by: Ellen C. Caldwell
for JSTOR Daily
The pioneering jazz artist John Coltrane was born 90 years ago on this date. Despite his untimely death at only 41, Coltrane’s impact on the world of music is still felt today.
Arun Nevader pays tribute to Coltrane and his lasting influence by exploring the complexity of his music, composition, and spirituality. Nevader opens with the following quote: “The MUSIC of John Coltrane is not easy listening. It is not meant for people on a five-minute lunch break—as D.H. Lawrence once said of his own prose.” As Nevader puts it, “Coltrane transformed the saxophone…[he] lent a human voice to his instrument that at once seemed visionary, visual, spatial. His sound escaped any ordinary, objective definition.” Coltrane helped to develop and make famous free jazz, an avant-garde approach to break down traditional jazz music without the traditional meters or conventions.
Nevader makes apt comparisons of Coltrane’s auditory art to the visual arts, claiming that the musicians of New Jazz “altered the structure of music in the same way that French Impressionists had redefined the nature of color.”…
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