ORNETTE
COLEMAN: 1930-2015
Loss
of the Jazz Revolutionary, Not the Revolution
An obituary by John Pietaro
Photo courtesy of SFJazz.org
Ornette Coleman, the composer and
multi-instrumentalist, died on June 11th in Manhattan. He was 85. Though health
challenges in recent years had been a constant struggle, Coleman’s relevance as
a visionary artist kept him at the helm of the “Change of the Century”; this
jazz revolution began some 60 years ago but lives far beyond his mortal years.
The challenge Ornette posed to listeners, to musicians
and to the public in a period of anxious social upheaval matched the tenor of
the times. With roots in Texas blues and then years spent on the road before
endeavoring deeply in the Los Angeles jazz scene, Ornette’s concepts were
stirring, indeed, radical on every level. His vision of a liberated melody,
harmony and rhythm, aka Harmolodics, reflected the abstract expressionist
movement in visual art and yet held such a visceral connection to the blues, to
African American folk forms, that it was anything but abstract. A closer listen
revealed the entire spectrum of the Black experience as it pushed outward.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1930, Coleman was raised in
a poor household after his father died in a tragic accident. Searching for the
means to grow beyond the cramped rural home by the railroad tracks, the young Ornette
became enamored with the arts. His initial foray into music grew out of
self-taught experimentation and high school band, and was heralded by the
sounds on the radio and what he could pick up on the circuit. Hearing Charlie
Parker affected Coleman deeply and many of the musicians who knew him back in
Texas have said that he had an uncanny ability to imitate the legendary
Parker’s approach to the alto saxophone. Among his cohorts on the Fort Worth
music scene were drummer Charles Moffet, whom he’d perform with again in the
mid-60s, clarinetist John Carter, drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and flutist
and multi-reeds player Prince Lasha, all of whom would go on to careers as
expansive jazz artists. Coleman performed in a disparate range of arenas, from
minstrel shows to bars, parties to pick-up gigs, but was wont to make enemies
on many a bandstand due to his burning need for invention. Not content to
perform the be-bop, jump blues or R & B he was hired for, Coleman forged
new ground in this unlikeliest of places---until finally finding his way to the
West Coast.
Once in LA, Coleman sought out sympathetic co-voyagers
in after-hours clubs until finding cornetist Don Cherry. With the saxophonist
acting in the role of guide-star, Cherry’s unique voice came to fruition,
offering an indelible counter-part to Coleman’s own searching, achingly blue
and yet joyous tone. Both had a penchant
for brief, simple folk-like melodies that, upon repetition, reconfigured into
bold new layered pathways which overtook the rules of music theory. Just long
enough to explode into seemingly unfettered forays.
Coleman’s higher form of improvisatory performance-practice,
upon examination, offers clear resolutions connecting passages or movements—not
the standard chordal dominant-to-tonic resolution but logical cadences summoning
the return of the piece’s melody or its ending. Concurrently, Ornette Coleman’s
abilities as a composer came to the forefront and he was able to draw out some
of the most painfully captivating melodies from his and Cherry’s horns. Early examples
such as “Lonely Woman” and “Beauty is a Rare Thing” continue to dictate the
apex of jazz balladry.
To the uninitiated, the music in its formative years was
akin to wild confusion. Coleman and Cherry were laughed out of performance
spaces, physically threatened. Jazz
critics fought over who would get their hatchet pieces to press first. Yet,
Coleman’s supporters found in his music a new way, a liberation that shunned
pre-conceived notions and tore off the shackles that confined. Pianists John
Lewis (of the Modern Jazz Quartet) and Paul Bley, as well as Leonard Bernstein,
celebrated the daring sounds and concepts. Even Coleman’s instrument spoke of a
new dawn in the music: he played an alto saxophone made of plastic which
produced a throaty wail in long-held tones. This coupled with musical memories
of the Southwest begat soaring, compelling phrases that dipped and contoured,
offering a cry that stirred one’s soul. This was something drastically new, yet
simply timeless.
The young progressive bassist Charlie Haden joined the
cause, and with the addition of the driving post-bop drummer Billy Higgins or,
alternately, the New Orleans-raised Ed Blackwell (who’d define free drumming), the
Ornette Coleman Quartet came to be. The four-way instrumental conversations
that floated over 20th century jazz constructions advanced the
legend, albeit often in negative terms. Los Angeles in the mid-later 1950s was
a bitter place for an African American musical revolutionary drenched in the
avant garde. Yet, Coleman, brandishing the stealth symbolism of Black
liberation, persisted.
The Quartet relocated to New York and held residency
at the Five Spot club on the Lower East Side for months. Through the derision
of negative reviewers as well as the championing of others, Coleman was elevated
to celebrity status. The Quartet’s groundbreaking recordings led the way of
this musical genre, this new thing, that had no title as of yet.
Following releases such as “Something Else!” and
“Change of the Century”, Coleman’s next albums continued the trend of claiming
ground. The self-defining “This is Our Music” led to the breathtaking “Free
Jazz” which featured a double quartet--in stereo!--that included the likes of
Eric Dolphy, performing freeform works. For many at the time, this was as far
as the music could go. The latter album title soon stood as the banner of the
genre itself. For the next generation of social justice activists, the
eponymous freedom in a free jazz was
a grand symbol of, a soundtrack to, movements of liberation. This unleashing of
the instrumentalist created an art form as radical as the days demanded.
The musicians of the Coleman ensembles included the
aforementioned giants Cherry, Haden, Blackwell, Higgins and Moffet as well as
bassists Scott LaFaro and David Izenson, saxophonist Dewey Redman and drummer
Denardo Coleman, Ornette’s young son, among others. Ornette Coleman’s
chameleon-like tendency toward change saw him through a variety of musical
settings, testing his limits (and the audience’s) at each turn. The quartets
and trios brought the leader to still wider experimentation including an
expansion of his own musical arsenal, adding trumpet and violin.
Later, Coleman played in Morocco with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, he composed the epic orchestral work ‘Skies of America’, founded the space Artists House, won the Pulitzer Prize and multiple fellowships, and then realized the transformation of his Harmolodic theory as Prime Time, a band built on funk and dance grooves. Electric instruments became central and guitarist Bern Nix and bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma were among the stalwarts Coleman called upon to realize this concept.
Prime Time became Coleman’s vehicle for performance through
the final decades of his performing life but he also collaborated with older
bandmates at various junctures, helped to found Karl Berger’s Creative Music
Studio in Woodstock NY and presented his music at Lincoln Center in a
performance with the New York Philharmonic, Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. He
created the performance hall Caravan of Dreams in Texas, performed around the
world and recorded an award-winning album with guitarist Pat Methaney.
Coleman’s rather legendary battle with major labels saw him refusing huge sums
of money as he sought out, as usual, his own way.
There was no one like Ornette, this brilliant musical
philosopher and singular voice who forged a path of revolt in a time when
racism and inequity coursed through the nation unashamed. His musical journey
inspired new generations of free improvisers and experimental composers and
demonstrated that undeterred vision can conquer the status quo.
The implications for the wider battle for revolutionary
change should have been apparent in all Coleman did. The themes in his epic
work ‘Skies of America’ speak volumes: “Foreigner in a Free Land”, “The Men Who
Live in the White House”, “Native Americans”, “Soul Within Woman”, “The
Military” and “The Artist in America” offer insight into the quiet man’s concerns
for his nation and his people.
But Coleman’s commentary on the struggle could best be
heard through his revolution of sound. Screaming and then subtle, devoid of the
obvious, all was left to the listener to define the meaning for himself.
In remembering some of the Coleman theories on race
relations, the trumpeter Matt Lavelle, a student of Ornette for years and a current
Harmolodic protagonist, recalled the master stating:
“The
major chord is white; the minor chord is black. Do you agree?”
But the question was defiantly rhetorical.
“O.C. just dropped in this sort of subversive, almost
subliminal way to bring you to a higher perspective”, Lavelle explained. “To your
own reality in that higher perspective”.
...And then the profound silence which followed became
enveloped in a mournful song of colossal heights.
--THIS PIECE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN COUNTERPUNCH MAGAZINE--
