Introduction to SONG OF PRAISE: HOMAGE TO JOHN COLTRANE, to be published by BookBeat in 2010.
You had to be there. Words are not available fully to convey the impact of John Coltrane, his fearless musical creations and exemplary persona on the generation of musicians, artists, poets and cultural warriors that came of age in the 1960s.
You had to be there. The stiff crust of the American social order was cracking open. Black people were moving for social and political equality in a big, inspirational way. The Cuban Revolution was well under way. The President of the United States was gunned down by a hellish collective of CIA agents and Mafiosi. Artists and academics were beginning to speak out forcefully for nuclear disarmament and against the ever-burgeoning war in Vietnam.
You had to be there. White people were discovering the blues. Hippies refused to cut their hair or get a job, smoked dope and dropped acid, plugged in their guitars and played rock & roll music, resisted the military draft, dropped out of the consumer society and lived together in urban and rural communes. American poetry and creative music and art were at an all-time high point and giants of every artistic discipline walked the earth.
You had to be there. Soul music was on the radio. Black people were on the move. Martin Luther King was leading massive civil rights marches and demonstrations and sit-ins all around the country. Students were rebelling. Draft resistance was on the rise. The government was on the defensive. Malcolm X was assassinated in the middle of a sermon. Four little black girls were blown up by white racist bombs placed in a church in Alabama. Voter registration workers from SNCC and CORE were murdered by white racists in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South.
You had to be there. The music was everywhere, fresh and exciting and charged with the moment. Freedom Suite by Sonny Rollins. Haitian Fight Song and Better Get It in Yo’ Soul by Charles Mingus. Freedom Now by Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln. Let Freedom Ring by Jackie McLean. Change of the Century by Ornette Coleman. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The Heliocentric World of Sun Ra. Giant Steps and Africa/Brass and Out of This World and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane.
You had to be there. You had to be there when the records came out. You had to be there in the little nightclubs and coffeehouses where the music was made. You had to be there where the music was, and the musicians, and the people whose lives were illuminated and reshaped by the music in action. You had to be there to see and hear what was going to happen, and when it happened, and how you could be a part of it.
You had to be there. If you were looking for a way out of the American stasis and a stake in the immediate future, you had to be there. It was all there in the music, spelled out in fiery notes and relentless rhythms with ceaseless intelligence and spontaneous improvisation, and you had to be there to stand under the music and understand what it was telling you.
You had to be there. There was no other place you would want to be. You had to be there to hear and see and feel the message of freedom and immense human possibility blazed across your mental sky by the music of John Coltrane & his thrilling quartets made in America between 1959 and Trane’s untimely demise in 1967. There was nothing like it then, and there’s nothing like it now.
You had to be there. But since you couldn’t be there, maybe this book of Homages to John Coltrane in verse and prose will help give you a tiny idea of what it was about, and how it reached us, and what it made us feel and think and do as we received it and figured out how to act on it.
The poems in SONG OF PRAISE were principally composed between 1965 and 1967, inspired by specific Coltrane works from the albums called John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard, Coltrane Plays the Blues, Coltrane Jazz, Crescent, Kulu Se Mama and Meditations.
The critical writings represent record reviews of the albums titled Coltrane Live at Birdland, Crescent, A Love Supreme and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays written upon their release, a report of a Coltrane concert at the downbeat Jazz Festival in August 1965, and a long retrospective of Trane’s Atlantic years written upon the release of The Heavyweight Champion boxed set in the 1990s.
You had to be there. I was there. I had to be there. That was exactly where it was at, and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
—John Sinclair
New Orleans
February 21, 2009
© 2009, 2010 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
