ORNETTE COLEMAN - The Territory and the Adventure
Written by Maria Golia
Reaktion Books Limited
Ornette is one of the most significant musicians to have worked in the twentieth century. In many ways, he is still misunderstood. It is strange that such a major figure has not yet been celebrated in a major biography.
‘When you hear me, you probably hear everything I’ve heard since I was a kid’, Ornette is quoted as saying which probably explains a great deal about Ornette and also explains why Maria Golia spends so much time on describing Ornette’s early life in Fort Worth, Texas. Nearly a third of the book details Ornette’s early life and background. It is a world of legendary figures like Buster Smith, Red Conner, Pee Wee Crayton and Ornette’s band the Jam Jivers with players like Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett all in thrall to R and B.
The eventful months when Ornette moved to Los Angeles are described where Coleman met up with Sonny Rollins, apparently, they would visit the beach and play to the sea. Ornette played with Paul Bley and made two controversial albums for Contemporary. Gradually, Coleman was being accepted and John Lewis of the MJQ had the foresight and vision to invite him to the Lenox School of Jazz. Lewis was one of the few who could see that Coleman offered a valid way forward.
Eventually, Ornette hit New York like a musical tsunami when he played the Five Spot with his quartet in November 1959. The musical and artistic cognoscenti rushed down to the little club to see what this revolutionary player was producing. His raw sound and his deceptively simple themes were dismissed by many as the work of a charlatan, rejected by those who feared that they would be sidelined, seen as yesterday’s musicians. Ornette explained: ‘The theme you play at the start of the number is the territory. And what comes after, which may have very little to do with it, is the adventure.’
The mild-mannered Ornette divided the jazz community fiercely and Golia describes the animosity and venom accurately. She paints Ornette as part of a wider arts movement like the radical artistic upheavals of the 60s..Some could see that Ornette was offering ways out of the chordal based jazz that had trapped jazz musicians like musical mice in a maze. Coleman was breaking the orthodoxy that many musicians relied on on.. Revolutionary though he was, his playing reached back into the heart of jazz, the centre of his sound was the raw echoes of the field hollers and the spirit of rebellion that should be part of jazz.
After Coleman’s initial impact he became disillusioned with the way he was treated compared to the musicians and composers in the classical world.. Coleman saw himself as an artist and demanded to be treated as an artist. It led to him withdrawing from playing in public, Golia analyses the different stances of Coltrane and Coleman. Coleman did not have much sympathy with the spiritual dimensions explored by Coltrane. Often Coleman bridled at the description of his music as free jazz.
The freedom that Golia describes is the freedom and openness to form friendships with artists from other areas of the arts. It is the freedom of someone who would go off to Morocco to seek out the musicians of JouJouka. These musicians had a profound effect on the way that Coleman developed multiple unisons and the harmolodic melding of the blues to create the Prime Time band.
Fort Worth’s The Caravan Of Dreams Performing Arts Center is an institution that was set up to change how the city was perceived and it became somewhere that Ornette played on a number of occasions. Maria Golia worked there for a period which probably explains why there is a disproportionate amount of space dedicated to the organisation.
The research that Maria Golia has done is impressive and her book will be essential to anyone in the future who attempts to write the definitive book about Ornette. In spite of the depth of her research, Golia does not penetrate into the heart of the remarkable unique music that Coleman played. She makes little attempt to analyse the remarkable series of ground-breaking albums that Coleman made for Atlantic or with Prime Time or even to understand the contributions made by Charlie Haden and Don Cherry. Golia is sociological rather than musical but still well worth reading.
Reviewed by Jack Kenny
Reaktion Books Limited
Ornette is one of the most significant musicians to have worked in the twentieth century. In many ways, he is still misunderstood. It is strange that such a major figure has not yet been celebrated in a major biography.
‘When you hear me, you probably hear everything I’ve heard since I was a kid’, Ornette is quoted as saying which probably explains a great deal about Ornette and also explains why Maria Golia spends so much time on describing Ornette’s early life in Fort Worth, Texas. Nearly a third of the book details Ornette’s early life and background. It is a world of legendary figures like Buster Smith, Red Conner, Pee Wee Crayton and Ornette’s band the Jam Jivers with players like Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett all in thrall to R and B.
The eventful months when Ornette moved to Los Angeles are described where Coleman met up with Sonny Rollins, apparently, they would visit the beach and play to the sea. Ornette played with Paul Bley and made two controversial albums for Contemporary. Gradually, Coleman was being accepted and John Lewis of the MJQ had the foresight and vision to invite him to the Lenox School of Jazz. Lewis was one of the few who could see that Coleman offered a valid way forward.
Eventually, Ornette hit New York like a musical tsunami when he played the Five Spot with his quartet in November 1959. The musical and artistic cognoscenti rushed down to the little club to see what this revolutionary player was producing. His raw sound and his deceptively simple themes were dismissed by many as the work of a charlatan, rejected by those who feared that they would be sidelined, seen as yesterday’s musicians. Ornette explained: ‘The theme you play at the start of the number is the territory. And what comes after, which may have very little to do with it, is the adventure.’
The mild-mannered Ornette divided the jazz community fiercely and Golia describes the animosity and venom accurately. She paints Ornette as part of a wider arts movement like the radical artistic upheavals of the 60s..Some could see that Ornette was offering ways out of the chordal based jazz that had trapped jazz musicians like musical mice in a maze. Coleman was breaking the orthodoxy that many musicians relied on on.. Revolutionary though he was, his playing reached back into the heart of jazz, the centre of his sound was the raw echoes of the field hollers and the spirit of rebellion that should be part of jazz.
After Coleman’s initial impact he became disillusioned with the way he was treated compared to the musicians and composers in the classical world.. Coleman saw himself as an artist and demanded to be treated as an artist. It led to him withdrawing from playing in public, Golia analyses the different stances of Coltrane and Coleman. Coleman did not have much sympathy with the spiritual dimensions explored by Coltrane. Often Coleman bridled at the description of his music as free jazz.
The freedom that Golia describes is the freedom and openness to form friendships with artists from other areas of the arts. It is the freedom of someone who would go off to Morocco to seek out the musicians of JouJouka. These musicians had a profound effect on the way that Coleman developed multiple unisons and the harmolodic melding of the blues to create the Prime Time band.
Fort Worth’s The Caravan Of Dreams Performing Arts Center is an institution that was set up to change how the city was perceived and it became somewhere that Ornette played on a number of occasions. Maria Golia worked there for a period which probably explains why there is a disproportionate amount of space dedicated to the organisation.
The research that Maria Golia has done is impressive and her book will be essential to anyone in the future who attempts to write the definitive book about Ornette. In spite of the depth of her research, Golia does not penetrate into the heart of the remarkable unique music that Coleman played. She makes little attempt to analyse the remarkable series of ground-breaking albums that Coleman made for Atlantic or with Prime Time or even to understand the contributions made by Charlie Haden and Don Cherry. Golia is sociological rather than musical but still well worth reading.
Reviewed by Jack Kenny
