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Traning the Nineties, or the Present Relevance of John Coltrane's Music of Theophany and Negation

1995; Saint Louis University; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3042306

1945-6182

Michael Bruce McDonald,

Music History and Culture

Can it be merely accidental that recent works by such otherwise dissimilar film makers as Spike Lee and Oliver Stone feature striking allusions to - and, indeed, appropriations of - the music of John Coltrane? The burden of this essay is to demonstrate that this phenomenon should not - must not - be regarded as a mere accident, or lucky coincidence. Rather, I shall insist that the renewed interest in Coltrane's legacy signaled by these films stems largely from concerns immanent to his work, and that these simultaneously social and aesthetic concerns have particular and special relevance for contemporary issues of American, and indeed worldwide, culture.(1) Beginning with a consideration of the reasons Coltrane's work holds particular significance for Stone's The Doors and Lee's Mo' Better Blues, I shall seek to demonstrate that Coltrane's aesthetics of dissonance provides an indispensable glimpse, and immanent invocation, of the spirit so vital to the democracy still aborning - and too frequently suppressed - in America, as in the world. Surprisingly perhaps, The Doors exemplifies - albeit in somewhat sketchy fashion - the renewed interest not only in Coltrane's music, but in his abiding belief in the special restorative power that music can possess, the power to revitalize even a seemingly moribund culture. In this regard, Stone's film is praiseworthy, whatever its faults in other respects, for acknowledging - as rock mythographies all too rarely do - Trane's considerable influence on many of the more adventuresome rockers of the mid- and late Sixties.(2) The film s allusions to Coltrane, moreover, while naturally interesting for music aficionados and historians are, it seems to me, crucial for our understanding of a phenomenon that has been too frequently overlooked by connoisseurs: the vital interrelationship of culture specifically jazz culture - and democracy. Having directly acknowledged his debt to Coltrane in an early scene evoking The Doors' burgeoning improvisational proficiency, Val Kilmer's rapidly aging Lizard King - now so sodden as to seem virtually incapable of meaningful speech - tersely counters a crass comment regarding his audience with: You know what the audience wants? They want an experience of the While this remark might seem compromised by Morrison's extreme debauchery at this stage in the narrative, the vital attitude that it nonetheless expresses toward his audience - and toward the function of art - strongly resonates with, and echoes, Coltrane's oft-repeated assertion that his foremost musical aim was to bring listeners just such an experience of the sacred. Especially toward the end of his life, Coltrane came to feel increasingly responsible for creating nothing less than a music of theophany, not just a music capable of conveying experiences of the sacred to those able to heed its insistent call, but one that would immanently embody, that would itself be, such experience.(3) Indeed, I hold that Coltrane's art is especially important for the present era, precisely to the extent that our age is fraught with longing for something akin to sacred experience - whether or not such experience be gained through traditional methods and institutions - contemporary injunctions to the contrary noted but notwithstanding.(4) This sort of hunger persists even in the face of the ubiquitous commercialism which has appeared, to so many commentators, tantamount to a hegemonic force underlying the production and consumption of contemporary popular music.(5) The longing for numinous experience remains an important basis for resistance to a culture industry whose hegemony might otherwise seem so unflappable, so utterly secure. In following this very line of inquiry, Jon Michael Spencer has asserted the need for a new discipline - theomusicology - aimed at evaluating those aspects of popular music which embody the sacredness embedded in, and forever haunting, the secular: . …