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John Coltrane CDs:
Ascension
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Ballads
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Best of John
Coltrane /
Impressions
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My Favorite Things /
Selflessness /
A Love Supreme /
Giant Steps /
Meditations
Kulu Se Mama /
Interstellar
Space /
The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions /
Stellar Regions /
Expression /
Afro Blue Impressions
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John Coltrane—Blue
Train
BoL— Music
Commentary by Mtume & Kalamu ya Salaam
Sometimes
we don’t know who we are until some one or some
thing comes along and smacks us—Whap! Whap!
(Twice as it were to make sure it got our
attention.) Maybe it was the sight of something
we’ve never seen. Maybe it was a tall, tall
black woman coming down the aisle of some
old-ass department store, tall and beautiful,
walking—no, actually striding, her walk akin to
an antelope’s lope: graceful, captivating. You
were looking at her walking, marveling,
admiring. Her eyes staring straight ahead at you
but you could not stop looking. She was not
challenging you but she was in some way
challenging your sense of aesthetics, making you
clear-cut the forest of bullshit-beauty, the
debris of old ideas cluttering up your head, and
she, as she draws near you, smiles.
And shit,
she is smiling at you, and now you notice the
crown that had captivated you from afar—she is
wearing her hair natural. No grease, creams or
alterations other than water and the results of
genetics curling her locks tightly into a soft,
black, wooly mass. And now she is almost up in
your face, and you are young, and it is the
early, early sixties, and you never seen a six
foot, black, beautiful, natural-wearing woman
walking toward you and smiling like she is
smiling when she says, “Hey, my brother.”
And
suddenly you know, you know you are kin to
beauty and goodness and elegance and everything
natural. She has told you with three words that
it’s not just about her or just about you but
about all of us who want to return the world to
nature. And goddamn if you are not glued to one
spot for a moment but freer than you’ve ever
been and all of sudden you’re not only imagining
things you have never thought of before but also
imagining yourself as a brother to beauty. Hey
my brother, this is love, this is a new day.
This is what the world can look like if we
change up from the old and straighten our heads
by unprocessing our minds.
Coltrane was like that. Coltrane opened a lot of
us up, and out. Made us think of us-selves in
ways not previously thought about. And like
genies and jars, once Coltrane’s sound rubbed
us, nobody could completely bottle us back up.
Once out there a minute, staying inside for the
rest of our days was impossible. So we sought
and continue to seek the exit. Or as Jimi
(another visionary who was covering Dylan, who
himself had pretty good vision too) said: there
must be some kind of way out of here.
What took Trane out was the blues. Understanding
the totality of the blues as black response to a
world of whiteness, not simply colors but social
construct(ion)s. Trane figured out how to go
forward by going backwards. Trane = Sankofa.
Moving into the future while facing the past. To
face the past, to embrace the blues, Trane’s
recipe for greatness.
“Blue Train” was the first stop after leaving
the station. Prestige Records had had Trane
working the fields for a relatively long time.
Trane, grip in hand, was leaving the farm and
even before he was officially gone, before his
work contract was expired, he slipped off one
night and made it over to Blue Note to do a
one-off quickie. When it hit, heads went crazy.
Man, what was this? The title said it all: Blue
Train. Another man done gone; way gone, way out
there for more than a minute.
Check the passenger manifest: Lee Morgan
(trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), John
Coltrane (tenor), Kenny Drew (piano), Paul
Chambers (bass), Philly Joe Jones (drums)—Rudy
Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey,
September 15, 1957. Already Mr. Trane was going
somewhere and taking people with him. This is
recognized now (and even way back in the late
fifties) as Trane’s first jazz classic.
It’s in the style of the territory bands. Horn
riffs behind Trane’s solo. A churning bass walk
like the flywheel on a locomotive. The drummer
doing a modified shuffle beat on the cymbals but
staccato accents on the snare in order to keep
it from falling off into commercial territory.
Philly Joe is insanely adept at keeping two
times simultaneously, displaying that graceful
walk the red caps (i.e., Pullman porters) could
do carrying a loaded tray down the aisle of a
swiftly moving train. Listen to what happens
behind (Gillespie acolyte) Lee Morgan’s trumpet
solo: with the left side of his body (snare and
sock cymbal) Philly Joe accents the quick time
while on the right side he keeps it steady on
the walk.
There are very few trombone solos on Coltrane
records and on the Blue Train LP Curtis Fuller
has most of the existing examples. This is some
of the best jazz of the mid-fifties, a time when
jazz was in deep transition and shortly (in
1959) would bust all the way out with seminal
statements from Ornette Coleman, Charlie Mingus,
Miles Davis and, of course, John Coltrane.
Actually, Blue Train is part of one of
the most important periods in the formation of
post-bop, modern jazz.
By 1960, Trane was moving like a cheetah,
twisting and turning fast as a mofo with his ass
on fire! He was completely off the farm and was
now recording his own compositions unencumbered
by Prestige’s attempts to own his publishing.
Trane was about freedom; he had horded his work
until he could make a break. Once he got free he
left multiple calling cards all over the place
for the world to dig.
Check Trane’s first commercial recording with
McCoy Tyner. It’s a piece dedicated to Sonny
Rollins: “Like Sonny,” AKA “Simple Like.” The
musicians are John Coltrane (tenor sax), McCoy
Tyner (piano), Steve Davis (bass) and Billy
Higgins (drums) at the United Recording Studios,
Los Angeles, CA on September 8, 1960. Here we
are getting a preview as Trane is beginning to
put together the classic quartet. Consistent
with all major developments in jazz (which is,
after all, a communal art-form) John Coltrane
knew he needed cohorts to fully develop his
music. He was carefully recruiting.
I like the theme of “Like Sonny.” Its sing-song
melody invites you to hum along.
By October of 1960, Trane had assembled three
quarters of the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner
on piano and Elvin Jones on drums. (Bassist
Jimmy Garrison would join them shortly.) In
1960, Trane recorded enough music to make four
or five albums (Like Sonny on Roulette
Records; and John Coltrane/Don Cherry The
Avant Garde, Coltrane Jazz, My Favorite
Things, Coltrane Jazz, and Coltrane’s
Sound, all on Atlantic Records). An amazing
run of material.
“Mr. Syms” is from Coltrane Plays The Blues
and is a loping blues that seems to float along
effortlessly in the style of an Ethiopian
marathon runner. You can easily hear the
difference drummer Elvin Jones makes compared to
the two previous examples. Jones was the master
of swinging hard without swinging at all, by
which I mean he eventually left the time-keeping
function to the bass and instead pushed
poly-rhythms. On “Mr. Syms” Jones is not fully
in the new bag yet but you can feel the freedom
coming in his left hand even as he is steady on
it with the right.
This is also a further exploration of the
soprano saxophone, which Coltrane
single-handedly restored to the pantheon of
quintessential jazz instruments. Before Trane
the soprano had been forgotten; after Trane
almost everybody doubled or dabbled on soprano
even if their main horn was alto, which is in a
different key (unlike the natural pairing of
tenor and soprano).
We close this investigation with “Wise One.”
It’s John Coltrane (tenor sax), McCoy Tyner
(piano), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and Elvin Jones
(drums) recorded at the Rudy Van Gelder Studio,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, April 27, 1964.
Trane recorded “Wise One” in the spring; by
winter of the same year, on December 9, 1964,
Coltrane would cut his masterwork, A Love
Supreme. I think it is important to
contextualize the chronology of Coltrane’s work
so we can fully appreciate how incredibly
productive, prolific and profound John Coltrane
was as a recording artist.
I’ve written about this one before but “Wise
One” bears further examination. Here we have the
classic quartet from a classic album,
Crescent.
This is deep Coltrane solemnly meditating.
Trane’s solo is sublime, a transcendent example
of the use of simple, unhurried playing, letting
the tone of his sound carry the gravity. Again,
notice how the song (and it actually feels like
a song even though there are no lyrics) is set
up with both a walking blues feel and a Latin
rhythm. Rhythm-wise it’s amazingly complex even
as the melody is straight forward.
What Coltrane got to was the complexity of the
blues, the swirl of emotions at the center of
one’s being. The contradictions of one’s life:
at any given moment of peace, one is grappling
with all kinds of contending forces. Coltrane
gives voice to the stillness at the center of
the storm: i.e. the blues.
These are not the only examples. There are many
more but this is enough wine to be drunk at one
time, especially for those used to soft drinks!
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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Trane at
his most accessible
If I
remember correctly, Blue Train was the
second John Coltrane CD I ever bought. I was
into it right away. Despite the very long solo
(I’m talking about the title track
specifically), this is Trane at his most
accessible. The easy swing, clear tones and
straight-ahead nature of the playing all make it
listenable for the average non-jazz afficionado.
I hope people who can’t quite get into stuff
like "Impressions" or even "Love Supreme" do
find "Blue Train" easier to listen to.
The thing is, you have to start somewhere and
once you start, Trane tends to pull you in.
Before you know it, things that previously
sounded too wild or free or crazy start to make
sense. Get into "Mr. Syms" and before you know
it, you’ll be swinging to "Equinox." Figure out
"Like Sonny" and some of Elvin John’s more
polyrhythmic efforts, "Tunji" maybe, will be a
lot easier to deal with. It’s worth it too.
There’s a reason Kalamu writes so much about
Coltrane — when it comes to jazz, Trane is
simply superlative.—Mtume ya Salaam
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John Coltrane, "Alabama" /
Kalamu ya
Salaam, "Alabama" /
A Love Supreme
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The transcendent power of music has long been recognized as a vehicle
for spiritual practice and a path to spiritual fulfillment and
enlightenment. Spiritual music, a universally powerful form of prayer,
has for millennia provided human beings with a sense of the greater
spiritual universe. Chanting forms part of many religious rituals, and
diverse spiritual traditions consider music as a means of opening the
individual to spiritual experience. I
n this episode of Global Spirit,
host Phil Cousineau explores the transcendent qualities of spiritual and
sacred music with guests Rev. Alan Jones and Grammy-award-winning singer
and member of the Native American Onondaga tribe Joanne Shenandoah.
Experience the power of liturgical musical performances in Latin from
Grace Cathedral in San Francisco (where the Rev. Jones serves as Dean)
and witness powerful, live studio performances by Joanne Shenandoah and
her daughter.
This episode also includes a
hauntingly moving, seven-minute sequence from Peter Brook’s film,
Meetings with Remarkable Men, in which the young mystic Gurdjieff
learns the power of sacred sound as it resonates from the Afghan
mountaintops.—Music,
Sound and the Sacred
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Among the
many forms in which the human spirit has tried to express its innermost
yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal. It
symbolizes the yearnings for harmony, with oneself and with others, with
nature and with the spiritual and sacred within us and around us. There
is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the
sacred music of every community—music that expresses the universal
yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.—His
Holiness the Dalai Lama
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John Coltrane A
Love Supreme
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Africa Makes Some Noise—Documentary on contemporary music from
Africa
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John Coltrane A
Love Supreme /
My Favorite Things—John Coltrane
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My Favorite Things is a 1961 jazz
album by John Coltrane. It is considered by many jazz critics and
listeners to be a highly significant and historic recording. It was the
first session recorded by Coltrane on the Atlantic label, the first to
introduce his new quartet featuring McCoy Tyner (Piano), Elvin Jones
(Drums) and Steve Davis (Bass) - neither Jimmy Garrison nor Reggie
Workman featured as yet.
It is classed as another album in which Coltrane made a break free of
bop, introducing complex harmonic reworkings of such songs as "My
Favorite Things", and "But Not for Me." Additionally, at a time when the
soprano saxophone was considered obsolete, it demonstrated Coltrane's
further investigation of the instrument's capabilities in a jazz idiom.
The standard “Summertime” is notable for its upbeat, searching feel, a
demonstration of Coltrane's “sheets of sound,” a stark antithesis to
Miles Davis's melancholy, lyrical version on Porgy and Bess. "But Not
For Me" is reharmonised using the famous Coltrane changes, and features
an extended coda over a repeated ii-V-I-vi progression.
The title track is a modal rendition of the Richard Rodgers/Oscar
Hammerstein's seminal song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of
Music. The melody is heard numerous times throughout the almost
14-minute version, and instead of soloing over the written chord
changes, both Tyner and Coltrane taking extended solos over vamps of the
two tonic chords, E minor and E major. Tyner's solo is famous for being
extremely chordal and rhythmic, as opposed to developing melodies. In
the documentary The World According to John Coltrane, narrator Ed
Wheeler remarks: “In 1960, Coltrane left Miles [Davis] and formed his
own quartet to further explore modal playing, freer directions, and a
growing Indian influence. They transformed ‘My Favorite Things’, the
cheerful populist song from The Sound of Music, into a hypnotic
eastern dervish dance. The recording was a hit and became Coltrane's
most requested tune—an abridged broad public acceptance.”
A cover of the title track appeared on the OutKast album The Love
Below.
It is one of the most well-known examples of modal jazz, set in the
Dorian mode and consisting of 16 bars of D minor7, followed by eight
bars of Eb minor7 and another eight of D minor7. This AABA structure
puts it in the format of popular song structure.
The piano and bass introduction for the piece was written by Gil Evans
for Bill Evans and Paul Chambers on Kind of Blue. An orchestrated
version by Gil Evans of this introduction is later to be found on a
television broadcast given by Miles' Quintet (minus Cannonball Adderley
who was ill that day) and the Gil Evans Orchestra; the orchestra gave
the introduction after which the quintet produced a rendition of the
rest of "So What".
The distinctive voicing employed by Bill Evans for the chords that
interject the head, from the bottom up three perfect fourths followed by
a major third, has been given the name "So What Chord" by such theorists
as Mark Levine.
While the track is taken at a very moderate tempo on Kind Of Blue, it is
played at an extremely fast tempo on later live recordings by the
Quintet, such as Four and More.
The same chord structure was later used by John Coltrane for his
standard “Impressions.”
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 14 July 2008
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