rhythmaning (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhythmaning) wrote2009-01-27 06:44 pm
rhythmaning) wrote2009-01-27 06:44 pm
"A Love Supreme"
I wrote the other day about how my iPod was obsessing about John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and yesterday I had a text from a friend who I think was listening – not hearing, because I know I’ve played it to her before, but listening - to A Love Supreme for the first time, and she was bowled over by it.
It is music that demands listening to.
This got me thinking about what it is in the music that I – and many others - find so compelling.
There is something about Coltrane. I remember an article in The Wire when it was still a jazz magazine. It was about Coltrane on, I think, the twentieth anniversary of his death (which means it is more than twenty years ago now) (actually, I got that wrong – I think it must have been April 1991…). The article – by Richard Cook, I think – started with words that went a bit like this…
(If anyone has a copy of this article – and if you do, you’ll know the one I mean – I’d love to see it. Here’s looking at you, bro’…)
Coltrane really does inspire that kind of devotion. I don’t have it that bad, but – well, I think it is clear the guy was a genius who created some of the most important music ever. Not just jazz – but any genre: one of the most important composers, period.
I can still remember buying A Love Supreme, first time around. (I am now on my third copy.) It was a vinyl reissue; I bought it in a sale in a record shop on the Royal Mile; it must have been in the autumn of 1983 or spring of 1984.
I got it home, put it on the turntable – and was blown away. It was a revelation. I had listened to a fair bit of jazz (at least compared to most people in their early twenties!) – I had a few albums, I would go to a few gigs at the Queen’s Hall, I knew the names, and I was exploring: I bought A Love Supreme because I knew Coltrane from the classic Miles Davis quintet’s Workin’ and Steamin’ (I didn’t have Kind of Blue by then, either.)
A Love Supreme was something completely different – a different level of music – it was on a different plane, and seemed to bear no relationship to the reworked show tunes I had heard before. This was hard, it grabbed you and shook you. It made listen.
It helped me make sense of jazz. I had a couple of free jazz albums – maybe only one: Archie Shepp’s A Poem for Malcolm. It was frankly unlistenable to. (I gave it to a friend who was interested in free jazz, as a gift - here, take it; a couple days later, they gave it back.) It still is unlistenable to (and Shepp plays nothing like that now – he has become a blues honker.) But at least after hearing A Love Supreme, free jazz made sense. It was like the missing link: it changed the music that followed, radically.
It was as if hearing it changed everything.
Although it is credited to Coltrane – and it is very much his record – it is also an ensemble piece, the classic quartet: without Elvin Jones on drums and McCoy Tyner on piano, Coltrane could not have done what he did. (I feel sorry for Jimmy Garrison, the bass player – because he is almost the forgotten artist on the record. He is solidly there, keeping the music moving, swinging, along – but the others shine, soar and reach new heights; Garrison is just there.)
Someone once described Jones’ drumming, saying “even his polyrhythms have polyrhythms…” (It was probably Art Blakey.) His drumming is essential to the music: together with Tyner’s piano, it enables Coltrane to lay down long, ceaseless searching solos – described as sheets of sound (others called them noise). It can sound frenetic and angry – and much of Coltrane’s music was born of the civil rights movement of the 1960s (Alabama, say). But it was also beautiful, powerful and spiritual.
Ashley Kahn has described how A Love Supreme came to be made. In the 1950s, ‘Trane was addicted to heroin, getting repeatedly fired from Davis’ band. He kicked the habit by 1957 and formed his own band, throwing himself into his music with an intensity. (When he had been with Davis, he played long, intense solos; Davis asked why he played so long. Coltrane replied that he was so into the music, he didn’t know how to stop. Davis is reputed to have replied, “Try taking your horn out of your mouth.”)
Coltrane conceived A Love Supreme as a prayer: a reaction to his addiction. His own liner notes to the album say
His wife Alice described ‘Trane appearing after he’d written the piece:
He actually wrote a prayer – his solo in the last section of the music, Psalm, is apparently a reading of the prayer through the saxophone: the solo mapping out the words and rhythms of the prayer-poem.
In his foreword to Kahn’s book, Elvin Jones says of A Love Supreme:
It IS a spiritual work. I am not religious, and I don’t believe in God, but listening to A Love Supreme is an uplifting, spiritual experience. It can be hard work, too – it is intense - all those sheets of sound.
But brilliant.
As Coltrane’s prayer says,
Amen, indeed.
(If you don't know the piece and want to hear it, you can list to the whole album here.)
It is music that demands listening to.
This got me thinking about what it is in the music that I – and many others - find so compelling.
There is something about Coltrane. I remember an article in The Wire when it was still a jazz magazine. It was about Coltrane on, I think, the twentieth anniversary of his death (which means it is more than twenty years ago now) (actually, I got that wrong – I think it must have been April 1991…). The article – by Richard Cook, I think – started with words that went a bit like this…
There are crazy jazz fans out there for whom John Coltrane is a kind of messiah, a god-like figure to be worshiped with awe. Thing is, they are right…
(If anyone has a copy of this article – and if you do, you’ll know the one I mean – I’d love to see it. Here’s looking at you, bro’…)
Coltrane really does inspire that kind of devotion. I don’t have it that bad, but – well, I think it is clear the guy was a genius who created some of the most important music ever. Not just jazz – but any genre: one of the most important composers, period.
I can still remember buying A Love Supreme, first time around. (I am now on my third copy.) It was a vinyl reissue; I bought it in a sale in a record shop on the Royal Mile; it must have been in the autumn of 1983 or spring of 1984.
I got it home, put it on the turntable – and was blown away. It was a revelation. I had listened to a fair bit of jazz (at least compared to most people in their early twenties!) – I had a few albums, I would go to a few gigs at the Queen’s Hall, I knew the names, and I was exploring: I bought A Love Supreme because I knew Coltrane from the classic Miles Davis quintet’s Workin’ and Steamin’ (I didn’t have Kind of Blue by then, either.)
A Love Supreme was something completely different – a different level of music – it was on a different plane, and seemed to bear no relationship to the reworked show tunes I had heard before. This was hard, it grabbed you and shook you. It made listen.
It helped me make sense of jazz. I had a couple of free jazz albums – maybe only one: Archie Shepp’s A Poem for Malcolm. It was frankly unlistenable to. (I gave it to a friend who was interested in free jazz, as a gift - here, take it; a couple days later, they gave it back.) It still is unlistenable to (and Shepp plays nothing like that now – he has become a blues honker.) But at least after hearing A Love Supreme, free jazz made sense. It was like the missing link: it changed the music that followed, radically.
It was as if hearing it changed everything.
Although it is credited to Coltrane – and it is very much his record – it is also an ensemble piece, the classic quartet: without Elvin Jones on drums and McCoy Tyner on piano, Coltrane could not have done what he did. (I feel sorry for Jimmy Garrison, the bass player – because he is almost the forgotten artist on the record. He is solidly there, keeping the music moving, swinging, along – but the others shine, soar and reach new heights; Garrison is just there.)
Someone once described Jones’ drumming, saying “even his polyrhythms have polyrhythms…” (It was probably Art Blakey.) His drumming is essential to the music: together with Tyner’s piano, it enables Coltrane to lay down long, ceaseless searching solos – described as sheets of sound (others called them noise). It can sound frenetic and angry – and much of Coltrane’s music was born of the civil rights movement of the 1960s (Alabama, say). But it was also beautiful, powerful and spiritual.
Ashley Kahn has described how A Love Supreme came to be made. In the 1950s, ‘Trane was addicted to heroin, getting repeatedly fired from Davis’ band. He kicked the habit by 1957 and formed his own band, throwing himself into his music with an intensity. (When he had been with Davis, he played long, intense solos; Davis asked why he played so long. Coltrane replied that he was so into the music, he didn’t know how to stop. Davis is reputed to have replied, “Try taking your horn out of your mouth.”)
Coltrane conceived A Love Supreme as a prayer: a reaction to his addiction. His own liner notes to the album say
During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God a spiritual awakening... At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music…
His wife Alice described ‘Trane appearing after he’d written the piece:
It was like Moses coming down from the mountain, it was so beautiful. He walked down and there was that joy, that peace in his face, tranquillity… He said, “This is the first time I have received all of the music I want to record… This is the first time I have everything, everything ready”
He actually wrote a prayer – his solo in the last section of the music, Psalm, is apparently a reading of the prayer through the saxophone: the solo mapping out the words and rhythms of the prayer-poem.
In his foreword to Kahn’s book, Elvin Jones says of A Love Supreme:
It is like the culmination of of one man’s life, the whole story of his entire life. When a person wants to become an American citizen, he or she has a say a pledge of allegiance in front of God. A Love Supreme is John’s pledge of allegiance…
The quartet never really talked about the spiritual aspect. It wasn’t contrived; things just happened… The spirit of God is in all of us, and when we started to play, that’s what came out.
It IS a spiritual work. I am not religious, and I don’t believe in God, but listening to A Love Supreme is an uplifting, spiritual experience. It can be hard work, too – it is intense - all those sheets of sound.
But brilliant.
As Coltrane’s prayer says,
ELATION – ELEGANCE – EXALTATION –
All from God.
Thank you God. Amen.
Amen, indeed.
(If you don't know the piece and want to hear it, you can list to the whole album here.)