Coltrane and the jazz revolution

Bye Bye Blackbird
John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison
Fantasy through Festival

First Meditations (for quartet)
John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison
Impulse!/GRP through BMG Records
Reviewed by Norm Dixon

Since his untimely death in 1967, saxophone colossus John Coltrane has became an icon of African American pride, achievement and uncompromising determination. He led a revolution in music that mirrored the turbulent growth of black nationalist and revolutionary ideas within the urban black community. Today, in the midst of another radicalisation of African American politics and culture, 'Trane continues to inspire.

Coltrane has often been likened to Malcolm X. US jazz writer and socialist Frank Kofsky, in his 1970 book Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (Pathfinder Press, New York), wrote: "Both men perceived the reality about [the USA] — a reality you could only know if you were Black and had worked your way up and through the tangled jungle of jazz clubs, narcotics, alcohol, mobsters ...

"Both men called upon their followers to break out of accustomed ways of thinking and feeling, and they themselves were willing to lead the way by challenging all the conventional assumptions and discarding those that failed to meet the rigorous test of reality — even if, in doing so, they were forced to sacrifice their own material security. Both men could have assured themselves of lives of relative comfort and wellbeing merely by making a few seemingly minor compromises; yet both refused to exchange a mess of consumer-goods pottage for the right to seek after and enunciate the truth as best they could."

It is no accident that references to Coltrane appear in the films of Spike Lee — most prominently in Mo' Better Blues but also in Malcolm X. That film features the haunting composition "Alabama" — written by Coltrane after reading a speech by Martin Luther King eulogising four

black children blown up in a racist attack on a church in 1963.

African American culture often reflects the political and ideological moods and aspirations of the community from which it springs. It sometimes anticipates them. Coltrane's music evolved during a political upsurge of the African American people.

Through the late '50s and into the '60s, the momentum of the civil rights movement gathered pace. In the cities, the militant ideas of black nationalism and black power were embraced by larger and larger numbers of African Americans. Black youth were fired up by the struggles of their compatriots in the south and the liberation movements in Africa and the Third World. A significant number discovered the works of Lenin, Mao, Castro, Nkrumah, Fanon and Ho Chi Minh. This powerful movement for freedom combined with, and inspired, the huge anti-Vietnam War movement and women's liberation movement to spark a massive youth radicalisation that shook US society.

There was also a vigorous cultural radicalisation. Many African Americans explored art, music, culture and religious and philosophical ideas from Africa and Asia that they felt were more in tune with their aspirations and desires. Others set about rediscovering their African heritage and history. It was a period of turbulence, impatience, excitement, frustration, and determination to create a better society.

John Coltrane provided the jazz soundtrack of the '60s. Anybody who has attempted to come to terms with Coltrane's music is immediately struck by its brooding impatience, absence of compromise, and sense of a tenacious quest for an undefined goal.

Coltrane's musical quest began in earnest when he joined Miles Davis in 1955, played for a period with Thelonious Monk in 1957, and rejoined Miles in 1959. In this period, it was clear Coltrane was champing at the bit to break free of the constraints of be bop.

His celebrated "sheets of sound" were first heard as his sax solos raced faster and faster, cramming notes into each other to create harmonies of

fascinating complexity. His surging solos built around recurring motifs are prominent on Mile Davis' forever fabulous Kind Of Blue. His recording debut as leader in 1959 with Giant Steps, soon followed by My Favorite things, found him exploring improvisational freedom.

By 1961, the classic Coltrane quartet was in place — McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums and Jimmy Garrison on bass. With this band Trane created some of his greatest work. From 1961 to 1965, they explored new terrain in improvisation as they attempted to extend beyond the limits of bop. They investigated adventurous new polyrhythms and tempos borrowed from African, Arab and Indian music.

Taking up soprano saxophone allowed Trane to focus on "eastern" tonalities. He studied sitar and began writing to the great Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. He experimented with drone instruments and chants. He investigated the use of unusual combinations of instruments to replicate the sound and texture of African and Indian music.

Yet as he experimented, he continued pushing and accentuating his characteristic dense, surging, complex sax lines. Albums such as Coltrane, John Coltrane Quartet Plays and A Love Supreme are great examples of this period.

By 1966, Coltrane's ceaseless search for musical "progress" led to the demise of his classic quartet with the departure of Jones and Tyner. As far as they had travelled with Trane, they were not prepared to follow their leader further into the uncharted waters he was now exploring.

Respected Australian jazz critic Gail Brennan aptly described the music that followed the quartet's disintegration, until Coltrane's premature death from liver cancer at the age of 40, in OK Music magazine: "Some, but not all of the music of Coltrane's last period pushes emotion, energy, sheer momentum and rhythmic, textural and harmonic complexity to the point where it seems that it can only seize up or explode".

Coltrane had been increasingly drawn towards the

emerging generation of radical young Black musicians who were abandoning the accepted rules of be bop jazz to play avant-garde or "free jazz". Coltrane was soon seen as the leader of this iconoclastic movement, the first among equals of players like Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Pharaoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy and Cecil Taylor. Sanders, Shepp and Dolphy played with Coltrane's band prior to Jones' and Tyner's departure.

Coltrane never explicitly embraced political black nationalism or radical politics but was uncompromisingly in the vanguard of the cultural and spiritual radicalisation that was political black nationalism's constant companion. He buried himself in books on Indian, Asian and African philosophies and African history — topics which recur regularly in the titles of his songs. His music was a source of black pride and consciousness.

Yet Coltrane was not opposed to radical politics nor was he apolitical. Many of his later musical collaborators were convinced radicals. Free jazz was considered to be the musical equivalent of the radical black politics. Archie Shepp said in 1968: "We are only an extension of that entire civil rights-Black Muslim-black nationalist movement that is taking place in America. That is fundamental to the music." His saxophone, Shepp added, was "like a machine gun in the hands of the Viet Cong".

It was not unusual for Coltrane's performances to attract political crowds. According to one patron at New York's Half Note club, young blacks would shout "Freedom Now!" as Trane's long solos reached their climax.

Coltrane was an admirer of Malcolm X. He agreed to play benefit concerts for civil rights organisations, and many compositions were dedicated to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. He opposed the Vietnam War.

In 1966, Coltrane told Frank Kofsky: "Music is an expression of higher ideals ... brotherhood is there; and I believe with brotherhood, there would be no poverty ... there would be no war ... I know that there are bad forces, forces put here that bring

suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be a force which is truly for good."

John Coltrane was responsible for some of the most beautiful, controversial and challenging music ever created, as is well illustrated by two brilliant albums just recently reissued. Bye Bye Blackbird is a live concert recording made in Europe in mid-1962 consisting of two fantastic, surging 20-minute work-outs. First Meditations was recorded in late 1965 in the twilight of Coltrane's classic quartet. While it precedes much of his most extreme work, its mystical, turbulent power is hypnotic.

If you have not listened to John Coltrane, these albums are as good a place to start as any. But be warned: experiencing the magic and tumult of Coltrane's music is not for the faint-hearted, but it is a challenge well worth meeting.