iMedia: John Coltrane's A Love Supreme

First, a clip from John Coltrane's "Pt. 1- Acknowledgment" off of A Love Supreme:

I picked this clip for a lot of reasons. I'll begin with the composer, John Coltrane. Alive in the early-mid 20th century, Coltrane remains by far one of the most influential musicians of all time. In the genre of Jazz specifically, I'd argue the only one on an equal plane with him is Miles Davis. Coltrane took Jazz music, which was at the time all about dancing, and made it into something that you just couldn't dance to. Almost everything before him and Miles was bop- quicker, lighter Jazz meant for people to have fun with.

And then, while every other musician just played along, Coltrane took the norm and smashed it in half. New York Times writer Ben Ratliff says in his biography Coltrane, "[John] got beyond the language of the utterances... he kept playing more forcefully and originally."

There have been hundreds of historians that have said it: John Coltrane changed music forever. One man, lived only 40 years. Music had been around for thousands of years. If you do that math, it's pretty astounding to see how quickly one man influenced it all.

The piece I picked is the first number off his A Love Supreme, about a 35-minute album with four longer pieces. Their titles are the first thing that stand out: Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm. The album title suggests that these songs could be about pursuing a perfect loving relationship. I see them as the steps to solving a problem: recognizing that it's there, resolving it, pursuing any underlying causes, and then turning to beliefs and hoping it won't happen again.

The song is a little harsh on the ears, and it's meant to be. This is what Coltrane did: he took the often-soft and emotionless Jazz music that was circulating and threw it away, creating an avant garde style that many at first found appalling. It's taken me many lessons to accept the music, but comparing it to a lot of the other Jazz I have reveals how much better it is.

Good music is indeed a part of our culture. There are many forms of art, but I'd argue music is the most universal. If you took a group of 500 high school students, maybe 50 would say they paint or draw regularly. I hate to admit it, but only 150 would admit to reading regularly. But 498 would say they listen to music every single day. It's been around for thousands of years, as I said. Instruments have been part of cultures dating back to ancient African cultures and further back. Music is embedded in our culture, we're keyed in to it.

So, if it's just entertainment that a lot of people like, why is it important? That's the key, it's not just entertainment. Music can teach us lessons just as well as books or movies; you just have to look harder sometimes. What does this Coltrane piece teach me? It tells me to go beyond what our society tells us. Nothing is set in stone, don't let anyone tell you what art to make or what sounds to play.

The point is that Coltrane's music is controlled chaos. If there were no rhythm, nobody would like it. There has to be beat, it has to stay in some sort of form. This is why they had some of the most solid drummers, like Elvin Jones on A Love Supreme. If all the structure was lost, there would be no point. People would say that Coltrane is more of the useless musical garbage that is so often found these days.

So, there's a huge lesson to be learned here. As long as you don't ever lose your grounding, you're free to be as creative as you can be. Keep the foundation, keep structure, and you don't need to hold yourself in with any limits. This is Coltrane's message, now quiet down for the sax solo.

Connection: King Lear and the Berlin Wall

As I first turned on my computer today, a New York Times email popped up with the day's news and reminders. The very first thing I saw was a note on the Berlin wall being torn down. I soon learned that tomorrow (Monday) will be the 20th anniversary of the opening of Western Berlin to everybody.

Upon seeing this, I started thinking about the reasons that the wall was taken down: the ending of Communism and the Soviet Union, a huge uprising in East Germany, and a huge amount of people on either side of Germany clamoring to see those on the other side.

The New York Times article did an excellent job describing the phenomenon associated with the destruction of the Berlin wall. We all can see the wall as a great metaphor for what was going on: a huge concrete construction tearing an entire country apart. As this wall was broken, freedom poured through and people were ecstatic.

Obviously I wasn't around for the tearing down of the Berlin wall, but I can still get a feeling for what that day must have been like. After a huge buildup of political and social tension, the opening of borders must have been a gratifying result for everybody (except some of those crazy politicians).

It took a little longer to develop parallels with King Lear than it did to capture the feeling of the wall's destruction, but I really wanted to write about it after reading the NYT article. So, I went ahead and tried to make a few analogies.

The first is pretty obvious, being the division of Lear's state. He is in essence creating a Goneril England and a Regan England (doesn't sound as nice as West/ East Germany), and is paving the way for a whole lot of conflict. The basic conclusion from our reading so far is that this was a bad decision. Regan and Goneril are regular abusers of power, and overall quite horrible people.

I'm not trying to insinuate that every politician in Germany was a horrible person, and it wasn't even a Communist decision to divide Germany (the Allies took the West after WWII, a division was necessary). In this way, Goneril and Regan didn't necessarily want the division. Lear passed it on to them and they "dealt" with it accordingly.

So, the cause of our issues are pretty analogous. In both, a division of state was made and two different leaders took over. Now, the effects are a little more murky. One thing that Shakespeare did not do well is capturing the story of normal people. He seems to have tried to portray their ideas through major characters, but it's hard to get the whole story from his diluted tales of royalty.

What we do know about Germany is that everyone was affected. The New York Times article tells us that there were some people who were unable to see family or friends because of the way Berlin was divided. We have no such details (as of yet) in King Lear, so it's hard to tell. We can make the assumption, though, that the corrupted rules of Goneril and Regan are in some way affecting their subjects.

What's more important than their similarities, though, is what we can learn from them. We learned a lot from the Berlin situation: divisions in countries lead to violence, cultural and political issues, and myriad other problems. In King Lear, the division will be a cause for tragic effects (it is a tragedy). I'm gonna pretend I haven't finished the book and just take a guess: these divided countries don't work out so well, right?

360 Degrees: The Works of Shakespeare

It's been said over and over: Shakespeare was one of the greatest writers in history. All of his writings are ingenious, he was brilliant in his invention of new words, and most of all, he was the master of expressing romance and emotions.

So, we've all heard the raves about Shakespeare's greatness; the positive aspects of his writing have been recorded in thousands of books and lectures. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that William wasn't quite as amazing as everyone thinks.

Shakespeare made up a whole lot of goofy words, and he's known for it. One source said he made up over 3,000 different words. I believe, however, that it's important to remember what time he lived in. There were probably thousands less words back in his time, than there are now. So, while it's certainly cool that he invented words, anybody could have done it. In fact, it's still being done now. Every year, dozens of words are added to the dictionary. Beyond that, many of Shakespeare's words were just silly, like slugabed or flibbertigibbet.

Another popular claim is that every one of Shakespeare's works is a masterpiece. I'd argue that certain works, like his Titus Andronicus were just extravagantly violent plays meant to appeal to audiences that clamored for such entertainment. One researcher, S. Clarke Hues, said Titus has, "14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3, depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity and 1 of cannibalism--an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines." It might just be me, but I'd say that's completely excessive. This play is also (with a little research) considered by many to be his worst. If some of his works are so jam-packed with violence, where's the room for the beauty that's supposed to be Shakespeare?

The last statement I made in the opening was that he was the master of romance and emotion. I'm not at all suggesting that he didn't make a huge number of relationships, I'm just suggesting that it's been done in better ways by other people. The often ridiculous Shakespearean language seems to dodge around what he's really trying to get at: the core of human emotion. Romeo and Juliet's encounters are always uncomfortable to the reader, and death (of all things) stops them from truly being able to love each other at the end. Shakespeare made so many hints at love and emotion in his plays, but I've yet to see a place where he actually followed through.

With an opposite view taken, I think it's important to see some sort of balance between the two (here's the dialectic part). On one hand, he's amazing. On the other, he's nothing special. If we weigh the two against each other, we can reach a pretty solid conclusion: Shakespeare was good at many things, but never the best at anything. There were better overall writers, better romantic writers, other people who can create more words. But nobody else put it all together. William Shakespeare was indeed special.