The Adventure - On Free Jazz & Ornette Coleman (I of II)

[zn37]

wow... thank you so much for posting this. This is so interesting.

[warsd4]

Man I'd love to see that footage that starts around @4:00 in... I've never been able to find footage of Ornette and Charlie Haden playing together....

[BuckshotLaFunke1]

After so many years it sounds like playing outside on Bird and blues, but I still find them awesome at times. And what a bass player and what a drummer! And Ornette so eloquent yet pedantic in Down Beat interviews. They were indeed a new horizon at the time.

[horbergus]

Man, i do not understand this music

[tedscottsky]

I know jazz as well as anyone on this post.

I personally have no taste for "Free Jazz" and very little respect for it.

It reminds me of much modern art that looks like child's finger painting.

Ultimately it's up to each individual listener. There is no way one can intellectualize it to another to justify or discredit it.

True, on can gain a greater appreciation for something with time, exposure, and education. But in the end it either touches you or it don't.

"If it sounds good it is good"

[Jamsessionroom1337]

Music will always be judged on it's "pretty" factors, but i think everyone can lie to an audience. I think alot of musicians nowadays get off on lying to people, deceiving them with the shades of pretty chord progressions, over studied solos, always wanting something to "fit".

I get what free jazz is about. It's truly just about telling another part who you are to a person, whether it be chaotic or strange to some. Or just dis-organized bliss to others.

[Jamsessionroom1337]

As much as i want to be a free musician part of it is being an entertainer.

And i really hate that part,it means conforming for a listener indulging them, when in reality all i want to do is play my instrument, but to be a musician you have to be an entertainer first, and cater to the people you entertain, in order to make a living off it.

If i could just play and not worry about the money part, i would. But it's not likely, i guess that's why i'm liking this stuff,it's not catering to anybody

[feuerzwerg9]

Miene fresse klingt das scheiße Rock 4life

[jazzand]

Ornette's music comes right out of the music of Charlie Parker. Go read Francis Poudras' account of the time he and Bud Powell spent staying at Ornette's apartment after Bud's Birdland gig ended (in the book "Dance of the Infidels").  He talks about Ornette getting up and playing all the Charlie Parker heads all day long! Jimmy Heath personally told me that of all the "free" jazz guys, Ornette was one of the only ones he could listen to.

[gogodancer253]

Is this narrated by Keith David? It really sounds like him...

[BlacknWhitesAlright]

Having listened to and collected punk, no-wave, experimental industrial, noise, power violence, black metal, drone/stoner/doom etc. since high school, I frankly don't get what's supposed to be so goddamn strange and scary about this music. Apparently it's supposed to be inaccessible to a lot of people, but this feels a lot more accessible to me on a raw emotional level than most jazz, so clearly it's a matter of one's personal and cultural context.

[RiverPlateCavenaghi9]

LOVE that documentaaal!!!! please upload the trane and davis part!!!

[freejazzfree]

i'd like to point out here that even JAZZ on its own, depending on the kind of jazz, can be an alienating experience for people that have never heard it before. same with art, literature, etc.

[edcerc]

@freejazzfree very good point. people act like this is so foreign and strange but they don't even know anything about jazz in the first place. they couldnt tell the difference between ornette or bird.

[ARShadduck]

Ornette rejected nothing, he embraced all. 

[MeneerTiki]

what comes after, is the adventure...the descend into senility.

[historicalrecall]

@MeneerTiki So when you hear two foreigners speak in a strange language in the street, you assume they're talking gibberish?

[MeneerTiki]

@historicalrecall

Bluntly answered as a bigot: Yes.

or:

I wouldn't need to understand their language, to see their exchange is an exercise in intellectual vanity. I just see manic-depressives with possible substance abuse, jabbering along, without having an actual conversation.

....

btw, was your question rhetorical or a sophism?

[MeneerTiki]

@historicalrecall

Or better yet, I like being a troll, you like Free Jazz. Petty clashes like this happen, let's just enjoy what we do.

[ZupraVisor]

Whats the song in the beggining?

[historicalrecall]

@ZupraVisor The song is "Eventually" from the Album 'Shape of Jazz to Come'.

Also recommend listenings are; 'Sound Grammar' and 'This is our music'

Peace

[tbcass]

It is rare for Free Jazz to become a cohesive piece. When it works it can be impressive but most of the time it just becomes self indulgent noise with no communication with the listener. I never really cared for most free jazz myself as I believe music should communicate with the listener as well as your fellow musicians.

[Tabla461]

@tbcass I like ornette colemans playing, his organic sense of music, his phrasing, sense of timing and his bluesy wail. his solos are infectiously melodic and its almost like hes taking music back to its most primitive roots. for the most part I could listen to his music for hours and never get annoyed but it really chaps my ass when I shuffle his songs and then hear noisey bullshit that doesnt sound like music and i look at the length of the song and see its 15 minutes.

[tbcass]

@Tabla461 I agree completely. Often when I listen to Free Jazz and isolate the individual instruments I hear good playing but when you listen to everything as a collective it usually doesn't work with good moments book-ended with garbage. How could it? Unless people can communicate through mental telepathy most of the time such attempts are destined for failure.

[tbcass]

The earliest attempts by Coleman were quite good as was the ensemble playing by Gato Barbieri's groups in the late 60's and early 70's but those examples stayed within a more rigid format with a little less freedom.

[networkingtoo]

@tbcass sometimes listening is a part o fcommunication....i have to be quiet and hear where you are coming from so that i can jump into the conversation and speak on that subject and at that level....same concept....i can celebrate anothers depth and order of presentation. go ahead be free let me hear you..this doesnt involve me ..im listening

[tbcass]

@networkingtoo Of course that assumes the speaker is saying something I want to hear and in the same language I speak. Usually Free Jazz just doesn't speak to me that way.

[historicalrecall]

@tbcass so freejazz is perhaps the most "intense-communication"

[freejazzfree]

@tbcass

i think theres been a few generations that would disagree with the notion that free jazz doesnt communicate with an audience. not everything is for everyone nor should it be.

your problem is your expecting free jazz to be something its not.. i'm not suprised you hate it.

[tbcass]

@freejazzfree I grew up listening to Free Jazz in the late 50's and 60's & I am also a musician. Free Jazz is extremely difficult to do right. When it comes together I love Free Jazz so to say I don't like it is incorrect. The problem is every half ass musician back then tried to do it & as a result most of it didn't work IMO. They thought they could play anything they felt like without regard to the other musicians. That won't work. When it does work it's great.

[freejazzfree]

@tbcass i dont think its any more difficult than it is to do anything else.theres TONS of bad songwriters out there and i'd say a major % of which are talentless.i applaud anyone making art,analysis aside,and when it comes to free jazz i realize some of the people that decided to do it werent really liberating themselves from any particular context because they didnt have it to begin with.however sometimes it makes for the best music! so it does work(not always)!!like punk rock.. its about vibe

[k0sha]

@tbcass actually I'd regard some Free Jazz pieces to be cohesive. I agree with you that Free Jazz can be considered indulgent noise, however I think we fail to receive the true impression of free jazz and indeed all jazz when listening to it's recording. Jazz, more so Free Jazz is about the live impulsive moment, the creation which is original at the time. Therefor there IS a communication, not only with each musician but also with the audience and listener.

[k0sha]

@tbcass It's the addition of the audience which completes the music. Think of the 'does a tree make noise.' thought experiment

[gjohnsoningary]

@tbcass They sound like a bunch of toddlers messing with their daddies musical instruments. Free jazz is indulgent laziness that flips the bird at real creativity and effort. A man could commit suicide listening to Ornette Coleman. Pure noise at its infinite worse!

[benmillerintx]

Had to post the rest up here, yourockets, couldn't even see what i was typing. Anyway I think he's been a visionary in music since the 50's and a great instrumentalist. Well, maybe I have the wrong documentary in mind, but I am not a big fan of Giddens. I don't think he's good for the music that's been happening past the 60's in general. Most of the critics are too reactionary and a lot of the most popular musicians are reactionary.

[yourockets]

@benmillerintx

ok - my english isn't so good and I wasn's sure about the proper meaning of your post, sorry.

I mostly agree with you.

[benmillerintx]

Interview Coleman? These people don't won't acknowlege that since Trane's death, the most vital music from the jazz continuum has been highly, highly marginalized. And any movement Trane was apart of, they've got to acknowlegde. But past '67? Ha! I'm just to the point that I'm thankful that since Trane's death, the musicians have had every bit as much passion and dedication. For example Ali: RIP (Aug, 2009). From Miles: 'Coleman mixed up in the head" And Marsalis? He's just as bad for jazz..

[yourockets]

@benmillerintx

so Ornette is bad for jazz in your opinion ?

[benmillerintx]

@yourockets ornette's great. don't like some of the people in the documentary.

[javijazztazz]

Great documentary..... The only thing that i don't understand is why they didn't interview ornette coleman

[darkoanton5]

Awesome. Amazing how they all fit together.