Om-Jazz
Alice Coltrane shrine from www.alicecoltrane.com
The study of American music and its subsequent influences in popular culture have proven to be an important insight into the unwritten history and spiritual essence of the American identity. Particularly in the case of black music, where transatlantic origins lasted through time, carrying in its sound the struggle against slavery and oppression as well a joy and a resilience lasting throughout several centuries. This is where I believe the true nature of America can be felt; at the obelisk of oppositions, in this budding nation tainted by the zeal of ambition and buzzing with new meaning.
In the midst of this act of equilibrium, the desire for social change took a serious stance against inequality and posed a challenge to artists and musicians alike to define a past and future where the oppressed became equal and prosperous through the respect of their human rights. Known broadly as the civil rights movement, this “period in which [...] ‘natives’ became human beings, and this internally as well as externally” as Frederic Jameson put it, coincided with the influence of globalization which brought important waves of New-Age spirituality and an eastern influence which would help define a new spiritual identity and give a fresh perspective to the struggles of life of the American people. The importance of spirituality in the black community helped to give purpose beyond lived experience that was desperately needed in a community which so far had already gone through so much injustice.
Use of non-western instruments in jazz as a pivotal element of change towards a new sound and identity.
Black lyricism and chanting in comparison with eastern spiritual practices
Music improvisation movements and how these facilitated a groundbreaking shift towards non-western music through their underlying ideologies.
Don cherry in Mali with Batourou Sekou Kouyate
New tools
Use of non-western instruments
Firstly, while jazz originated from the black community as a form of free expression, it coincided with the adoption of a rigidity by institutions that favored uniformity of technique. This tendency for discipline turned musicians such as Don Cherry and Pharaoh Sanders, who understood the artform as more than a mechanical medium, away from the conservative idea of jazz and towards a practice which reflected the realities of life and were more-so centered around expression. This approach was reflected in part through the interaction with the instrument, either by using pre- existing non-western instruments or in a recontextualization of these western instruments while disregarding “proper technique”.
In response to Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism or Pan-Africanism, held the idea of a strong African heritage within every black individual that could be explored and reinvented to define the African American identity with a more positive outlook. In practice this triggered a fundamental change in the notion of community and the role of spirituality in one’s life as the notion of sociality in many African cultures is inherently anti-establishment and decentralized. This shift also meant closer affiliation with African and Eastern spiritualities to replace the imposed western religions, giving rise notably to the influence of the Nation of Islam and popularizing Indian spiritual teaching through gurus such as J. Krishnamurti, Swami Sivananda and Prabhupata.
While many artists who adopted Islam began wearing the Taqiyah, a traditionally Muslim headpiece, the use of instruments from middle-eastern and African cultures was still underrepresented if look at the affluence of saxophone and trumpet players during this time. Yet for musicians such as Don Cherry, Pharaoh Sanders or Sun Ra who sought to represent music in a fundamentally different context, the exploration of trans-cultural tools was essential in understating a greater cultural and spiritual identity. Fumi Okiji describes Don Cherry’s playing of the donso ngoni (a form of Moroccan harp) as a “nonidentical, nonlocal sociality of the inseparable that is being shared”. What she is describing here is that these instruments reflect in their dislocation with the black American’s geographical origins, a sound which should have been foreign but was implemented with ease within the idea of a global spirituality and that unveils in this tension a “nonlocality”, a black identity that is “inseparable” in a broader scope of time and space.
Improvised acceptance
The musical movement of “free jazz” initiated by Ornette Coleman was an important bridge between eastern musical practices centered around improvisation and possibly explains why the application of third-world styles of music was so accessible to jazz musicians specifically. Its fundamental philosophical basis closely relates to Hindustani concepts of music performance such as the rag or raga. But what spurred this advanced idea of untethered improvisation as a principal form of expression in Coleman? In an interview with French philosopher Jacques Derrida Coleman explains:
“Yes, the idea is that two or three people can have a conversation with sounds, without trying to dominate it or lead it [...] In improvised music I think the musicians are trying to reassemble an emotional [...] puzzle in which the instruments give the tone”
Although this is not a complete definition of Coleman’s interpretation, it is a way to understand the intention behind the practice of improvised music which Coleman set forth. What is important to understand here is the mention of domination since it criticizes the vast majority of pre-existing forms of improvisation. It is in this innovation; of non-dominance through communication, that free jazz stands out from other improvisational methods. Even when talking about the instruments that “set the tone” there is an equivocal discourse between musicians and the characteristics of jazz and life. This is where Don Cherry’s career plays a key role in expanding the concept of free jazz beyond the stage and instruments which were assigned to musicians living in New-York. Don Cherry who was an integral member of Coleman’s free jazz quartet, carried with him the notions of harmolodic and decentered collaboration that he learnt in this time across continents, applying them with different instruments, in different contexts and with different people to understand the range of possibilities within this free musical discourse.
What he learnt he later applied to the Organic Music Society, a fluid agglomeration of musicians, usually with formal jazz training, that explored the improvised interpretations of a “universal” music using a variety of instruments and melodies borrowed from India, Morocco, Brazil and wherever else the sound could inspire itself from. This produced a vibrant and ecstatic combination that transcended both the origins of the players and origins of the song to represent a higher idea of what Cherry described as “universal consciousness through music”. In short, the training Cherry received in free jazz during his time as a trumpet player in Ornette Coleman’s quartet, gave him the ability to adapt his lively music and style to his equally fervent curiosity of culture and spirituality. The Organic Music Society exemplifies the spiritual avant-garde jazz movement not only in its use of spiritual lyricism and transcultural instrumentation but also in the social culture it nourishes, one that embraces the non-individual approach by dismantling the divide between listener and player.
The influence of spirituality on avant-garde jazz can be understood through the use of African and Asian instruments which inform the idea of a universal identity and this identity, as expressed in the lyricism of chanting, reveals the spiritual resilience of the black community in spreading joy through music. We saw that the concepts of eastern spirituality not only helped these black musicians through difficult times but inspired radical changes in the course of their lives which in turn directed their music towards spiritual goals. But not only did their lives change their music, one could argue that their music also deeply contributed to the implementation of spirituality in these musician’s lives by facilitating accessibility to distant religious practices through shared musical traditions and by the flexibility to new concepts which artists had through the plural perspectives of free jazz. We have seen that this spiritual curiosity was in many ways synonymous to the black struggle in its ability to provide alternative viewpoints to their internal and external identity but more importantly in its capacity for hope and joy in the face of adversity.
