John Coltrane – The Motive
What was the motive behind Coltrane’s body of work? Why did it start where it did and end the way it did? All of this is speculative, but by looking at what the critics were saying at the time and what his contemporary musicians have said, we can infer some things.
His playing has been described by listeners as “angry” and “dense”. Coltrane himself admitted that harmonically he was trying to play, trying to exhaust, all of the possible combinations with the chord changes. Critics have said that if anyone came close to doing so, it was Coltrane. He was asked by Miles once why he played so long and Coltrane said that he didn’t know how to end it, how to wrap it up. Miles quipped, “Try taking the horn out of your mouth.” But the indication is that Coltrane was striving to achieve something that he couldn’t get to.
Coltrane stretched out and began studying music from India and other places around the world. He was trying to achieve the flexibility of the human voice on his instrument. He wanted it to be a vocalization. In the last years of his life he sometimes stopped his solo on stage and began beating his chest. Again, almost in what appears to have been frustration in not being able to get what he wanted out of the horn.
Coltrane is noted as being one of the most studious musicians ever. He was always learning, asking questions of everyone, trying to find something he hadn’t found yet. The critics agree that he was a mediocre sax player up until the time he played with Thelonius Monk. Monk somehow turned his mind around and put him on a path of self-motivation and searching that saw him through to the end of his career.
The book I’ve read suggests that Coltrane was a highly driven musician searching for the ultimate truth in sound, which might have meant trying to vocalize the sax to mimic the human voice after having blown through the harmony with “sheets of sound” early in his career, and later with the melodic modal jazz phase. Critics were hard on albums like Ascension. Debate exists on why, and what did it cost Coltrane in credibility with the jazz community.
Did Coltrane ever achieve satisfaction in his playing? Personally, I don’t think so. I think he was striving towards something he knew he could never achieve, but the struggle in trying to reach it was as close as he could get to it. Was his playing angry? Maybe frustrated is a more appropriate term. But I think Coltrane liked the struggle…it was the journey he enjoyed, not the achievement. But I think he was still reaching up until the end. And to me, that suggests hope. That was an act of hope. Maybe hope is what we are hearing from ‘trane and why he is still so worshipped today. His horn has a sound that says, “Maybe what I’m trying to achieve is right around the corner.”
His playing has been described by listeners as “angry” and “dense”. Coltrane himself admitted that harmonically he was trying to play, trying to exhaust, all of the possible combinations with the chord changes. Critics have said that if anyone came close to doing so, it was Coltrane. He was asked by Miles once why he played so long and Coltrane said that he didn’t know how to end it, how to wrap it up. Miles quipped, “Try taking the horn out of your mouth.” But the indication is that Coltrane was striving to achieve something that he couldn’t get to.
Coltrane stretched out and began studying music from India and other places around the world. He was trying to achieve the flexibility of the human voice on his instrument. He wanted it to be a vocalization. In the last years of his life he sometimes stopped his solo on stage and began beating his chest. Again, almost in what appears to have been frustration in not being able to get what he wanted out of the horn.
Coltrane is noted as being one of the most studious musicians ever. He was always learning, asking questions of everyone, trying to find something he hadn’t found yet. The critics agree that he was a mediocre sax player up until the time he played with Thelonius Monk. Monk somehow turned his mind around and put him on a path of self-motivation and searching that saw him through to the end of his career.
The book I’ve read suggests that Coltrane was a highly driven musician searching for the ultimate truth in sound, which might have meant trying to vocalize the sax to mimic the human voice after having blown through the harmony with “sheets of sound” early in his career, and later with the melodic modal jazz phase. Critics were hard on albums like Ascension. Debate exists on why, and what did it cost Coltrane in credibility with the jazz community.
Did Coltrane ever achieve satisfaction in his playing? Personally, I don’t think so. I think he was striving towards something he knew he could never achieve, but the struggle in trying to reach it was as close as he could get to it. Was his playing angry? Maybe frustrated is a more appropriate term. But I think Coltrane liked the struggle…it was the journey he enjoyed, not the achievement. But I think he was still reaching up until the end. And to me, that suggests hope. That was an act of hope. Maybe hope is what we are hearing from ‘trane and why he is still so worshipped today. His horn has a sound that says, “Maybe what I’m trying to achieve is right around the corner.”
posted by jambander at
9:34 PM
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