longtime Haden collaborator and arranger Carla Bley. "She did it in such a beautiful way," he says. "It's pastoral, and cityscape, and country. It's very dynamic and very political, the way we do it."

Not in Our Name is one of Haden's favorite albums. According to his website, it serves as a "musical manifesto for the disaffection many people in America and all over the world feel about the manner in which the present Administration is conducting its affairs both at home and in the global arena."

Born in Shenandoah, Iowa, Haden began his musical career in 1939, when he was just twenty-two months old. His musically inclined family had its own twice-daily radio show and a weekly television program. "My mom was singing me to sleep in the rocking chair," he says. "She was humming, and all of a sudden I started humming the harmony with her. And she said, 'That's when I knew you were ready for the show, Charlie.'"

He learned how to sing vocal harmonies by ear, and from the age of two until fifteen, young Charlie...