Truth must be said from the beginning, I’m not, even a little, objective when it comes to John Coltrane’s last chapter in life and in music. Those two are inseparable in any case. Second truth is that this last period that starts roughly sometime in 1964, prior to A Love Supreme, and ends with his death is my favorite music. He and all his comrades, especially Alice, Pharoah, Rashied and Jimmy managed to create a body of music of transcendence –an ascension for the soul and deep meditation for the mind.
My album of choice is this last live recording (where the aforementioned musicians are joined by Juma Santos and Algie DeWitt on percussion), recorded just three months before his death at the Olatunji Center of African Culture in Harlem, N.Y.C. In a quite symbolic move (the place: deep in an African-American neighborhood, the name: African Culture and tradition as a starting point) the music of the players, even though both geographically and in name still black, still jazz but free, is already a new entity.
With this recording, one that the sound is not so hi-fi, Coltrane’s sound seems to be in the final stage of the total freedom that Ascension initiated. Listening to the unrelenting growls, howls and their thick wall of sound created by Trane and Pharoah, one could easily comment that the two tracks, Ogunde of almost half an hour and the total reconstruction of My Favorite Things that clocks in thirty four uncontrollably joyous minutes, are pure noise.
This ferocious a la Ayler attack by the two locked in reeds brothers, provides a rough field, like a magic carpet flying in the air, for the others to give everything they have. And they have to give a lot to the not so big crowd attending, as their collective struggle to follow or lead at some points, or intertwine with small gestures like the polyrhythmic-not-so-rhythmic barrages by Rashied, the lovingly plucked piano chords by Alice and the even though not always audible, monstrous strength by Jimmy on double bass.
Allow me to humbly comment that Coltrane’s music channeled everything in black tradition and went beyond that. He created his own tradition. You also don’t need me to say that this is an amazing recording. One that encapsulates all the stated goals by John Coltrane himself. Total freedom, love, myriads of feelings and a spiritual unity that could be the final Truth.
If there’s something to think about, to question, it could be this: where could his music go after this? Did he, before even turning 41, reached a point of no return?
@fot.isn
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