It was a Five Spot engagement in 1959 that introduced them to the Jazz community - but typically with a great deal of musical controversy. As Nat Hentoff observed: “For months, grimly skeptical jazz men lined up at the Five Spot’s bar. They made fun of Coleman but were naggingly worried that he might, after all, have something to say - and in a new way”.
Much of the reaction was due to Coleman’s instrumental technique - or rather lack of technique [he was not a virtuoso player] - and his apparent appearance ‘out of nowhere’ onto the NYC Jazz scene and in one of the most sought after venues.
His musical statements presented ‘in a new way’ were truly, Coleman’s way. The group appearing at the Five Spot included Don Cherry, Charlie Hayden, and Billy Higgins and it is evident, that Coleman schooled this group with his own Jazz esthetic: “It took me a long time to get them interested in studying with me, and staying…because when I met Charlie [Hayden] and Billy
[Higgins] and Don [Cherry], they were into Bebop. They got very interested in the things I was trying to write to play. So when we got together, the most interesting part is: What do you play after you play the melody if you don’t have nothing to go with? That’s where I won them over…”
Coleman didn’t provide chord changes on which to improvise - so what do you play? Ornette clearly stated: “usually, when you play a melody, you have a set pattern to know just what you can do while the other person’s doing a certain thing.
But in this case, when we played the melody, no one knew where to go or what to do to show that he knew where he was going”
This new music was not about ‘changes’, but about emotional expression: “I finally got them to where they could see how to express themselves without linking up to a definite maze…I think it was a case of teaching them how to feel more confident in being expressive like that for themselves. It was the innovations that Coleman developed which allowed that ‘expressive confidence” and these innovations are essential elements of a new musical language spoken by a new generation of jazz musicians - for the New Jazz started when Coleman and this Five Spot unit began playing together.
He basically negated the use of a stated harmonic framework to provide a base and form for improvisation. This harmonic framework was not replaced by another ‘way’ but actually not present in his conception - the recordings for Contemporary reflect this with his and Don Cherry’s struggles with the rhythm section on ‘Something Else! The Music of Ornette Coleman’ [Bassists Red Mitchell amp; Percy Heath, Drummer Shelly Manne, Pianist Paul Bley]. In a ‘traditional’ jazz setting, these accomplished players would have been ideal but for Coleman and Cherry it was not. Both were forced to improvise over set changes but with a conception which did not accommodate such a fixed harmonic structure.
‘Tomorrow is the Question’ had a better relationship with the rhythm section - without a chording instrument present the free space allowed the soloist expanded considerably but more needed to be done to accommodate Ornette’s conception. When Charlie Hayden became a permanent addition many of these problems were solved. Hayden was a participatory bassist [vs an accompanying one], following the horn lines free from functional harmonic orientation, and favored the low registers of the instrument - all factors which liberated the improvised line.
Ornette’s music did conform with the concepts of conventional form but while accepting formal structure he ‘omits’ the harmonic implications of form. His is a totally linear approach to making music - the point of reference is not the ‘changes’ but a fundamental ‘sound’…a tonal relationship to one underlying tone rather than functional harmony. The Modal Approach to improvisation - by choosing a modality for improvisation actually is a choice among ‘musical sets’ and the acceptance of the internal order of relationships within the mode. The Focal Tone Approach has no such implications and provides a much freer space for improvisation.
Both approaches can stagnate easily and Coleman’s solution incorporated two elements - motivic improvisation [termed Motivic Chain-association] and shifting to secondary ‘tonal centers’. Motivic improvisation in this context is the invention a Motif independent of the stated Theme: one idea grows from another - linearly - which then evolves into another new idea. It is almost analogous to the ‘Stream of Consciousness’ literary style of Joyce or the ‘automatic writing’ of the surrealists. The shifts to secondary tonal centers develop from these Motivic Chain-associations and independently of time order - while retaining the ability to provide contrast for bridge sections [again, Coleman accepted the concept of conventional form].
One of the major criticisms - I’m sure part of the Five Spot reception - is Coleman’s intonation. He was accused from the beginning of ‘wrong intonation’ - the subtle manipulations of embrochure to bring notes into tune on his instrument. He often speaks of the ‘human quality’ of his intonation - the ‘human pitch’ or ‘vocalization of the sound’: ‘When I play an [f] in a a song called Peace, I think it should not sound exactly like the same note in a song called Sadness’ [from Berendt]. Berendt infers that the [f] should not be equal in vibrations [how pitch is measured] - Jost, on the other hand, indicates that what Coleman is really saying is that they should not ‘sound’ the same. This concept is used within Ornette’s improvisations but - again, as Jost states in referring to his early recordings - he is very off pitch ‘in a very real sense’ and with ‘clashes which cannot be interpreted as expressive technique.
Coleman’s Rhythmic conception is simple in principle and his music often has a ‘folk song’ quality. He does however utilize a type of rhythmic displacement - passages of ‘on the beat’ notes contrasted with just as simple a rhythmic passage but played ‘off beat’. In addition, he often subdivides eighth note lines into odd groupings by shifting accents - the bar line with its implied accents is irrelevant in his music and it is very difficult to determine ‘one’ in his melodic line.
So what do you play? In ‘traditional’ Jazz, the Theme functions as a means to outline the improvisational passages which follow - for both the musicians and the audience. The melodic content provides a reference point for what is to follow and provides a set series of Chord Progressions. In Coleman’s music the Theme determines the expressive content of the improvisations - this Unity of Theme and Improvisation is emotional and expressive rather than formal and functional.
22 Let Freedom Ring: Ornette Coleman and a New Way-Part 2
Ornette Coleman’s compositions can be split into two broad and significant categories [several types have ‘crystallized’] - a Type 1 and a Type 2 and both of these are not dependent upon chord structure.
Type 1: exemplified by ‘Mind and Time’, has no implicit harmonic progression[s] but rather a melodicrhythmic line that determines the emotional nature of the improvisation. This line sets the initial tempo…and provides no clear tonal center. Rhythmically, it fits none of the common metric schemes and since it is 11 1/2 bars in length the division of the melody into bars is irrelevant. It should be noted that once a melody is divided by the bar line a series of reoccurring accents is implied. This melodic construction of 11 1/2 bars has an indicated repeat which changes the melodic accents between the first play through and the repeat - notes occurring on beat 1 the first time will occur on beat 3 with the repeat.
What this line essentially provides is a ‘relatively non-obligatory framework for improvisation’ - for range, motion, and perhaps dynamics.
Type 2: exemplified by ‘Congeniality’, which follows an A - B1 - A - B2 standard song form. These sections are actually melodic constructs of contrasting rhythms which set the emotional context of the piece - not one specific emotional orientation but rather these contrasting sections provide ‘emotional’ choices for the soloist to develop an improvised line.
If any one common element can be identified within these two types, ‘Freedom of Choice’ for the soloist must be primary. The constricting elements of functional harmony, a tonal center, and the ‘tyranny’ of the bar
line are all absent - but, at the same time, the organization which provides Theme and Improvisational unity remains. It is not a free form performance just a ‘New Way’ of organization, a way freed from the previous confines of chords, standard metric patterns, and tonality.
In 1959, Ornette stated: ‘Perhaps the most important new element in out music is our conception of free group improvisation’. The group which brought this to fruition was the unit which recorded ‘Free Jazz’ in 1960 [Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Charles Hayden, Billy Higgins, Ed Blackwell, Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, and Scott la Faro]. Prior to this ‘60’s release two previous jazz performance norms remained present - the dominating role of the soloist and the accompanying role of the rhythm section
[in which the Bass and Drums still defined the time] - they had to ‘keep the beat’.
This 36 minute composition is organized around a series of agreements rather than a musical score in the traditional sense. Here, individual passages [‘single complexes’] are led by a different ‘soloist’ and are linked by transitional ‘ensemble’ interludes. Some of these interludes are completely notated while others exist as partially written structures [‘harmonic unison’]. The harmonic unison provided the players with tonal material but with no fixed timing - this would become an important compositional technique in the later development of Free Jazz. The ‘tonal center’ and the tempo were also agreed upon - with Hayden and Blackwell responsible for the fundamental rhythm which was ‘constantly challenged and consciously endangered by la Faro and Higgins’.
The music created on the basis of these ‘agreements’ depends almost totally on the player’s readiness to interact - it was an expansion of the ‘motivic-chain associations’ to a larger group context. Here, these associations develop and evolve within the group as a whole. Ideas introduced by the ‘soloist’ of a given section are taken up by the other musicians, developed further, and then handed back to the soloist in an altered form. It is a network of musical interactions - by imitation, continuation, and contrast that is continually renewed from within by the flow of musical ideas.
The performance [and much of this ‘composition’ is dependent upon performance] remains static - with little emotional climax. But it did - along with the work of Mingus - move closer to the idea of a ‘musical collective conversation’ and away from the primacy of the individual soloist…a demonstration that a long collective improvisation had potential for ‘unity of form’ in the new music.
Ornette, after this album, retreated into smaller musical associations. He returned in 1965 for an engagement at the Village Vanguard with bassist David Izenzon and drummer Charles Moffet - playing two more instruments: Violin and Trumpet. Here, the additional instrumental voices were handled in typical Ornette fashion…as ‘sound tools’ rather than the expected ‘traditional playing techniques’. His treatment of these instruments were as producers of sound, rhythms, and emotions - not the expected melodic roles normally occupied by either [though eventually the trumpet was utilized in its expected role]. Soon after, he took a two year ‘voluntary inner exile’ - not from the music but rather from the music business: “I don’t feel healthy about the performing world anymore at all. I think it’s an egotistical world; it’s about clothes and money, not about music. I’d like to get out of it, but I don’t have the financial situation to do so. I have come to enjoy writing music because you don’t have to have that performing image…I don’t want to be a puppet and be told what to do and what not to do…” [1966].
By the end of the ‘60’s, things grew quiet for Coleman. He presented concerts in his home on Prince Street in Manhattan but did record again in 1970 releasing ‘Ornette Live at Prince Street: Friends and Neighbors’. In 1971, his quartet appeared in Lisbon, Portugal - with Charlie Hayden arrested and released with the intercession of the American Cultural attache. This incident developed after Hayden dedicated his ‘Song for Che’ to the ‘Black people’s liberation movements of Mozambique, Angola, Guinea’.
Coleman’s compositions were not only in the jazz genre - his string quartet ‘Dedication to Poets and Writers’ was recorded in a 1962 Town Hall concert. A Woodwind Quintet ‘Sound and Form’ was recorded in 1965 at a concert in Croydon, England. He received the first Guggenheim Fellowship ever awarded for a jazz composition and the ‘Inventions of Symphonic Poems’ composed for that Fellowship debuted in 1967. ‘Sun Suite of San Francisco came in 1968 and he recorded his 21 movement ‘Skies of America’ in 1971. ‘Skies of American was recorded the next year under conductor Davic Measham with the London Symphony.
Ornette continued his musical journey going to Joujouka, Morocco in 1973 and working with Prime Time from the mid 70’s [a quintet in 1975, sextet in 1979, and then a septet]. He recorded ‘Of Human Feelings in 1979 and appeared on James ‘Blood’ Ulmer’s ‘Tales of Captain Black”.
I feel, what can best sum up Coleman’s view of music is a comment about his Joujouka trip - the music and the musicians: “And the thing that was so incredible is that they were playing instruments that wasn’t in Western notes, wasn’t no tempered notes, and yet they were playing in unison. It’s a human music. It’s about life conditions, not about losing your woman, and you know, baby will you please come back, and you know, I can’t live without you in bed. It’s not that. It’s a much deeper music. There is a music that has the quality to preserve life…The thing that was very beautiful about Joujouka and the same time very sad was that all the musicians have to survive is their music. I mean, they don’t have anything else but that.”
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Jazz: A Short History Page 9