Giant Steps

[gottaB]

Earlier this week on Hardball (the transcript is sucky but no matter) Carol Moseley Braun named Kieth Jarrett and John Coltrane --in that order!!--as her favorite musicians. Coltrane of course is the safe choice. It's like saying you love music, like picking Wizard of Oz as your favorite movie says you like watching movies, or naming Abraham Lincoln as your favorite president--uh, whatever--Carol's a Democrat and don't you forget it. More on Trane in a moment.

The politics of Jarrett stand out for a number of reasons. I'm not going to touch the issue of the man's time or whether he can (he can of course), should or ought to swing, and how to define what constitutes swinging in the first place, and for the moment I'll skirt around his place in *the* tradition and just assume that he belongs, though the full depth of his belonging isn't realized simply in his own playing, imo, but in those he's influenced to varoius degrees.

First and foremost Jarrett stands for freedom. After that there's courage and the overcoming of obstacles and doing what it is you have to do to realize yourself fully. The path of exile is not chosen lightly, as if it were just any route among many on the way to being beautiful. The way to the beautiful, in music as in politics, is seldom straight and clear and broad. Too, one discerns a tragic element in the consciousness of the expatriot, a cruel twist of fate that is perhaps all the more cruel for being an enduring historical subtext of America's music. Ah, but things do change, faster than you can say plus ça change, plus c'est pareil. People change. Now and then they come home, if they ever really left. Perhaps its just a matter of rediscovering one's center, or allowing others to find it, or just being in circumstances that reveal one's center of gravity, and if that means coming back to ECM instead of Blue Note or Impulse, more power to you. Welcome home, Kieth Jarrett, pianist nonpariel. I'm Roger Rosenblatt--just kidding. :-)

Speaking of rapid changes, that would be Coltrane, what are known as "Coltrane changes" as laid out in "Giant Steps." Nowadays every horn player and his kid brother blows Coltrane changes wherever and whenever. A blues? Coltrane changes. A' of 32 bar ballad? Coltrane changes. Forget the channel? Coltrane changes. Freeform lament? Coltrane changes. The ironic thing is almost nobody plays "Giant Steps," or rather, almost nobody can play the changes on "Giant Steps." Two things invariably happen: (1) they go through the head and then cut the tempo, in which case they might as well be playing "Central Park West"; (2) they blow the changes (meaning they ignore the changes and just blow). We might give Kenny Garrett a pass on the latter, because his understanding of tonality derives from A Love Supreme, and is therefore spiritually Coltrane and musically *a* version of Coltrane, but it is not "Giant Steps," the manifesto of Coltrane changes, and as much as I dig Moffett and the rest of Garrett's rhythm players, fact is they blow the changes.

You see Coltrane is not such a simple choice, musically or poltically. Which Coltrane do you mean? Most commentators have found the classic quartet to be the musical, spiritual, political apotheosis of Coltrane's expression. And who in their right mind would argue against A Love Supreme? Nobody. It has to be there as the bedrock of what you mean when you say John Coltrane is your favorite musician. Politically, it's about pluralism, about perseverence, freedom, empowerment, working well with others, it's about wisdom and knowing how to apply it to the challenges of the moment, it's about knowing when to mourn and when to exult, not letting yourself forget how to feel or express your feelings, or why that matters.

Coltrane, then, is an excellent choice for Braun or any Democrat. Braun, however, at this stage of her campaign, needs something a little different, something with more forward momentum, more urgency, more audacity, something more primal and intellectual at once. That something is embodied in "Giant Steps," the little ditty that chews up just about any rhtyhm player that touches it. Even Tommy Flannagan, the first pianist who saw it, said he thought it was supposed to be like a ballad tempo. It threw him, just like it throws everybody else.

The only pianist I've heard who both played the tune and owned it is Gonzalo Rubalcaba. More of that exile business, and a difficult musician by any measure (Kucitizens ought to check out his version of "Imagine"--WOW). Geri Allen I believe has the left hand for it, but her thing is her own music, and that's got to be respected. Jacky Terrasson I would love to hear attempt it, because of his unorthodox time, but I have doubts as to whether he'd pull it off. (Just read a review of fellow Parisian Jean-Michel Pilc's performance of a "Giant Steps"/"Mission Impossible" medley--cute, you know. He did "Giant Steps" on his Welcome Home cd, I'll have to check it out.) I wouldn't think of downplaying cats like Mulgrew Miller who play it competently, no small achievement that, but my heart aches for something more. I'm holding out for excellence.

Patricia Ireland this week joined the Braun campaign, replacing Kevin Lampe as the campaign director. Ireland does not strike me as either a Love Supreme or Köln Concert kind of campaigner, not that she wouldn't be down with that musically, but I'm hoping for something more propulsive. Is she up to "Giant Steps"? She better be.

[blm]

1. Wow...this was a really nice post, gottaB.

I can practically hear your heart beating. it was so expressive.