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John and Alice Coltrane/Pharoah Sanders/Rashied Ali. Live. 1966. Temple University.


UstadKhanAli

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John Coltrane.

Alice Coltrane.

Pharoah Sanders.

Rashied Ali.

Live. 1966. Temple University.

 

If this gets you all excited, you will likely love this. This is seriously out stuff, recorded just 9 months before Coltrane's passing. It's wiggy, passionate, frenetic, spiritual, and difficult.

 

The rest of you will likely hate this and feel it sounds like animals are being tortured onstage.

 

Really, either would be an accurate description. :D

 

 

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Yep, Coltrane was in another dimension when he entered into his last period… This is some of the most profound music I`ve ever heard and his passion just drives the entire ensemble through all the turmoil and questioning… its really not the easiest stuff to listen to at times but damn, the man was on a mission.

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Yeah. This is really difficult listening....but you can also hear the inspiration and the transcendence, the questioning, the searching, the spirituality, the heart. This is really some special stuff. But it's not for everyone. It's not for a lot of people, really, and that's perfectly alright. I can't listen to this a lot of times, either. But when I am receptive to it, it's soooo magical.

 

As I think you remember, I was able to have dinner with Alice Coltrane and attend her ashram for a while, and I feel lucky I was able to do so. Really great lady.

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Ken, are you a big Coltrane fan?

 

I read a book on Coltrane several years back… he was an interesting guy. The quiet and strong type. He also had some serious teeth issues due in part to his constant practicing.

 

The guy was driven by some force that propelled his music into areas that have been untouched since his death. Others have tried but when you listen to Coltrane, its almost as if he knows where he has to go but he's not sure how to get there. At least thats what his later period sounds like to my ear.

 

Love Supreme is probably my favorite record of his. I had the pleasure of listening to it several months back on my friends stereo…. it was ridiculous, I thought the band was in the room with us. I really wish more people had the opportunity to listen to records like that… oh well.

 

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I'm a moderate John Coltrane fan, admiring his work greatly, but not always listening to him. I tend to listen to Miles Davis, Pharaoh Sanders, Herbie Hancock/Headhunters, and other stuff more often.

 

I'm a huge Alice Coltrane fan, and largely as a person, not just as a musician.

 

With John Coltrane, I think what I hear is spiritual restlessness, maybe restlessness in general. And I think jazz can be a really great medium for that restlessness and exploration, especially in the 1960s, when that sort of thing was in the air, and was sometimes encouraged greatly.

 

As far as favorite albums by him go, I'm not sure. Probably John Coltrane and Don Cherry "The Avant Garde". But not sure.

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In case anyone who might be interested doesn't know there is a John Coltrane Omnibook - transcribed solos available on Amazon. I'm not sure if it has any of his late period solos. Many years ago I found "Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane" which I liked a lot. I think each of their sounds complemented the other's nicely. The liner notes described Coltrane's playing as using "sheets of sound". But in later period I've never been able to digest his playing. I read something recently about him playing shapes, using scales from Slonimsky's scale book. Seems like he may have studied Indian classical music as an influence to his late playing.

 

The Omnibook:

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1458422135/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1C4SG247VWJK2P51YHKJ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846

 

David

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Indian music and culture informed the Coltranes' playing and general outlook a great deal. John Coltrane studied music briefly under Ravi Shankar and named his son Ravi. Alice Coltrane studied Indian music as well, and that influence is pretty obvious on things like "Journey Into Satchadananda".

 

Alice Coltrane became a teacher (swami) and begean an ashram in Agoura Hills, CA (which I think still might be going, but not 100% sure; in either case, this is where I saw her most of the time). She also used to regularly travel to South india to learn, study, meditate, etc. I traveled to India with her son a long time ago as well, and he went to study for a while in South India as well during that trip.

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When I was 16 years old a high school buddy invited me over to his house. He'd been taking lessons from the great Peter Sprauge who still lives local in Encinitas. So my buddy puts on some stuff Peter had recommended. It was the chicken slaughter Trane era. I... what? I loved and still love jazz. I was in the local college jazz band at that time in high school soaking it up. But I was studying Thad Jones, Diz, Hefti. Abercrombie and Burton on an out day. But this? My friend was disappointed in my lack of positive response. Clearly, I knew then and now, it's me not it. But for me... I'll always prefer my outside when I can track it. Follow it. See how implying this key on that key has THIS as a result. Hearing a Bird solo and laughing at the toying of tonal center. It all comes down to what angle we see or hear things from, doesn't it?

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So given what you've written above, what do you think of the above video, assuming you listened to it? Just curious.

 

But I totally agree. One of the things that I like about my favorite jazz stuff, even if they're out, is that there is a "center" that is continually referenced. I discovered this early on when someone wanted this Cecil Taylor style jazz piano thing in a sort of industrial music piece. I worked out the solo, as much as it's possible to work out something this demented, and kept discovering that if I kept reference, or returning briefly, to the key, it kept it from sounding like a bunch of random, rackety "piano falling down the stairs" sort of noise, while still imbuing the whole solo with a completely insane, haphazard quality.

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And, as you guys may be able to tell from what I'm describing and writing here, I don't always listen to this kind of thing. It's a difficult listen even for someone like me who listens to "strange" music, much of it international music that really has an odd quality to it. And I'm hardly an outsider jazz, free jazz, or avant-garde jazz expert. But when it "hits" me and I am in one of those receptive states, it just leaves goose bumps, as this video above did when I heard it.

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