{"id":5185,"date":"2015-06-29T18:38:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T18:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2015-06-29T18:38:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T18:38:18","slug":"cutting-ornette-loose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/29\/cutting-ornette-loose\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Ornette Loose"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pharoah<\/a>
Pharoah Sanders playing at Ornette Coleman’s funeral, Riverside Church, June 27.(Photo \u00a92015 enidfarber.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nIt\u2019s hard to describe how it feels to stand at the podium of Riverside Church, to look down at a coffin that holds Ornette Coleman\u2019s body, and to look out at a large crowd including Yoko Ono, Sonny Rollins, Henry Threadgill, John Zorn and Jason Moran, along with so many musicians and artists and friends from all corners of New York\u2019s cultural world and from a much wider world, too.
\nAn hour earlier, I\u2019d attended the viewing. Lying in state,\u00a0Coleman looked resplendent in one of his customary silk suits; he looked happy, bathed in his own glowing light, much as he\u2019d always seemed\u00a0when I saw him.
\nEarly on in the 3 1\/2\u2013hour celebration on Saturday, June 27<\/a>\u2014which began with a procession led by two musicians from the Master Musicians of Jajouka, the Moroccan brotherhood that collaborated with Coleman several times in his career\u2014I had the honor and the challenge of finding words with which to help do justice to Coleman\u2019s life and legacy, and that might help raise everyone up.
\nA sudden switch in the program order meant I ended up following Cecil Taylor. Taylor began with an extended moment of silence at the piano. He played sweetly and slowly and then with accumulating rhythmic intensity. He finished up with a recitation in various inscrutable tongues.
\n\u201cI thought I\u2019d be following two erudite critics,\u201d I said, \u201cAnd so I had kept these words Ornette Coleman in my head: \u2018It\u2019s perfectly O.K. to repeat a phrase, just don\u2019t say the same thing.\u2019 Following the great Cecil Taylor, we don\u2019t have that concern.\u201d
\nI looked out over that diverse and deeply focused crowd, and began like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s put it this way. On this planet, there is human expression, which has been related through art for many years. But this expression has not been free of categories or preconceptions.\u201d
\nOrnette Coleman told me that 20 years ago.
\nThis community, here today,\u00a0celebrating Ornette, is distinctly free of categories and preconceptions.\u00a0This community is among the many wondrous things that only Ornette could have shaped.\u00a0It\u2019s humbling in a transformative way to be part of it.
\nThat humility\u2026 the very first time I head Ornette\u2019s tone on alto saxophone\u2014bold yet fragile, almost unbearably human\u2014I got a taste of the special brand of humility that was essential to Ornette\u2019s greatness\u2026.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somewhere in the middle, I got to this:<\/p>\n

Ornette talked about tones and about sound, but not about notes. Never notes. Because notes can get bound up in chords or trapped on a staff or stuck in hierarchy\u2014 dominant, subdominant , all that.
\nOrnette talked about human beings, not men and women or black and white because he known those traps, those domination schemes. Ornette consistently called out racism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I had Erica, my wife, and Sam, my son, with me. And so I said this as well:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m happy my son, Sam, who is here today, got to meet Ornette. Being around Ornette and his son, Denardo, as they made music on the bandstand and lived life off of it helped me understand that fathers and sons can free themselves of hierarchy and convention\u2014they can function as a harmolodic team.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Phil Schaap, jazz historian and disc jockey at WKCR, Columbia University\u2019s radio station, officiated throughout with grace and some insightful anecdotes. Schaap, who’d celebrated Coleman\u2019s birthdays during the past 40 years with 24-hour radio marathons, recalled asking Coleman\u2019s advice for playlist one year. Instead, Schaap said, Coleman offered simply this: \u201cI just want you to tell people to be good to each other.
\nThroughout the program, the music resonated wonderfully through the cavernous church: At the sound board will be\u00a0Coleman\u2019s\u00a0longtime engineer Chris Agovino, who had traveled the world with\u00a0Coleman, making sure his presentations were superb.\u00a0 Tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders played a sorrowful, hymn like melody on his saxophone. Henry Threadgill, playing flute, and pianist Jason Moran, performed a new composition, \u201cSail,\u201d that began with solemn long tones and floated gently yet forcefully into something gloriously complex. Tap dancer Savion Glover engaged in a free-flowing and intricate call-and response with drummer Jack DeJohnette. After Schaap pointed out that Coleman had played at the funeral of John Coltrane, in 1967 (at Coltrane\u2019s specific request), Ravi Coltrane (John\u2019s son) played Coleman\u2019s \u201cPeace,\u201d in duet with Geri Allen, who was one of few pianists to record with Coleman. Tenor saxophonists David Murray and Joe Lovano, along with two bassists, Al Macdowell and Charnett Moffett, and Denardo Coleman on drums, performed the Coleman classic \u201cLonely Woman.\u201d A final recessional gathered guitarists who had played in Coelman\u2019s Prime Time band\u2014Jamaladeen Tacuma, Charlie Ellerbe, Bern Nix, Ken Wessel, Chris Rosenberg, along with tabla player Badal Roy and pianist Dave Byrant.
\nIn his spoken reflections, musician Karl Berger, who, with Coleman\u2019s help, founded and still runs the Creative Music Studio, cited Coleman as the one who taught him that\u00a0\u201cthinking is too slow for music, but intuition isn\u2019t.\u201d
\nYoko Ono spoke briefly and tearfully while holding an unfinished white scarf that she had begun knitting for Coleman. \u201cI wish the world could have him for another 50 years,\u201d she said. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t have to blow his horn. Just him sitting there breathing would make the world a better place.\u201d
\nPoet Felipe Luciano spoke forcefully and beautifully about the impact of Coleman\u2019s presence on him during his nascent days as and activist. Poet Steve Dalachinsky worked many Coleman album titles into a poem, and reminisced with humor about getting to know Coleman while a budding poet: \u201cI handed Ornette a copy of my book, he said, \u201cand he signed it, and gave it back to me.\u201d
\nDenardo Coleman, wearing one of his father\u2019s suits, recalled how his dad began outfitting him in silk suits at age 11. During his reflection, he pointed out: \u201cBecause Ornette did everything with such ease does not mean it was easy.\u201d And he explained: \u201cIt\u2019s not like he thought outside the box, it\u2019s just that he didn\u2019t accept that there were any boxes.\u201d
\nIn my reflections, I recalled how Coleman\u2019s 1995 album \u201cTone Dialing\u201d had arrived to reviewers with a jigsaw puzzle that spelled out one phrase: \u201cRemove the caste system from sound.\u201d And how Coleman had asked me 20 years ago, \u201cDid you get the puzzle?\u201d As I stood before Coleman lying in state, I answered him: \u201cWe\u2019re working on it, Ornette, thanks to the pieces you gave us.\u201d
\nLater, during his eulogy, speaking directly to the casket, Riverside Church’s pastor, Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes waved his hands and exclaimed, “He’s hovering, waiting to see if we get it.”\u00a0<\/strong>
\nSpeaking directly to the casket, Riverside Church’s pastor, Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes waved his hands and exclaimed, “He’s hovering, waiting to see if we get it.”
\nIn New Orleans, there’s an expression at jazz funerals\u2014”cutting the body loose.” That’s when dirge turn to uptempo celebration, and the spirit is set free. Coleman, who spent some formative time in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, had a spirit that was defiantly and notably and gloriously free from the start. Mostly, he helped others wrangle themselves free. (As critic Howard Mandel said during the funeral:\u00a0\u201cOrnette didn\u2019t play free jazz. What he did was he freed jazz.\u201d)\u00a0<\/span>
\nThat\u00a0Saturday in Riverside Church helped cut us all loose from Coleman’s body. It set us free to simply follow his spirit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to describe how it feels to stand at the podium of Riverside Church, to look down at a coffin that holds Ornette Coleman\u2019s body, and to look out at a large crowd including Yoko Ono, Sonny Rollins, Henry Threadgill, John Zorn and Jason Moran, along with so many musicians and artists and friends … <\/p>\n

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