Coltrane and African Rhythm

[Hot Ptah]

In our jazz history class at the University of Wisconsin in 1978, Richard Davis told us that it was planned that he was going to become a full time member of Coltrane's group in the winter of 1967-68.

This is not as exotic as some of the other suggestions here, I suppose.

[Pete C]

In our jazz history class at the University of Wisconsin in 1978, Richard Davis told us that it was planned that he was going to become a full time member of Coltrane's group in the winter of 1967-68.

This is not as exotic as some of the other suggestions here, I suppose.

Richard and not Art?

[clifford_thornton]

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

A lot of great music happened in that "void," for sure (and I'm not referring completely to the BYG/expatriate axis). Would the AACM or the lofts have become what they are/were if Coltrane were around? Probably not.

[Stefan Wood]

Coltrane and Fela.

[JSngry]

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

A lot of great music happened in that "void," for sure (and I'm not referring completely to the BYG/expatriate axis). Would the AACM or the lofts have become what they are/were if Coltrane were around? Probably not.

And for that, we should be thankful. Coltrane's death "made room" on the overall landscape, room that was put to good use and might not otherwise have been there.

OTOH, Louis Armstrong stayed alive until 1970, Ellington until 1974. Anybody really think that if they had both died in, say, 1950, that Trane wouldn't have more or less gone where he went anyway?

What if Bix would have lived? What if Lester Young would've been sober? What if Bird would've joined the Army? What if Charlie Christian had played violin?

After a while, it's time to make sense of what did happen, not try to figure how how what happened might not have happened "if" and/or ""if only".

I'll say it again - what happened after Trane died was very much inspired by him, but was not things that he himself would likely have fit into particularly well. It was a good time to go, and as fate would have it, he went.

[.:.impossible]

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

This is what I thought might have happened.

How's that for ambiguous tense!

[ep1str0phy]

It's a point that's been implicit/sort of explicit on this thread, but I look at the arc of Trane's post-A Love Supreme years as nothing if not the sounds of someone running out of time. Compare the Quartet's marathon workouts at the Half Note or in France in 1965 with virtually any live document with Pharoah in the band--I do get the sense that the sheer volume of solo space ceded to the younger man in those final years does have to do with an acknowledged sense of exhaustion on Trane's part--or, rather, an understanding that Pharoah's idiom (or Rashied's, for that matter) touched upon a space that Trane wouldn't or couldn't get to before his time was up. On that level, I really like Jim's notion that the many relevant things that popped up post-1967 really couldn't have had anything to do with Trane himself; I do look at the late Quintet music as both a culmination of Trane's ideas and an acknowledgment of his corporeal/physical and temporal limitations. It just does't feel like a logical progression for someone who was taking his time.

So--to take a party-pooping stance (ugh)--it's sort of unrealistic to trace the pattern of those final years and then figure out what was next--unless, that is, the hypothetical presents itself that something reached down from wherever and gave Coltrane the improbable extra few years on earth (in which case a flirtation with rock/pop trends--completely unforshadowed in his own work, as is/was not the case with Miles or even, to an extent, with Ornette--is kind of outlandish). Electric instrumentation within the Coltrane mode? Probably. "Exotic" instrumentation--probably... extravagant orchestrations with a cast of thousands--probably... it's interesting to ponder what the next technical progression would be, though--as Jim notes--the logical and intuitive answer is that this question isn't a question at all. Although--although--I REFUSE to believe the next course of action with this music would have been a softening up (ala Pharoah, Shepp, whatever)--many of the second generation free guys had retroactive scores to settle with the jazz idiom--not so with Trane. I'd like to think that Coltrane was done with standards in the traditional sense, if not metered playing and changes...

The question that's more present to me: if Coltrane were born in, say, the 80's, what kind of music would he be making right now? This is where it gets dicey, and where I know I've had some tension with what it is that I do/have done and many in the jazz community take as gospel truth.

[Chuck Nessa]

He was never sure where the music was going when he was making it. That was his magic.

[Bill Nelson]

Machito with John Coltrane on Roulette - 'Safari Moods'

(featuring Johnny Hartman on 'African calls').

[JSngry]

The question that's more present to me: if Coltrane were born in, say, the 80's, what kind of music would he be making right now? This is where it gets dicey...

Yeah, how would Coltrane make post-Coltrane music in a world where he had never existed until it was time to do that?

Edited June 9, 2010 by JSngry

[Pete C]

The question that's more present to me: if Coltrane were born in, say, the 80's, what kind of music would he be making right now? This is where it gets dicey...

Yeah, how would Coltrane make post-Coltrane music in a world where he had never existed until it was time to do that?

He'd have made post-Ornette or post-Ayler music.

[JSngry]

Ornette music w/o Trane I can imagine...post-Ayler...not so sure...maybe, maybe not.

The whole question of "what if", though, is really kind of, uh...feigned potency in the face of true impotency. I mena, what if Christopher Columbus had been born a dog? What if Alexander The Great had discovered electricity? What if? What if? What if? What might have happened if?

I mean, c'mon...there's real things that have happened, still need to be dealt with, haven't been (not particularly), and don't show any signs of going to be dealt with.

Like - after all and everything, do we really need "tunes" any more? As one of many options, yeah, great things, sometimes. But lord have mercy, if that's all we've learned after all these years, if all we can do is still play little ditties with recurrent structures that smile, sigh, or cry in predicted intervals, if we go there not just because we want to , but because that's all we volunteer to have at our mental, emotional, and spiritual disposal, then...

Let's play this one, then - what if the 20th Century had never happened?

Yeah, let's play that one.

[.:.impossible]

Wait. If the 20th Century never happened, then Coltrane was never born in the 80s to play post-Ornette music. This wormhole is more like an ant farm.

[Pete C]

what if Christopher Columbus had been born a dog?

I'd be living in Dogpatch.

[JSngry]

Wait. If the 20th Century never happened, then Coltrane was never born in the 80s to play post-Ornette music. This wormhole is more like an ant farm.

If that...

[Chuck Nessa]

Wait. If the 20th Century never happened, then Coltrane was never born in the 80s to play post-Ornette music. This wormhole is more like an ant farm.

If that...

Now we are drifting into David Gates territory.

[JSngry]

You mean the Bread guy?

Time to vacate, then!

[Chuck Nessa]

"IF".

[ep1str0phy]

Ornette music w/o Trane I can imagine...post-Ayler...not so sure...maybe, maybe not.

The whole question of "what if", though, is really kind of, uh...feigned potency in the face of true impotency. I mena, what if Christopher Columbus had been born a dog? What if Alexander The Great had discovered electricity? What if? What if? What if? What might have happened if?

I mean, c'mon...there's real things that have happened, still need to be dealt with, haven't been (not particularly), and don't show any signs of going to be dealt with.

Like - after all and everything, do we really need "tunes" any more? As one of many options, yeah, great things, sometimes. But lord have mercy, if that's all we've learned after all these years, if all we can do is still play little ditties with recurrent structures that smile, sigh, or cry in predicted intervals, if we go there not just because we want to , but because that's all we volunteer to have at our mental, emotional, and spiritual disposal, then...

Let's play this one, then - what if the 20th Century had never happened?

Yeah, let's play that one.

My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world. Honestly, this isn't even necessarily a hypothetical because (1) it may yet happen and (2) it may be happening without us noticing it. And by qualities I'm not talking jawline or facial structure--it's not even an exact science--more like a general intellectual focus, physical/psychological drive, an acute drive toward technical improvement...

So maybe it's more like this--what happens to the Coltranes today? I don' think this is the same issue as "are there still giants in jazz" or "who is the new Coltrane" or whatever--I mean what musical routes are available for younger musicians--coming of age--looking for something genuinely creative to deal with?

I mean the catch 22 of jazz in this atmosphere is that (1) you could stare down the nose of decades of happenings in the music, realize that "progress" has been an illusion (at best) or that everything has "been done" (at worst) at just realize that self-aware innovation just isn't happening anymore, or (2) you could not focus on the issue and just go about the process of creating (which is and isn't a Coltrane thing... whether or not he agonized over creating a "new" relevant thing, as Miles seems to have, he did have an eye on creating something he understood as a universal music). Either way--and this is the hazard of coming to terms with where we are now--it's ridiculous to grow up digesting the rhetoric of free music, for example, as confrontational and new (as I have, to a certain extent) and then realize that it is maybe the former but most definitely not the latter--not anymore. Some people are just fine with watching the world turn and go about making their music--but there's way too much writing on the wall, everywhere, right now, to just sit with that.

Seriously, though--I lived and breathed two years along the lines of Roscoe Mitchell saying "people ain't doin' shit" to just think that anyone could be happy with the rote avenues history hands us. Not that there's necessarily a "big thing" around the corner--but we/you/I are definitely, without a doubt not looking hard enough if we're caught up in questions of "how do we save jazz" or "is it jazz" or "does it swing" or--even--"is this the next big thing in jazz." I mean, take a sledghammer to this shit--seriously--DO we need tunes anymore?

And before this comes out as a sheer nihilistic rant, keep in mind I've been trying to think constructivist. What's killing jazz is the Heisenberg principle of cultural awareness--it becomes "Jazz" the minute it stops being something mutable. And we aren't at the time, historically, to take this for granted. Dolphy could say something like "I'll never leave jazz" because the streets were on fire, for heavens' sakes--it just isn't an issue then. Now that we're in the sandbox, and we can see shit for what it is, maybe we should start taking it apart? Or step outside?

[JSngry]

My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world.

In all seriousness, I think they'd have a laptop and would know how to use it.

Of course, the realm of in-some-form-digital musical production is still in its infancy, contrasted to Trane's world of wholly analog music-making being quite advanced (to the point of almost having completed it's true "evolution"), so we're sort of comparing apples to pears here...but still, I think that's your answer.

Lots of peoples not gonna want to hear that, or even conceive of that, but there it is anyway.

[ep1str0phy]

My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world.

In all seriousness, I think they'd have a laptop and would know how to use it.

Of course, the realm of in-some-form-digital musical production is still in its infancy, contrasted to Trane's world of wholly analog music-making being quite advanced (to the point of almost having completed it's true "evolution"), so we're sort of comparing apples to pears here...but still, I think that's your answer.

Lots of peoples not gonna want to hear that, or even conceive of that, but there it is anyway.

I think you're totally right, and this simultaneously frightens and invigorates me. Again, the writing is on the wall. The time I spent at Mills slowly, gradually hipped me to this--I was on a totally acoustic thing--which may or may not, as it sometimes or often does, come back around--for a bit, but the forces propelled me toward working (at least) with people who had an understanding of some form of electronic manipulation (whether that be pedals or sampling or whatever...). Among the things that made me think twice were (1) Roscoe's responding very favorably to a soundscape piece created by a friend of mine (soon to perform at the 2010 International Supercollider Symposium with, incidentally, other friends of mine)--the first instance, I'd found, of him wanting to collaborate with one of my peers on what seemed to be something like a professional level during my tenure there, and (2)--I can't stress enough--Flying Lotus's latest music which, genetics be damned, gets closer to the Coltrane vibe than any jazz, I'd wager, of at least the last 15 years.

Just something observationally interesting, but I recall a debate between a couple friends of mine--one an electronic musician/rock bassist and the other, predominantly, an improviser and concert composer over whether or not there was anywhere left for jazz "to go"... the former said yes, the latter said no. Keep in mind the latter was, I'm fairly sure, much better versed in the conventions of contemporary jazz... the point being that, in this case, an outsider's sense of a awareness and facility in an alternative medium = "jazz possibilities," whereas the converse was true for someone very "in" the jazz thing. I'll always favor listening to jazz but, at this point, I'm feeling increasingly awkward and irrelevant playing it.

Complete and total tangent, but why do people hate Cosmic Music so much? I think it kicks ass.

[JSngry]

Because for many, Alice is Trane's Yoko.

I also remember an offhand comment Miles made about how the whole world sounds different now than it used to. He used the example of cars colliding, how the thinner metal and greater plastic content makes a car crash sound totally different now than it did then.

And, uh, yeah, Miles was right.

[ep1str0phy]

Surely I'd be looking at it a different way if I were around back then. It still sounds clear to me that even Alice's early post-John music (like A Monastic Trio) sounds very different from the Quintet stuff--but it's got an ethos of its own, I think. Cosmic Music has a weird compilation feel to it for that reason, but all of what's there sounds miles more interesting than a lot of epigonal, Trane-like music from even the extended family (Rashied, later Alice, a lot of Pharoah, etc.). It's mixed like shit, to be sure, but the playing is amazing. Now Infinity, I can understand...

I do like Yoko, by the way, in much the fashion that I like Alice. On that level, I don't in the slightest believe that any of Alice's music could speak, definitively, to what John would have done or where he was going (which is not to say that Alice did or would think that, either)--and, for those reasons, I definitely vibe the onus on Infinity, especially. As a remix project, great--but, in that instance, Alice seems to have been playing her (very well-educated) guess/what-if, just like everyone else; calling it a John Coltrane album is kind of questionable. Now, the reason I might want to defend Infinity is that, as music, it's actually kind of interesting to me. No way in hell is it a John Coltrane album, though--no more than Bird Up is a Charlie Parker album (to speak nothing of the quality therein).

Edited June 10, 2010 by ep1str0phy

[Niko]

My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world. Honestly, this isn't even necessarily a hypothetical because (1) it may yet happen and (2) it may be happening without us noticing it. And by qualities I'm not talking jawline or facial structure--it's not even an exact science--more like a general intellectual focus, physical/psychological drive, an acute drive toward technical improvement...

I like to think that to some extent Jazz happened because the possibilities for the black population were so limited at the time; many of those who might have become great, say, rocket scientists or dozens of other things, more or less involuntarily chose music and then jazz as the way to express their talents... and that they wouldn't become musicians today...

[ep1str0phy]

My hypothetical has more to do with what would happen if someone with John Coltrane's qualities (rather than a man himself) emerged in a post-Coltrane world. Honestly, this isn't even necessarily a hypothetical because (1) it may yet happen and (2) it may be happening without us noticing it. And by qualities I'm not talking jawline or facial structure--it's not even an exact science--more like a general intellectual focus, physical/psychological drive, an acute drive toward technical improvement...

I like to think that to some extent Jazz happened because the possibilities for the black population were so limited at the time; many of those who might have become great, say, rocket scientists or dozens of other things, more or less involuntarily chose music and then jazz as the way to express their talents... and that they wouldn't become musicians today...

That does in a way serve to emphasize the point. It's hard to take seriously the notion that we/I/one as a jazz musician is playing music of the "now" when the very social constructs that facilitated its emergence in the forms we now celebrate have transformed and/or been rendered obsolete. There certainly is an aspirational quality to Coltrane's music as I hear it--and that may be why people often respond to it on a level so far removed from the technical intricacies of the music itself... it speaks to energies outside of itself--and, for that matter, hints at something other than what it is.

No one but Trane, obviously, can speak to Trane's personal experience. Perhaps I still see the creative possibilities of that legacy in musical terms because it's a route that I chose (after my parents made the sacrifices that allowed me to make a choice).

This does remind me, to speak in even more abstract terms, of what happened to the notion of "culture as a weapon of struggle" after the end of Apartheid; the SA government began to move away from aggressive/inflammatory art the minute the formal institutions of Apartheid were technically done away with. None of this, obviously, meant that the struggle was over. It also speaks to the fact that there is still place for harrowing, powerful creativity in an environment that doesn't necessarily call for speaking in tongues (or bebop, or whatever, for that matter)--"contemporary" art will have to address its times to a certain extent, which is why I do like Jim's response to the hypothetical, above. A luta continua.