Coltrane and African Rhythm

[Pete C]

For a long time Kulu Se Mama seemed an anomaly in Trane's catalog. Then the release of The Olatunji Concert suggested the he may have been interested in pursuing that direction. Considering the fact that guys like Pharaoh and Shepp's Impulse albums after Trane's death relied heavily on African rhythms and percussion, I'd bet Trane too would have explored those possibilities further. I don't think his aesthetic would have been compatible with going electric, but who knows, I might have said the same of Ornette if Prime Time had never happened.

[paul secor]

We certainly can't say and I doubt that Trane would have had any idea where his music might have gone. I'm sure that in 1957 he had no idea what his music would sound like ten years later. Growing as an artist is a part of living, and none of us knows what life has in store for us - except perhaps changes and surprises.

[Hot Ptah]

Here is a fantasy I wrote up years ago:

John Coltrane Discography 1971-82:

1971: Electronic Communication: with John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Sharrock, Larry Coryell, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Bloomfield, Johnny Winter, Larry Young, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Jimmy Garrison, Jack Bruce, Harvey Brooks, Rashied Ali, Billy Cobham, Lenny White, Don Alias, Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette (all playing on every cut)

1972: Light as a Lotus Flower: John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams, Airto, Flora Purim

1973: Love Devotion Surrender: John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Larry Young, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams, Airto

1974: Live! With Love Devotion Surrender! (3 LP gatefold set) with same lineup as previous year

1975: Talkin' To The People: John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Gil Scott Heron, Doug Carn, Wah Wah Watson, Paul Jackson, Harvey Mason, Mtume

1976: The Happy Trane: John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Wah Wah Watson, Lonnie Liston Smith, Jaco Pastorius, Narada Michael Walden, Alex Acuna (sells 1.2 million copies)

1977: The Disco Trane: John Coltrane and a cast of thousands, produced by Donna Summers' producer (sells 3 million copies)

1978: Doin' It Again On The Disco Trane: same as previous year (sells 2.1 million copies)

1979: The Disco Trane Rides Again: same as 1977 (sells 800,000 copies)

1980: no album (spends year meditating in Nova Scotia)

1981: no album (spends year "seeking new direction", discussing many projects in jazz press--all major jazz magazines run multiple cover stories throughout the year on "Where Is Trane?" "Is Trane coming back?" etc.)

1982: Trane Is Back!!!: John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Pete Cosey, Dominique Gaumont, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, Mtume (album leads to bitter denunciations by Young Lions of jazz world, who see him as "the problem with jazz")

[A Lark Ascending]

What about 1989's 'Gangsta-Supreme' and 2001's 'In the Transition: A Tribute to Prez, Bean and Hawk with special guests Chaka Khan, Sting and Georgie Fame'?

[B. Clugston]

One of jazz's great what ifs.

Coltrane's latter-day bands were often augmented with additional percussionists and the live documents and Interstellar Space focus on the relationship between sax and drums.

But Expressions and the session released as Stellar Regions suggest a different direction.

[clifford_thornton]

I think he would have lessened the amount of performing and recording, instead nurturing younger musicians and running a performance space or putting his weight behind some sort of guild or collective.

[.:.impossible]

I think he would have died in July 1967.

[JSngry]

I think he would have died in July 1967.

No fair. You peeked.

[Guy Berger]

This is all pure speculation, but nobody says it can't be fun.

I think Pete C's suggestion of greater Africanisms in Coltrane's music post-1967 is in the right direction - that was a major thread in avant-garde jazz.

As far as going electric, we know that Trane owned (and endorsed in an ad!) a varitone and practiced with it, though it never appeared on record or live. Given Trane's interest in exploring new sounds and textures, I think there's a pretty good chance he would have played with electric instruments - plenty of avant-garde artists did after he died. And I think there's also a good chance that at least some of his music would have incorporated rhythms from popular music - another common thread in a lot of 70s avant-garde jazz. None of this is fusion, mind you.

And finally, I think that some of the radical bent of his music may have faded over time. I don't mean that he would have reverted to playing hard bop, but simply that many other avant-garde artists of the 60s and early 70s de-edged their music as time went on.

But of course, who knows.

[.:.impossible]

My guess: a lot of folks might have eased up once he died. Suddenly, Polaris disappears and people set up camp, awaiting direction.

[Tom Cat]

1977: The Disco Trane: John Coltrane and a cast of thousands, produced by Donna Summers' producer (sells 3 million copies)

makes my day

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

HP - you started your discography too late and missed -

1969 - The Gator Trane - Willis Jackson & John Coltrane on Gator Horns, with Jackie Ivory (org), Pat Martino (g), Yusef Ali (d)

Trane was getting interested in this instrument that Wilis invented but died before he could get anywhere on it.

MG

[John L]

If my memory serves me right, Coltrane was planning a trip to Africa, including playing with African musicians, but cancelled due to his sudden illness. So something would have probably happened in that direction (African Brass 3). How much and for how long, who knows?

[Pete C]

If my memory serves me right, Coltrane was planning a trip to Africa, including playing with African musicians, but cancelled due to his sudden illness. So something would have probably happened in that direction (African Brass 3). How much and for how long, who knows?

I didn't know that, but here's an excerpt from an interview with Giddins:

JJM You quote Coltrane as saying, "The main thing a musician would like to do, is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe." Where do you believe Coltrane was headed with his music?

GG Isn't that the $64,000 question? When he died, it was like reading a mystery thriller and the last chapter had been torn out. Where in the hell was he going? Clearly, there was a greater and greater accent on a kind of religious, cosmic, thematic undercurrent. This, I confess, loses me, maybe because I am not particularly religious. Whereas I don't believe you could ever say of Coltrane that he made a political work at the expense of the music, I think there were implications in Alice Coltrane's work that music is secondary to some kind of religious notion. One of the few Coltrane performances that I find very difficult to listen to was Om. I just don't believe it. That may be where he was going. We don't really know. We do know that he was planning a trip to Africa, so he might have been on the very first wave, along with Ellington and the pianist Randy Weston, of a kind of world music synthesis. I don't think he would have gone toward fusion. I find that unbelievable, but that could be my own prejudice. I think he would have made a kind of truce with his past as most musicians have done, and we would have seen him playing a lot of ballads as he did in '62 and '63. I don't think you can have an entire lifetime of Ascension. I do think that Coltrane was running on borrowed time. I don't think he had any doubt that his days were numbered. I think he was trying to make the loudest sound he could make in those last moments.

http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/mainHTML.cfm?page=giddins-coltrane.html

[clifford_thornton]

Thanks for posting that.

[JSngry]

"Where was he going?" is probably not the right question. "Had he already been there" is more like it, and with Interstellar Space, I think the answer is a pretty obvious "yes, he had been".

I mean, that's the whole thing right there, everything he had learned about life and music (if you care to make that distinction in this case) came together, end of story. Stellar Regions, well...historically it's invaluable, but...and Expression (the tenor pieces, anyway) is like beautiful exit music at a funeral, which is essentially what it is.

After Interstellar Space, there was really no place left for "John Coltrane" to go musically forward that would still let him be "John Coltrane". Plenty of relevant, innovative and important things happened after he passed, but can you even begin to imagine Trane in any of them? I can't. And if something was going to happen, but didn't then...what difference does it make, ultimately? When peoples need to stay alive, they either find it or die trying. So if something really needed to happen....it probably did.

Just my opinion of course, but I'm adamant in it.

Edited June 8, 2010 by JSngry

[John L]

"Where was he going?" is probably not the right question. "Had he already been there" is more like it, and with Interstellar Space, I think the answer is a pretty obvious "yes, he had been".

I mean, that's the whole thing right there, everything he had learned about life and music (if you care to make that distinction in this case) came together, end of story. Stellar Regions, well...historically it's invaluable, but...and Expression (the tenor pieces, anyway) is like beautiful exit music at a funeral, which is essentially what it is.

After Interstellar Space, there was really no place left for "John Coltrane" to go musically forward that would still let him be "John Coltrane". Plenty of relevant, innovative and important things happened after he passed, but can you even begin to imagine Trane in any of them? I can't. And if something was going to happen, but didn't then...what difference does it make, ultimately? When peoples need to stay alive, they either find it or die trying. So if something really needed to happen....it probably did.

Just my opinion of course, but I'm adamant in it.

Maybe there was no way forward, but there was room for movement sideways, even backwards with a new twist. If Sonny Rollins had died in 1969, we might be saying much the same thing.

[JSngry]

Trane got lucky that way.

[sidewinder]

1977: The Disco Trane: John Coltrane and a cast of thousands, produced by Donna Summers' producer (sells 3 million copies)

makes my day

Around the time Jackie Mac issued 'Monuments' on RCA - so not totally inconceivable? Also John Handy 'Hard Work' etc.

I like the bit about the 1980 sojourn in Nova Scotia !

Edited June 8, 2010 by sidewinder

[Tom Storer]

After Interstellar Space, there was really no place left for "John Coltrane" to go musically forward that would still let him be "John Coltrane". Plenty of relevant, innovative and important things happened after he passed, but can you even begin to imagine Trane in any of them? I can't. And if something was going to happen, but didn't then...what difference does it make, ultimately? When peoples need to stay alive, they either find it or die trying. So if something really needed to happen....it probably did.

What happened after Trane would quite certainly not have happened the same way if Trane had remained on the scene. I often think the 80's and 90's would not have happened the same way if Mingus hadn't died. But people do die, and things go on without them, necessarily differently. It's interesting to fantasize, though. Personally I like to imagine the collaboration of Trane and the AACM crowd in Chicago. Imagine a group in 1969 with Trane, Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, Steve McCall...

[John L]

After Interstellar Space, there was really no place left for "John Coltrane" to go musically forward that would still let him be "John Coltrane". Plenty of relevant, innovative and important things happened after he passed, but can you even begin to imagine Trane in any of them? I can't. And if something was going to happen, but didn't then...what difference does it make, ultimately? When peoples need to stay alive, they either find it or die trying. So if something really needed to happen....it probably did.

What happened after Trane would quite certainly not have happened the same way if Trane had remained on the scene. I often think the 80's and 90's would not have happened the same way if Mingus hadn't died. But people do die, and things go on without them, necessarily differently. It's interesting to fantasize, though. Personally I like to imagine the collaboration of Trane and the AACM crowd in Chicago. Imagine a group in 1969 with Trane, Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, Steve McCall...

Coltrane would have studied the value of space and silence from Roscoe? I could certainly imagine Coltrane working like (or with) Don Cherry on some world music fusion, although I don't think that Coltrane would have spread himself as thinly over the world music landscape as Cherry, and would probably have spent more time pushing in one or another direction. But who knows.

[CJ Shearn]

I think Trane continuing on with African inspired rhythms and percussion is likely, but I also think he would have experimented with other reed instruments also. He did experiment with the Varitone but never recorded with it, which makes me think toward the 80's, he would have made sonic innovations on the EWI before Michael Brecker. There would also be collaborations with The Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron. Trane would be largely doing things outside of straight ahead, I think like Miles he would not have looked back and played standards again circa the Prestige era or anything like that.

[Pete C]

Imagine a group in 1969 with Trane, Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors, Steve McCall...

Something might have happened in Paris or Algiers. Trane may well have attended the Pan African Festival that resulted in all those BYG Actuel albums.

[JSngry]

Or, he could have stayed dead and not made the trip.

[CJ Shearn]

Or, he could have stayed dead and not made the trip.