Ornette Coleman. Those two words alone are enough to fuel a musical debate. Apart from John Cage, there is probably no other figure in twentieth century music who is equally reviled and lionised as much as the leading proponent of free jazz and its avant garde.
Meeting Coleman in New York on Thelonius Monk's birthday had a curious poignancy. Monk, too, was much misunderstood and the accolades he received for the strides he made in music came late in life. Often misquoted, misunderstood and the subject of dismissively off-hand reviews, Coleman has reason to be cautious. His tape recorder which he'd placed alongside mine was allowed to click off mid-interview when came plain that while I may not have come to praise him, I certainly didn't come to bury him. Jazz bible Down Beat as recently as 1997 ran a review which lazily concluded that one of Coleman's solos was "like the penetrating wail of a man who's stubbed his toe on the bathroom door," and decried the "ludicrous heights of absurdity to which Coleman worship has risen over the years." This from a publication which inducted him into its Hall of Fame as early as 1969.
Looking considerably younger than 70, Coleman turns out to be remarkably modest and self-effacing for someone whose voice is so individual and original. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, he still clearly recalls his musical epiphany: "I was born in the south, I played the blues, actually, I was always hungry when I was a little boy. I didn't know then what music was, so for me it was something I could do to make some money." As a teenager, he heard a solo on a number entitled 6:27 Stomp by a saxophonist in a travelling band: "I said `What is that?' and asked my mother could I have a sax. She told me if I saved my money I could buy one, so I made me a shine box, and went on the streets, started shining shoes, and I brought the money home and gave it to my mother. One day she said `Look under the bed' and there it was. And you know what? I played it like I play it right now. I thought it was a toy and I just blew it and just started to move the keys. I later found out that there was lots more to it than that."
Central to an understanding of Coleman's playing is his initial approach to the alto sax, which was also his hero Charlie Parker's instrument. Parker at first thought his instrument was played in only one key and, when he was shown that there are 24 major and minor keys, mastered them all equally. Coleman, teaching himself from a primer, misinterpreted the basic scale of the alto as alphabetical (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) when in fact it's C, D, E, F, G, A, B - the C major scale: "When you play `C' in a tonic piano you play `A' on the alto. So when I was playing that `A' I thought it was a `C'! It came out to be the same." Another important factor is Coleman's polyphonic ear: as early as 1954 he said that when someone played a chord he heard another chord on top of it.
Trying to define harmolodics - a synthesis of HARmony, MOvement of forms, and melody (or meLODICS) - the theoretical pillar of Coleman's playing - is a different story however. Even the man himself is enigmatic in his explanation of the concept that he says underpins his entire oeuvre. Harmolodics allow for freedom in the metre, or beat, as well as tempo changes, polymodality - or different "tonal centres" within an ensemble - and the transposition by a minor third on the alto sax, where a C has an E flat sound.
THEN there's what appears to be the random sequence of notes or what sounds like the unstructured rash of notes. But close listening will reveal quite apparent, and often lyrical, themes in his playing and compositions. The fluidity of the pieces, in fact, is vital to their life in others' hands, as Coleman explains: "If I compose something, when I show it to the musicians - I tried to do it in my Skies of America symphony when I played it at Lincoln Centre - I say `If you don't like that note, if you have a better note, put it there.' It's not going to change the concept. Some people say `What do you want me to do - rewrite your music?' To me, if you take anything I write, regardless of what it means to me, and do something I never thought of with it, that's just fine with me. As long as you get the result that you want."
During the early and mid-1950s, Coleman was ostracised and even beaten for his wild playing, but found kindred musicians in trumpeter Don Cherry, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummers Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell, who were also eager to push jazz beyond its bebop groove. But this was a tiny grouping, and when Coleman came bursting onto the scene in 1958 with his debut LP Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman, the unprepared jazz world was shocked. At a time when modal jazz was emerging, and would reach its zenith the following year with Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, here was what appeared to be the ultimate iconoclast playing without evident shape, form, melody or rhythm. Favouring piano-less trios of bass and drums, Coleman insisted on breaking up traditional 4, 8, 16 and 32-bar phrases, using odd lengths of 6 or 11 bars instead.
Coleman has had some lean years (during which, in the early 1960s, he mastered the violin and trumpet) punctuated by collaborations with Geri Allen, Pat Metheny, Yoko Ono and, on the soundtrack to David Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch, Howard Shore. Various line-ups have allowed Coleman to delve into an incredible span of musical styles: from the lyrical Morning Song on the 1965 Stockholm live dates, to his work with the Moroccan Master Musicians of Joujouka in the early 1970s, to the guitar-based West African rhythms and rap tracks on 1995's Tone Dialing with his Prime Time band.
Coleman's presence is the high point of an impressive jazz line-up at the festival, and includes film and traditional music projects. He will be accompanying the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by Howard Shore, as it plays to a surtitled screening of Naked Lunch, his unsettling alto runs adding a sense of manic urgency to Shore's menacing score. The Belfast Suite is a planned collaboration with Irish traditional musicians, while the second half of that set will be a trio performance with bassist Charnett Moffett plus Coleman's son Denardo on drums (the rhythm section Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins from Coleman's original late 1950s trio are unable to make it).
For his Belfast Suite Coleman is writing charts for his two groupings of stringed musicians (Eamonn Doorley, Jesse Smith and Noel Ryan) and wind instrumentalists Tom Doorley, Brendan McCarthy and Donnchadh Gough The rhythmic language of both jazz and trad is based on triplets, allowing for easy interaction between the two forms, and Coleman is optimistic about the outcome.
"Most folk music is different but the resolution of how they tell the story is the same. What I'm going to try to do is write ideas that have the same premise as songs - head, bridge and release - but I'm going to write it as ideas, not as form. What I'm interested in doing is going around the world playing with people that are not influenced by anything but what they're doing. I'm trying to share what I'm doing with them, make some new music."
Ornette Coleman will perform his Belfast Suite with Irish traditional musicians at the Whitla Hall on Tuesday, November 7th at 8 p.m.; he will perform the music for The Naked Lunch with the Ulster Orchestra and the Ornette Coleman Trio at the Water- front Hall on Friday, November 10th at 8 p.m.
