Ornette Coleman: Classic Or Dud?

and I'd like an intelligent definition of harmolodics, but we can't always get what we want.

Really? I'm sure this could be arranged, dude.

we can't always get what we want
we can't always get what we want
we can't always get what we want

Pilin' up the platitudes.

I basically don't think he's had anything new to say since very early on (which is a big reason why he records so rarely), but people seem to be so in love with him that they don't care or seem to notice.

of course, I also think Bob Dylan's output of the last 25 years is worthless and embarrassing, so I'm not really in the majority on much around here (which is why I almost never post).

anyway, my first comment was two years ago, and was a simple answer to "Classic or Dud?". I'll stick by that and let whoever wants to think that I'm a brainless fool for said position.

Well, Jon, I respect this opinion (not that you care for my respect).

Although some people don't mind if someone sticks with a thing and doesn't say anything new.

"Although some people don't mind if someone sticks with a thing and doesn't say anything new."

sure, this is a position I see expressed more and more by jazz fans/critics/musicians these days, innovation isn't important. it has a lot to do with why I'm no longer a jazz fan, as innovation in music generally is pretty important to me (not that it's always possible, but at least try).

innovation in music generally is pretty important to me (not that it's always possible, but at least try)

How do you define innovation in 2009? Who is innovating, and what are they doing that is innovative? Are there new chords being discovered/invented? New scales? New meters? New instruments? Or are we just talking about advances in recording technology and/or incremental adjustments in technique applied to existing instruments?

Phil, that would be a pretty long and involved discussion, but you basically know my answer anyway and I'm pretty sure you don't agree.

I'd actually be interested in hearing the answer though.

(And you don't see any innovation in 70s Ornette?)

i was tempted to ask that

i don't know; at the RFH there was a sense of "look! i can ornette over any kind of music i want!"

"And you don't see any innovation in 70s Ornette?"

no, he just added electricity to the same ideas.

"I'd actually be interested in hearing the answer though."

OK, I'll take a shot, although it's stretching the original topic at best. for anyone who doesn't know, I run Erstwhile Records, and have for the last ten years specialized in electroacoustic improvisation. so while obviously that's my bias, previously to that I was just a fan (of many different areas of music), and the only reason I work with the musicians that I do is that I believe in their music, not because they were friends of mine or they live in my city. so with that in mind, Phil's questions:

"How do you define innovation in 2009? Who is innovating, and what are they doing that is innovative?"

actions speak louder than words, so I'll enter into evidence the 60 or so CDs I've released in the last decade, the best 30-40 of which I think qualify as genuinely new music. if you need a few specific names, Keith Rowe, Toshimaru Nakamura, Sachiko M, Burkhard Stangl, Ami Yoshida, Jason Lescalleet and a slew of others to various extents.

"Are there new chords being discovered/invented? New scales? New meters? New instruments?"

chords, scales and meters are all meaningless in this music (at least to the limited extent of my understanding of those terms). new instruments in some cases, yeah.

"Or are we just talking about advances in recording technology and/or incremental adjustments in technique applied to existing instruments?"

no, I'm (pretty much solely) talking about the end result, which at its best combines the energy of free improv with an extremely wide palette of sounds, whether they be electronics, extended techniques on conventional instruments, or whatever mixture.

it's really hard to talk in generalities like this for me, but there's a brief shot since Sundar asked.

Cool, thanks. I enjoy many of your releases and agree that these artists are innovative.

I guess 70s Ornette isn't innovative in quite the same way but "adding electricity" and applying free jazz ideas to funk grooves do seem like creative syntheses to me.

thinking about it a little more and trying to connect it a little more to this thread, the Giuffre/Bley/Swallow material from the earlier sixties (particularly Thesis and Fusion) and Bill Dixon's two Vade Mecum records were I believe pretty influential on the European wing of EAI, as well as trying to bring the ideas of Cage/Stockhausen/Xenakis/Feldman/Cardew/Lachenmann (and probably a few others) into a free improv context.

the overarching general genre history of EAI is that when the Tokyo 'onkyo' crew emerged in the late nineties (specifically when Hat Art released Taku Sugimoto-Opposite, a record every improv fan of any kind should hear), the European free improv scene at the time basically splintered into two general areas:

1) musicians who felt compelled to rethink at least to some extent what they were doing in light of the Tokyo crew (Sugimoto primarily, but also Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura). Otomo's 'Mottomo Otomo' festival in Wels, Austria, was a major galvanizing event colliding Europe and Tokyo in a live situation. (EAI)

2) musicians who either didn't notice or decided to keep on going as they had been. (EFI)

Keith Rowe and Radu Malfatti both fell into the former group, and both currently count Tokyo-based musicians as most of their primary collaborators (Rowe: Toshi Nakamura and Sachiko M, Radu: the two Takus, Sugimoto and Unami). Derek Bailey and Peter Brotzmann would be examples of the latter, plenty of others, label examples would be Emanem, FMP, Incus, Maya.

it also should be noted that some of these ideas were already percolating in Europe (Polwechsel, For 4 Ears, some of the early Random Acoustics releases), and that's why the Tokyo crew's approach connected so well. and of course it should also be noted that there were grey areas in between (Another Timbre have specialized in documenting this area in the last few years) and musicians like Cor Fuhler and Axel Dorner who would play in both styles in different projects (both are also jazz musicians, they play in Otomo's jazz projects among other things).

anyway, all that is leading to a more specific answer to Phil's question: "Who is innovating, and what are they doing that is innovative?". London saxophonist Seymour Wright (a Prevost/Rowe disciple who's been doing some great work of his own recently, specifically his given away for free solo disc 'Seymour Wright of Derby' and his duo with Sebastien Lexer on Another Timbre) asked me not that long ago what I thought the most radical releases in my catalog were, and I told him the four all-Tokyo musician projects I've done. as music historians, we all know that one sign of the 'new' is often extreme, angry pans, here's one for the Ami Yoshida/Toshimaru Nakamura record I put out a few months ago that I just saw today:

http://www.squidsear.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=974

the flip side: http://dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4974

anyway, those are a series of four records that I'd describe as genuinely 'new' (013/024/042/056 in the Erst catalog) and the main reasons I would say would be the timing and the instrumentation (thus the palette). I also work with a lot of combos who are playing together for the first time, and in the case of Soba to Bara, it's actually before the first time they played, overdubbed solos recorded separately and layered on top of each other with no editing. I think you might even like this one, Phil, the Wire review (Bill Meyer) just compared them to Billie Holiday/Lester Young and Steve Lacy/Irene Aebi (eek), which is kind of amazing for a duo that not only wasn't actually playing together, but never had before.

"applying free jazz ideas to funk grooves "

to my ears, Fela and the best electric Miles dwarf Ornette's efforts in this area, he's never struck me as especially funky (more towards gospel), which is a problem when you're trying to make free funk.

along these lines, have people heard the Vernard Johnson record I'm Alive? DL immediately if you haven't, free sax on gospel songs, dude blows his ass off in service of the Lord and will make even the biggest haters believers sometimes, right up until the song ends. I'd love to hear more of him sometime, my friend is supposed to copy some cassettes for me if he ever finds them, but he didn't release much.

Peter Brotzmann's pretty awesome, too. I think jon and I have different aesthetics, because I'd rather hear Ornette or Brotzmann doing what they've been doing for decades than the innovative ashtray rattling with intermittent blips and bloops and the "oh-so-poignant" silences of EAI.

oh no, how wrong can you be. A jazzman like ornette really has to abandon his idiom and start making free improv electro acoustic bullshit if he wants to kick it in the 00s.

I wonder if jon abbey likes crabcore.

You should be more polite.

I'm actually really curious what jon abbey's reaction is to crabcore.

I've never heard of crabcore, sorry.

Then this is the thread for you!

someone can love seeing the Preservation Hall Jazz Band now (presumably they're still playing?), and they can indeed be pretty awesome.

but no one thinks they're playing the music of now, that's all that I'm saying, and I attempted to do it with minimal value judgments, just trying to explain my perspective.

one sign of the 'new' is often extreme, angry pans

I didn't find that review all that angry or extreme. I did think his questions ("What exactly does "music" like this accomplish? What is its innate purpose/function/meaning?") were kinda dumb, in that the majority of music has long been meaningless and purposeless (liturgical music played in actual churches/temples/synagogues/mosques during actual services, and military marching music, are the big examples of music with an actual purpose) and its only function is aesthetic. I also believe context is almost always moot anyway; each piece of music is a set of sounds, organized (to a greater or lesser degree), and should be taken on its own merits rather than placed into any larger context. This is one of the cornerstones of my approach to music criticism, as jon knows. One of the big disputes we've had in the past revolves around my refusal to accept the necessity of studying up on a genre before opining on a particular piece of music. If it works for me, it works for me, and deep reading of the composer's theories isn't gonna change the sonic product one way or the other. A listener who allows himself to be swayed by an artist's rhetoric is either gullible or insecure.

someone can love seeing the Preservation Hall Jazz Band now (presumably they're still playing?), and they can indeed be pretty awesome. but no one thinks they're playing the music of now

There's no such thing as "the music of now," though. Music doesn't move on a horizontal line. It's a string of moments, some of which are in reaction to others and some of which aren't. This is particularly true in the CD/internet era, when a huge amount of music exists in digital simultaneity.

There's no such thing as "the music of now," though.

Well, there is music that is more novel than other music, which is why I suggested jon familiarize himself with crabcore. It definitely has a "now-ness."

"There's no such thing as "the music of now," though."

amusingly, Radu Malfatti and Klaus Filip have titled their upcoming duo CD for my label 'imaoto' or 'now sound' in Japanese.

"Music doesn't move on a horizontal line. It's a string of moments, some of which are in reaction to others and some of which aren't. This is particularly true in the CD/internet era, when a huge amount of music exists in digital simultaneity."

I'd say yes and no. within areas, especially ones that are in their prime period of creativity, you have albums that vault everything that's come before and force people to deal with them or become yesterday's news. this was true for hip-hop and Public Enemy, for instance (I'd say with It Takes a Million... but maybe others here would say their first record), or when Charlie Parker showed up, or Albert Ayler.

and horizontal is too simplistic, but I do think there's an overall general lineage from jazz to EFI to EAI, just as there's one from big band to bebop to free jazz. this isn't saying free jazz is the best of those, but it was the music of the mid-sixties, not bebop.

within areas, especially ones that are in their prime period of creativity, you have albums that vault everything that's come before and force people to deal with them or become yesterday's news. this was true for hip-hop and Public Enemy, for instance (I'd say with It Takes a Million... but maybe others here would say their first record), or when Charlie Parker showed up, or Albert Ayler.

I think this is only true for listeners who were alive when these records were new. Both Charlie Parker and Albert Ayler stopped making records before I was born (1971). So to me, they exist simultaneously. As far as PE are concerned, much as I love them, they were more aberrant than pathbreaking. Nobody else could pick up where they left off - legal restrictions on sampling made it prohibitively expensive.

the majority of music has long been meaningless and purposeless (liturgical music played in actual churches/temples/synagogues/mosques during actual services, and military marching music, are the big examples of music with an actual purpose) and its only function is aesthetic.

The two examples you give are musics with a stated purpose; the lack of obvious statements-of-purpose with regards to other areas of music doesn't negate the face that they may have very specific purposes/functions (to paraphrase Little Richard, it's more fun to figure those purposes out than to have them spelled out for you).

I also believe context is almost always moot anyway; each piece of music is a set of sounds, organized (to a greater or lesser degree), and should be taken on its own merits rather than placed into any larger context.

Those merits are largely, if not entirely, defined and determined by larger (social, political, economic, what have you) contexts.

This is one of the cornerstones of my approach to music criticism, as jon knows. One of the big disputes we've had in the past revolves around my refusal to accept the necessity of studying up on a genre before opining on a particular piece of music. If it works for me, it works for me, and deep reading of the composer's theories isn't gonna change the sonic product one way or the other. A listener who allows himself to be swayed by an artist's rhetoric is either gullible or insecure.

Reading up on a composer's intentions isn't the same thing as, say, investigating what other artists in that particular area of activity (or, sometimes more revealingly, other areas of musical activity) were doing around that time. If "context" is strictly defined as background/theoretical study of a composer, that's only an extremely tiny part of the story. And reducing the potential results of such study to "Now I like it!" or "Now I hate it!" strikes me as limited/limiting. My own readings on, say, Anthony Braxton or Elvis Presley -- whether I've found them insightful or thought they were utter bullshit -- have given me different perspectives, new ways of approaching their work, new ways to listen; it's never resulted in a simple "Oh, I used to love this, but now I realize that it sucks," and I've never encountered anyone, in person or in print, for whom that's been the case, with any artist.

"I think this is only true for listeners who were alive when these records were new."

I'm giving you historical examples to explain to you what I mean. presumably you're alive now, right? :)

Right, but those albums were only leaps forward for the time; now, they're just drops in the ocean of sound. Are there records being released now that vault music forward in the way you're describing? Even if I accepted your framework, I'd say no.

OK, trying to work within your worldview is hurting my head a bit (do you also ignore chronology within the same artist's work?), but I think I explained my perspective, whether one agrees or not.

I think that some new music is judged too much by its procedure rather than its sonics.

Lately it seems that there has been a feedback loop in the musical dialectic, owing to so much instantaneous transmission and response to work. It is like cultural progress has become a buzz.

Would you (you=anyone here) say that different musics are part of different musical continuums? For instance, jazz, hip hop, etc.? Granting space for blending, of course.

If this is true, I haven't heard anything that seems new, that doesn't seem like some hybridization, synthesis or incremental progression of part of a musical continuum. I have been wondering what new thing will arise.

But I think owing to the wide vocabulary/syntax of jazz, classical and its compositional and improvisatory offshoots, new works produced in those and related genres are the least likely to seem fallow.

I have to admit to definitely being dismissive to new music for rehashing old ground. I have also been hard on music that seemed obvious - have you ever heard something completely of its time, or even seemingly ahead of its time, that nevertheless turned you off as if you were just waiting for it to come, waiting to be bored by it. I felt this way when Music Has the Right to Children.

Anyway, I go both ways on the time and music question.

"I think that some new music is judged too much by its procedure rather than its sonics."

I was going to get into this, but I thought I was already going on too long.

just to be clear, 'newness' is important but the quality of the music is the primary thing. my goal is to make records that are still revealing new facets after dozens of listens, not the aural equivalent of a Michael Haneke film that shocks you initially but that you never feel like exposing yourself to a second time.

Sure. I just figured this discussion was not going to jump ship to another thread.

Plus I need to copy edit my posts. Sheesh.

(In other words, the idea was to go on too long.)

Haneke isn't just a 'shock' merchant, its a very willful misreading of what he is interested in. He clearly has interests and keeps coming back to them over and over -- the definition of non-shocking.

I don't need to expose myself to records dozens of times; the newness of a film/record can reveal itself fairly quickly -- and if it is new, it ought to do it with people who don't know that much about it. This is what's so attractive about improvisation in the first place, where you are looking for your precious art to be compromised by engaging with someone else. After spending enough time with some of the records improv is a mostly concert only occasion, as a listen once/treasure it-or-throw-it-away etc, so Jon coming over here like a mad studio scientist trying to make these AMAZING records that will REVEAL themselves should you want to LISTEN! makes you want to start thinking that how music should never that much of an effort.

The question what is or isn't harmolodics isn't THAT important when it comes to engaging with Ornette's music. The desire to want to unlock music does demand explanations from the people who make them but they can be terrible at providing them. That's where the work from the person at the other end comes in.

So music can be an effort. But I don't expect to get it from a guy who wears colourful clothing and says he comes from Saturn or this chess freak who titles his compositions by drawing squiggly signs, or from these 'normal' looking improv guys that make millions of CDs that get accused of sounding 'the same'.

To go back to Ornette I think Dancing in Your Head is probably my single favourite by him, and really coming in from a different angles to Miles or Fela. When thomp talks about a sense of (to put it slightly differently) 'Ornetting' that's where the sense that he has a system ('harmolodics', lets call it) to make this stuff comes from, surely. He has it, but its his own, because we will never know the 'it'.

So music can be an effort. But I don't expect to get it from a guy who wears colourful clothing and says he comes from Saturn or this chess freak who titles his compositions by drawing squiggly signs, or from these 'normal' looking improv guys that make millions of CDs that get accused of sounding 'the same'.

It seems like this paragraph is missing a word or two. Are you saying that you don't expect the people in the second sentence to provide explanations of their music? That you don't expect to perceive "effort" in these people's music?

i think the devotion of 60s avant-jazz heroes to THE SYSTEM is kind of interesting, be it a system of 'squiggly lines' or harmolodics or pretending to come from saturn

i think my comment about 'ornetting over whatever' was brought on by the bassist playing something vaguely baroque which i later read wz a fragment from one of bach's solo cello suites

i certainly got the impression that his playing was reaching for a set of rather crystallised gestures at how he plays a lot of the time, rather than a genuine conception of the moment: but, you know, he is a 79-year-old who had been playing pretty much every night that week. (when haden called him on to take a bow the previous night he looked utterly shattered.)

& it might be possible to say "oh, if only he'd spent years looking for collaborators who would push him in different directions" — his violin playing, for example, is over the top of what the rest of the band is playing on every record i've heard it on, rather than integrated with it — but he didn't, and it feels kind of ... uncharitable, at this point, to slate ornette ...

& if there's nothing wrong with the preservation jazz hall band being awesome i don't really see why ornette can't be awesome, which he was, despite all, in places.

(like: i can see why it might make some very angry that ornette holds this dual position as an elder statesman [which he is] and as an ambassador of the new [which he isn't] — but i don't see why that makes his records awful, it just means it'll take a while longer to arrive at an accurate assessment of them ...)

jon abbey, if you don't mind my asking, how do you feel about
i) blue series stuff
ii) the idea represented by derek bailey's 'guitar drums and bass'*

*rather than the actual record, which eh

sarahel -- What I meant was that I don't expect clarity from musicians in general.

Thomp -- I couldn't tell how 'good' or not Ornette's improv was at times. Thinking now there certain riffs that kept coming back. But I was just enjoying the cast of people he bought along, as in just the fact that they were there (like you, I don't think I could tell what Flea was doing apart from one piece). The thing I really thought about quite a lot was the first 3-5 mins of the section with Master Musicians of Jojouka.

I'd be inclined to agree on his fiddle playing: there is a type of improv person that basically 'trolls' and that seems to me to be what Ornette is up to. But because everyone else is playing with some other 'concept' of his there is a mis-communication.

there is a type of improv person that basically 'trolls' and that seems to me to be what Ornette is up to.

Henry Kaiser likes to do this a lot.

Sorry I'm not explaining properly (see how difficult these things are):

Thinking now there certain riffs that kept coming back

Basically, he seemed to get stuck in a certain 'riff' and a certain response that wore me out, but actually I'll strike this, I'm too far removed from that aspect of the performance.

"jon abbey, if you don't mind my asking, how do you feel about
i) blue series stuff"

dreadful music, although to be fair, I stopped paying attention after the first handful. like you imply with the Derek record, the idea is compelling in theory but the execution is generally quite poor. but then again, I believe that jazz is a dead language, much like Latin, and attempts to crossbreed it to other areas are pretty much doomed to failure.

"ii) the idea represented by derek bailey's 'guitar drums and bass'*

*rather than the actual record, which eh"

heh, well, that's a little hard to separate, but I think I know what you mean. the idea is admirable, but the problem is that Derek never moved much, no matter who he played with. he did his thing, and people were expected to adapt to him. drum and bass on the radio was just more source material for him to play against, not something to genuinely try to meld with and have it influence how he played, how he thought. there were occasional exceptions, like the live set I saw him do with the Ruins, where he was forced to play extremely loud, but for the most part that was his approach. I have tons of respect for Derek, saw him do plenty of great sets, and dedicated my last ErstQuake festival to him, as it took place at Tonic soon after his death, which was his home away from home in the final years, and his work as a musician, label owner, and festival curator (Company Week) was a crucial building block for all the styles of free improv that followed.

but I'll defer to my man Keith Rowe on this, in a piece that the Wire ran about him in 2001 (it should be noted that EAI had just begun to coalesce in the year or two before Keith's quote here):

"I have the very greatest admiration for Derek's work, but for me he's playing the old language. The structure, verbs and syntax are different but the language is the same. My work's always been oriented towards the future, finding a completely different language."

Keith and I don't agree on everything musical, but we're in total agreement on this kind of thing, and on the importance of at least trying to work in that direction.

"I don't need to expose myself to records dozens of times; the newness of a film/record can reveal itself fairly quickly -- and if it is new, it ought to do it with people who don't know that much about it."

yes, I agree, that's not what I meant. the newness part should reveal itself almost immediately, I'm talking about fully coming to terms with the content and the logic, and I think the best records continue to reveal new depths and facets after dozens of listens.

"This is what's so attractive about improvisation in the first place, where you are looking for your precious art to be compromised by engaging with someone else."

totally agreed, and why I primarily work with first-time combos that I've asked to play together, in the interests of pushing them out of their normal grooves. this isn't randomly throwing people together, like in Company Week, but trying to put together combos who have yet to play together but that I think could work well if given the chance.

"After spending enough time with some of the records improv is a mostly concert only occasion, as a listen once/treasure it-or-throw-it-away etc"

this is where I strongly disagree. records are very different from concerts, which everyone in most areas of music knows, but improv people seem to have an issue with. concerts are designed to be heard once live and not revisited except in your memory, records ideally should hold up to numerous listens, otherwise they're not a very worthwhile purchase.

"willful misreading"

This phrase is going around.

concerts are designed to be heard once live and not revisited except in your memory

Not always. There are plenty of concerts that are designed to be recorded, with the resulting document to be merchandised.

Sounds like it was good fun.

yeah this sounded like it was a pretty great show. i hope i get to see Ornette some day. Not to be morbid or anything, but time is running out! How old is he? Late 70s at least?

Tyler if you're in SF in nov. he's playing the jazz festival. I saw him 2 yrs ago, it was really good. Also he's 79...

hmm, yeah, probably not going to be in SF then ... Seriously, though I need to move there. It's not expensive, is it? ;) But yeah there are a few jazz living legends I really need to see before it's too late -- Rollins, Ornette, Hancock, Ahmad Jamal ...