A Force for Good
How To Love John Coltrane
I do, and so should you
Disclaimer: I’m not telling anyone how to live their life or what music they should love. Just, if you wanna find your way to Coltrane, this might help.
It’s a drag when you hear a name floating around the music sphere and it is universally recognized as GREAT, but it’s a genre of music that has escaped you thus far and you DON’T. QUITE. UNDERSTAND. Every new discovery requires a way in and there’s no shame in that. As a friend of mine says, “Everything we love — at some point we did not love it and we were hearing it for the first time.”
Jazz, as a whole, can be like this, but John Coltrane, in particular, can be very much this. The love showered on Coltrane is extraordinary. He was, by far, the most influential musician of the second half of the 20th century. His great quartet of the mid-60s changed everything, and he had this way about him that might be described as shamanistic. There’s even a legit John Coltrane church in San Francisco, where the liturgy is based in his music (nope, not kidding).
When he was asked what the goal of his music was, Trane answered this way:
“I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know that there are bad forces…
