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Ornette Coleman ( Warning : Contains Jazz)
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Feb 23, 2011, 11:44
Re: Harmolodics
Feb 23, 2011, 11:32
The Sea Cat wrote:
IanB wrote:
dave clarkson wrote:
I remember reading articles about Coleman in jazz mags (Wire etc) and the theory of harmolodics. I never quite grasped the concept until I saw Prime Time in Manchester in 1988 and suddenly realised that they all seemed to solo at the same time weaving in and out of each others sound.

Been thinking about this in the last few days and whether this was the inspiration for the fast show 'jazz club' sketches especially the sketch with the 'James Nance quartet' with 'Clam' on bass. They sound remarkably like Prime Time from that period... Nice!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gfo-c-5pf5k

Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society are not too far away from that sound too.

8)


Have a bit of a soft spot for "Are You Glad To Be In America?" and records from around that time but the everyone solos all the time thing is basically rocked-up Dixieland with, in some cases, a bit of 12 tone theory built on to it. It's basically Free Jazz with a firmer relationship to the core melodic line and usually a stricter rhythm than Free players would normally tolerate. So not based on chords or modes as such and leaning a lot more towards 4/4 and other standard time sigs. Not a bad thing itself but Ornette never really nailed down what Harmolodics are beyond that which kind of backs up my Dixieland goes electric theory.


Harmolodics - I hadn't heard of this before Dave mentioned it. I shall check out 'Are You Glad To Be In America'.


It was the one "Free" album (which came out on Rough Trade) that a lot of Post-Punkers had circa 1981. There was an Ulmer track from that album on the NME C81 cassette but it was basically a mad-as-a-box-of-frogs free form funk tune with some west African guitar influences. The rest of the album (bar one other commercial track which also has a bit of a Ska feel in places) is in a whole other universe. Kind of Ornette meets Living Color with a horn section. The album must have fucked with some NME readers' heads the way The Mars Volta lured people to their shows with The Widow and then got all Mahavishnu on them. The fact that the TMV live audience in London halved after that tour would be proof of that. The Art Ensemble and Sun Ra were selling out multiple nights in 2000 seat venues in London around 81 / 82 so clearly some people bought into what they were hearing - either directly or via The Pop Group and Rip Rig etc. Wasn't an especially long lived obsession for most people but it certainly gave free improv a new generation of enthusiasts in the UK.
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