[Dixielandjazz] Ornette Coleman

[Steve Barbone]

CAVEAT - MOSTLY NOT OKOM EXCEPT FOR A REFERENCE TO COLEMAN'S RESPECT FOR
LOUIS ARMSTRONG IN PARAGRAPH 12. ALSO LONG. DELETE NOW IF NOT INTERESTED

However, some of us may find this article about Ornette Coleman's Jazz and
philosophy of life interesting.

Having seen him perform shortly after he arrived in NYC back in the late
1950's, and having had several conversations with him about jazz and life
back then, I still find him fascinating some 50 years later.

A reading of this article will make one aware of the vast differences in the
philosophy of jazz, depending upon who the players are.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Listening With Ornette Coleman - Seeking the Mystical Inside the Music

NY TIMES - By BEN RATLIFF - September 22, 2006

THE alto saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, one of the last of the
truly imposing figures from a generation of jazz players that was full of
them, seldom talks about other people¹s music. People generally want to ask
him about his own, and that becomes the subject he addresses. Or
half-addresses: what he¹s really focused on is a set of interrelated
questions about music, religion and the nature of being. Sometimes he can
seem indirect, or sentimental, or thoroughly confusing. Other times he
sounds like one of the world¹s killer aphorists.

In any case, other people¹s music was what I wanted to talk to him about. I
asked what he would like to listen to. ³Anything you want,² he said in his
fluty Southern voice. ³There is no bad music, only bad performances.² He
finally offered a few suggestions. The music he likes is simply defined:
anything that can¹t be summed up in a common term. Any music that is not
created as part of a style. ³The state of surviving in music is more like
Œwhat music are you playing,¹ ² he said. ³But music isn¹t a style, it¹s an
idea. The idea of music, without it being a style ‹ I don¹t hear that much
anymore.²

Then he went up a level. ³I would like to have the same concept of ideas as
how people believe in God,² he said. ³To me, an idea doesn¹t have any
master.² 

Mr. Coleman was born, in 1930, and raised in Fort Worth, where he attained
some skill at playing rhythm and blues in bars, like any decent saxophonist,
and some more skill at playing bebop, which was rarer. He arrived in New
York in 1959, via Los Angeles, with an original, logical sense of melody and
an idea of playing with no preconceived chord changes. Yet his music bore a
tight sense of knowing itself, of natural form, and the records he made for
Atlantic with his various quartets, from 1959 to 1961, are almost
unreasonably beautiful.

Following that initial shock of the new came a short period with a trio,
then a two-year hiatus from recording in 1963 and 1964, then the trio again,
then a fantastic quartet from 1968 to 1972 with the tenor saxophonist Dewey
Redman (who died three weeks ago), then a period of
funk-through-the-looking-glass with his electric band, Prime Time. Mr.
Coleman is still moving, now with a band including two bassists, Greg Cohen
and Tony Falanga, and his son, Denardo Coleman, on drums.

He has a kind of high-end generosity; he said that he wouldn¹t think twice
about letting me go home with a piece of music he had just written, because
he would be interested in what I might make of it. But there is a great
pessimism in his talk, too. He said he believes that most of human history
has been wasted on building increasingly complicated class structures. ³Life
is already complete,² he said. ³You can¹t learn what life is. And the only
way you die is if something kills you. So if life and death are already
understood, what are we doing?²

A week later we met for several hours at his large, minimal-modernist loft
in Manhattan¹s garment district. Mr. Coleman is 76 and working often: he is
making music with his new quartet that, at heart, is similar to what he made
when he was 30. On ³Sound Grammar,² his new live album (on his new record
label, of the same name), it is a matter of lines traveling together and
pulling apart, following the curve of his melodies, tangling and playing in
a unison that allows for discrepancies between individual sound and
intonation and, sometimes, key.

Unison is one of his key words: he puts an almost mystical significance in
it, and he uses it in many ways. ³Being a human, you¹re required to be in
unison: upright,² he said.

Mr. Coleman draws you into the chicken-and-egg questions that he¹s asking
himself. These questions can become sort of the dark side of Bible class.
Many of them are about what happens when you put a name on something, or
when you learn some codified knowledge.

Though he is fascinated by music theory, he is suspicious of any construct
of thought. Standard Western notation and harmony is a big problem for him,
particularly for the fact that the notation for many instruments (including
his three instruments ‹ alto saxophone, trumpet and violin) must be
transposed to fit the ³concert key² of C in Western music.

Mr. Coleman talks about ³music² with care and accuracy, but about ³sound²
with love. He doesn¹t understand, he says, how listeners will ever properly
understand the power of notes when they are bossed around by the common
Western system of harmony and tuning.

He¹s not endorsing cacophony: he says making music is a matter of finding
euphonious resolutions between different players. (And much of his music
keeps referring to, if not actually staying in, a major key.) But the reason
he appreciates Louis Armstrong, for example, is that he sees Armstrong as
someone who improvised in a realm beyond his own knowledge. ³I never heard
him play a straight chord in root position for his idea,² he said. ³And when
he played a high note, it was the finale. It wasn¹t just because it was
high. In some way, he was telling stories more than improvising.²

MR. COLEMAN¹S first request was something by Josef Rosenblatt, the
Ukrainian-born cantor who moved to New York in 1911 and became one of the
city¹s most popular entertainers ‹ as well as a symbol for not selling out
your convictions. (He turned down a position with a Chicago opera company,
but was persuaded to take a small role in Al Jolson¹s film ³The Jazz
Singer.²) I brought some recordings from 1916 and we listened to ³Tikanto
Shabbos,² a song from Sabbath services. Rosenblatt¹s voice came booming out,
strong and clear at the bottom, with miraculous coloratura runs at the top.

³I was once in Chicago, about 20-some years ago,² Mr. Coleman said. ³A young
man said, ŒI¹d like you to come by so I can play something for you.¹ I went
down to his basement and he put on Josef Rosenblatt, and I started crying
like a baby. The record he had was crying, singing and praying, all in the
same breath. I said, wait a minute. You can¹t find those notes. Those are
not Œnotes.¹ They don¹t exist.²

He listened some more. Rosenblatt was working with text, singing brilliant
figures with it, then coming down on a resolving note, which was confirmed
and stabilized by a pianist¹s chord. ³I want to ask something,² he said. ³Is
the language he¹s singing making the resolution? Not the melody. I mean,
he¹s resolving. He¹s not singing a Œmelody.¹ ²

It could be that he¹s at least singing each little section in relation to a
mode, I said. 

³I think he¹s singing pure spiritual,² he said. ³He¹s making the sound of
what he¹s experiencing as a human being, turning it into the quality of his
voice, and what he¹s singing to is what he¹s singing about. We hear it as
Œhow he¹s singing.¹ But he¹s singing about something. I don¹t know what it
is, but it¹s bad.² 

I wonder how much of it is really improvised, I said. Which up-and-down
melodic shapes, and in which orders, were well practiced, and which weren¹t.

³Mm-hmm,² he said. ³I understand what you¹re saying. But it doesn¹t sound
like it¹s going up and down; it sounds like it¹s going out. Which means it¹s
coming from his soul.²

MR. COLEMAN grew up loving Charlie Parker and bebop in general. ³It was the
most advanced collective way of playing a melody and at the same time
improvising on it,² he said. Certainly, he was highly influenced by Parker¹s
phrasing. 

He saw Parker play in Los Angeles in the early 1950¹s. ³Basically, he had
picked up a local rhythm section, and he was playing mostly standards. He
didn¹t play any of the music that I liked that I¹d heard on a record. He
looked at his watch and stopped in the middle of what he was playing, put
his horn in his case and walked out the door. I said, ohh. I mean, I was
trying to figure out what that had to do with music, you know? It taught me
something.² 

What did it teach him? ³He knew the quality of what he could play, and he
knew the audience, and he wasn¹t impressed enough by the audience to do
something that they didn¹t know. He wasn¹t going to spend any more time
trying to prove that.²

We listened to ³Cheryl,² a Parker quintet track from 1947. ³I was drawn to
the way Charlie Parker phrased his ideas,² he said. ³It sounded more like he
was composing, and I really loved that. Then, when I found out that the
minor seventh and the major seventh was the structure of bebop music ‹ well,
it¹s a sequence. It¹s the art of sequences. I kind of felt, like, I got to
get out of this.² 

He talks a lot about sequences. (John Coltrane, he said, was a good
saxophone player who was lost to them.) With regard to his Parker worship,
he kept the phrasing but got rid of the sequences. ³I first tried to ban all
chords,² he said, ³and just make music an idea, instead of a set pattern to
know where you are.²

I SUGGESTED gospel music, and he was enthusiastic. I brought something I
felt he might like: sacred harp music ‹ white, rural, choral music, about
100 voices in loose unison. We listened to ³The Last Words of Copernicus,²
written in 1869 and recorded by Alan Lomax in Fyffe, Ala., in 1959.

³That¹s breath music,² he said, as big groups of singers harmonized in
straight eighth-note patterns, singing plainly but with character. ³They¹re
changing the sound with their emotions. Not because they¹re hearing
something.² But then we were off on another topic ‹ whether a singer should
seek a voicelike sound for his voice. ³Isn¹t it amazing that sound causes
the idea to sound the way it is, more than the idea?² he asked.

Finally the listening experiment broke down. It¹s hard to keep Mr. Coleman
talking about anyone else¹s music. His mystical-logical puzzles are too
interesting to him.

He is writing new pieces for each concert, and was leaving for European
shows. ³Right now, I¹m trying to play the instrument,² he said, ³and I¹m
trying to write, without any restrictions of chord, keys, time, melody and
harmony, but to resolve the idea eternally, where every person receives the
same quality from it, without relating it to some person.²

He told a childhood story about his mother, who, he kept reminding me, was
born on Christmas Day. After he received his first saxophone, he would go to
her when he learned to play something by ear. ³I¹d be saying: ŒListen to
this! Listen to this!¹ ² he remembered. ³You know what she¹d tell me?
ŒJunior, I know who you are. You don¹t have to tell me.¹ ²