I mean, in my estimation, he sounded like a preacher. Anyway, because I didn’t know any better I could dig Ornette. I will never forget Downbeat giving no stars (zero, nada, zip) to Meditations by John Coltrane-but that is another story. Of course, once I started subscribing to Downbeat, I quickly found out how wrong I was. In the early Sixties, I was just getting into jazz and I didn’t know that Ornette was supposed to be controversial, not supposed to be considered in the jazz tradition. Hence, when Ornette hit New York in 1959, a number of seasoned musicians, not to mention the corps of jazz critics, thought Ornette was crazy (and that is their assessment when they were being charitable and giving Ornette the benefit of the doubt). For those reared to work off of changes, this freedom was anarchy of the most despicable sort. Chord changes? The changes were no longer predetermined ahead of time. Well, Ornette thought, Suppose you didn’t have to adhere to a standardized harmony? Suppose you could play whatever note you wanted to play at a given moment? Suppose your progression was based on your imagination and not a set of predetermined codes? Wouldn’t the music sound fresher?
(I’m coming to Ornette and rap, right now. So in one sense while the record enabled the world to hear Black music, it also encouraged people to think that “one” way was “the” way. Plus, recordings both spread the music and froze the music, enabled cross-cultural (and cross-time, cross-place) study and appreciation of the music), but at the same time, the recording device locked the music into a static/processed thing, whereas in Black music one factor that is certain is change. You know what I’m saying?īy Western standards a lot of James Brown songs technically aren’t songs. Dynamite recording a nine minute song without ever crossing a bridge. Hell, we can do away with harmony, simplify the melody, hit a groove and ride for days-like Mr.
What we call Black music is a different aesthetic. adherence to various, abstract ideal standards that a specific performance is measured against. And in all of it, a premium is placed on composition and technical correctness, i.e.
Western music is based on a triad of melody, harmony and rhythm. I don’t mean he literally invented rap, but aesthetically (in terms of the three main elements of music from a Western perspective) what Ornette did in jazz is analogous to what rap did in popular music. Ornette Coleman started rap in 1959 with a record called The Shape Of Jazz To Come.
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