Great comments all. Re Coltrane:
****Or did it lead him to develop a new language for expressing emotion.
Or did lead to expressing a new "kind" of emotion; almost like a painter "inventing" a new color (and sub-question: Is it then a "human emotion"?).****
He did develop a new language, and it could be argued that he did so well before the time period in question (mid-late 60's) with his very angular, pentatonic scale based improvisarion. Add to this the distinctive hard-edged tone and you have a "language" that would be very influential; especially among saxophone players.
****the age old question, "Can you dance to it?". If there's a burden of communicative responsibility on the artist, is the artist then to be limited by the "language skills" of his audience? I certainly don't think so. Art history says, "NO!"***
This has been debated here countless times. As always, no easy answer. As always, context is everything. For me an artist does not have a communicative responsibility beyond being honest with his message. There CAN be a conscious effort to be communicative and the result can be accessible and still very interesting and artistic with a very high level of craft; Herbie Hancock's electric projects come immediately to mind. Coltrane was a force of nature; a true artist whose creative spirit was so strong that he simply had no choice but to follow that spirit wherever it would take him, with apologies to no one.....including O-10 (kidding).
****Who calls crap?****
If we don't keep the door slightly open to art we don't fully understand yet, there's no way to determine what is crap and what is not. We don't have to like it; but, by at least respecting it, the stuff we do like is put in a better context. I believe it makes us a better judge of what is good and what is bs. Seems to me there is little downside and much upside to this attitude.
O-10, I think your Jackie McLean post is very timely to this discussion. Great player who came out of the "Charlie Parker school", was prominent in the "free jazz" movement and settled somewhere in the middle. His playing on that clip, while showing his bebop (Bird) roots demonstrates a clear Coltrane influence in his harmonic vocabulary: angular, pentatonic based; especially in the up-tempo tunes which lend themselves to pattern-based improvisation. As with Coltrane, he is very aggressive tonally with a very bright, hard-edged robust sound. The screaming quality in some of his playing owes a lot to late-Coltrane. Just one reason why I would never think that Coltrane "went too far". The influence that this approach would have on other players alone justifies it for me. I have always admired and respected McLean's playing; I can't say that I have always LIKED his playing. As a jazz player he is aggressive and fully committed. As an instrumentalist, I find his playing to be undisciplined. His sense of pitch (intonation) is very erratic (usually very flat) and I simply don't like his tone; I find it rather ugly. Players like Bird and Coltrane had all the expressive range (and more) and were also much more disciplined instrumentalists. There is a school of thought that feels that none of the former matters when judging creative art; and that, in fact, the undisciplined approach is an asset in jazz. It is true that some players actually cultivate that approach: the artistic equivalent of wearing torn jeans and a dirty t-shirt as opposed to a suit and tie when performing (Rok). We can debate the merits of one approach or the other, but the fact still remains that, almost without exception, the greatest jazz players were also very disciplined instrumentalists. Still, great jazz player. Btw, I don't quite understand the "stereotypical" designation to that type of playing. When one considers how many different styles there are (swing, bop, hard bop, etc.) I am not quite sure what "stereotypical" means. Good clip; thanks. From the NY Times obituary:
++++But Mr. McLean preferred not to talk about his music in terms of categories. "I've grown out of being just a bebop saxophone player, or being a free saxophone player," he told Jon Pareles of The Times in 1983. "I don't know where I am now. I guess I'm somewhere mixed up between all the saxophonists who ever played."++++
****Or did it lead him to develop a new language for expressing emotion.
Or did lead to expressing a new "kind" of emotion; almost like a painter "inventing" a new color (and sub-question: Is it then a "human emotion"?).****
He did develop a new language, and it could be argued that he did so well before the time period in question (mid-late 60's) with his very angular, pentatonic scale based improvisarion. Add to this the distinctive hard-edged tone and you have a "language" that would be very influential; especially among saxophone players.
****the age old question, "Can you dance to it?". If there's a burden of communicative responsibility on the artist, is the artist then to be limited by the "language skills" of his audience? I certainly don't think so. Art history says, "NO!"***
This has been debated here countless times. As always, no easy answer. As always, context is everything. For me an artist does not have a communicative responsibility beyond being honest with his message. There CAN be a conscious effort to be communicative and the result can be accessible and still very interesting and artistic with a very high level of craft; Herbie Hancock's electric projects come immediately to mind. Coltrane was a force of nature; a true artist whose creative spirit was so strong that he simply had no choice but to follow that spirit wherever it would take him, with apologies to no one.....including O-10 (kidding).
****Who calls crap?****
If we don't keep the door slightly open to art we don't fully understand yet, there's no way to determine what is crap and what is not. We don't have to like it; but, by at least respecting it, the stuff we do like is put in a better context. I believe it makes us a better judge of what is good and what is bs. Seems to me there is little downside and much upside to this attitude.
O-10, I think your Jackie McLean post is very timely to this discussion. Great player who came out of the "Charlie Parker school", was prominent in the "free jazz" movement and settled somewhere in the middle. His playing on that clip, while showing his bebop (Bird) roots demonstrates a clear Coltrane influence in his harmonic vocabulary: angular, pentatonic based; especially in the up-tempo tunes which lend themselves to pattern-based improvisation. As with Coltrane, he is very aggressive tonally with a very bright, hard-edged robust sound. The screaming quality in some of his playing owes a lot to late-Coltrane. Just one reason why I would never think that Coltrane "went too far". The influence that this approach would have on other players alone justifies it for me. I have always admired and respected McLean's playing; I can't say that I have always LIKED his playing. As a jazz player he is aggressive and fully committed. As an instrumentalist, I find his playing to be undisciplined. His sense of pitch (intonation) is very erratic (usually very flat) and I simply don't like his tone; I find it rather ugly. Players like Bird and Coltrane had all the expressive range (and more) and were also much more disciplined instrumentalists. There is a school of thought that feels that none of the former matters when judging creative art; and that, in fact, the undisciplined approach is an asset in jazz. It is true that some players actually cultivate that approach: the artistic equivalent of wearing torn jeans and a dirty t-shirt as opposed to a suit and tie when performing (Rok). We can debate the merits of one approach or the other, but the fact still remains that, almost without exception, the greatest jazz players were also very disciplined instrumentalists. Still, great jazz player. Btw, I don't quite understand the "stereotypical" designation to that type of playing. When one considers how many different styles there are (swing, bop, hard bop, etc.) I am not quite sure what "stereotypical" means. Good clip; thanks. From the NY Times obituary:
++++But Mr. McLean preferred not to talk about his music in terms of categories. "I've grown out of being just a bebop saxophone player, or being a free saxophone player," he told Jon Pareles of The Times in 1983. "I don't know where I am now. I guess I'm somewhere mixed up between all the saxophonists who ever played."++++