Ornette Coleman: Interview 2

My going to the Lenox School Of Jazz to study and play was due to the fact that John Lewis published all the music that I wrote during those years; that was just an investment for him. It wasn’t for any aesthetic reason. Yes, John has said some nice things about me, that’s true. Well, I think that he appreciates what I’m trying to do.

It wasn’t really through being at Lenox that I got to New York. Joe Timini of the Five Spot had said if I got to Lenox I could have the job. The club wouldn’t have paid the plane fare and transportation for me and my band to New York and back. So I spent my own money and got there from Massachusetts and played the job. And it wasn’t a disaster.

I find that, if impresarios don’t feel they want to invest their money on you, then you have to do it yourself. If you’re trying to stay with music. I don’t like to do that but, if I waited all the time until someone decides that they want to do something with me, I’d have fewer and fewer appearances before the public. So when I have the money and I can do it right, I do it myself. When I can’t I respond the other way. All I’m interested in is keeping with what I think has to do with music.

Encountering hostility from some of the established musicians in New York didn’t bother me, really. The only thing it made me aware of was that I was creating a sort of antisocialism musically because of playing that way. But since those musicians were the ones getting the jobs, they couldn’t say I was taking work from them, because they played their own way on their jobs. It was just their opinion of what they thought I was doing, for whatever reason they thought I shouldn’t do it.

As far as me making them out–of–date—I think people out–date themselves when they make security the same thing as their creative life. I feel that about myself, that when I worry about financing my band and it doesn’t come out right, the way it should be, then I’m out–dating myself. When I’m doing something musically that I don’t fear is going to be negative. then I feel that I’m very much alive in the presence of what is allowed. That’s when I realised that what I was doing was just as valid as anything else—when I learned that I could make mistakes.

Admittedly, some musicians may emulate me and believe that they can disregard all the rules. Well, I think that anybody that wants to express something not necessarily financially successful, they don’t worry about what anybody else thinks. Maybe a musician can have that attitude and play good—I don’t know. At least the privilege of doing that is allowed now. Maybe somebody will just pick up the horn and play something real beautiful, and never know anything about music. Maybe that’s possible: I don’t know. But the laws that prevented it are broken, anyway. It doesn’t mean that because he can do that he’s any greater authority than anyone else. Itls much harder, in fact, to be that way.

No standard of judging him? Yes, there are. You can judge him by what you’ve heard and liked. I mean, if beauty is value, when someone does something beautiful and well and you like it, you don’t have to judge it. That’s the highest value you can have. You don’t have to relate it to what went before—not if it’s going to take the same place. Its value is equal.

If you can hear links with the past in what I play, that’s because I am concerned about more than just music. I’m concerned about human existence on all levels. If I was just worried about one part of music, maybe I would never include that part of me that makes me have that element.

There are many people, regardless of their age bracket, that might start out with an instrument and there’s something they feel that they want to say. Maybe they don’t know that they shouldn’t play A natural against A flat because that’s a clash sound. But when they play it they make beautiful music. Then the person that does know that has learnt something.

See, discipline isn’t the same thing as knowledge. If a man is walking down the street and all of a sudden he takes his clothes off, we’ve got to assume that he thinks he’s in a nudist camp, not that he shouldn’t walk around naked unless he’s in a nudist camp.

What category does he fit in? If you want to be a doctor, you have to learn certain principles that determine whether you have a gift for being a doctor. Well, the only thing wrong with that is—somebody’s got to get sick first, for you to know that.

Going for yourself, that’s the thing—and see if you can add something valuable to what has already existed. The only thing that people are compelled to do is not destroy someone else to better their own lives. Anything else—I don’t see why you shouldn’t do it, if it’s what you want to do. The reason for the racial problems in life is the lack of acceptance of the fact that some people have a different way of thinking than others. They are not allowed to integrate because the others are too jealous and insecure to admit that someone else can think that way and still be valid. It’s also to do with traditions that are inherited.

Even though I’ve been around for a while now, it’s still difficult for me to find people with whom I can play. Musicians are still mostly learning how to play songs. They still like the idea of playing what they call resolutional music. And it’s been so long since I had to deal with that kind of musician that I’d have to start teaching. In fact., I’m supposed to teach a course this year at a university, but I don’t know if I’m going to do it.

I’ve got to finish a symphony first for the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra, which is 35 pieces. About five million notes are required, and I think I’ve got about five thousand notes written so far. Plus I’ve got to think of what I’m going to write; then I’ve got to worry about whether it comes out to be sounding good.

Writing long pieces of music is what I’ve always wished to do. It’s just that the people who make their living from the music world, that don’t perform music, have always wished me to stay in a category that didn’t allow me to do that, In other words, they’ll pay me to play music, but not to write it. There are some who they pay to write it, though. I haven’t been anywhere that Stravinsky had to be there performing his music, too. He gets paid for the music he writes. But I know he’s had his dues to pay before he reached his present position. Anybody that makes their living from something someone else has to value faces the same problem, to a certain degree.

You just have to keep doing what you do best. I certainly have no interest in playing conventiona1 music of the “Tea For Two” type. I’d rather be unconventional. When Charlie Parker wrote his own music and played it, they said that wasn’t conventional. I’d never take Tin Pan Alley tunes, start jazzing them up, and then claim that I was playing jazz. To me true jazz is original music. You don’t see Bach playing Beethoven or Mozart playing Stravinsky; so if it’s true, it must apply to everything that’s done in music. I’ll say this: I think that jazz has done more for popular music than popular music has done for jazz.

So my future plans are to just keep writing music and playing, and staying healthy. Maybe I’ll be coming back to London—but I hope it’s not to play a club engagement. I enjoy the whole idea of playing a concert. The audience is so much more receptive; it doesn’t make me feel like I have to worry about some guy being mad because he can’t make a girl. I feel that I really have paid enough dues in that field. Maybe somebody else that’s trying to do something might want that opportunity; so at least if I’m not there, he can have it.

Copyright © 1968 Les Tomkins. All Rights Reserved.