like having another hand

you know, jungle fever is probably not spike lee's best-remembered picture, but that scene where they're riding their bikes in the park early in the morning, and on the soundtrack comes john coltrane's "mr. knight", is something no other director would ever give you. that, and harold vick's soprano saxophone playing in she's gotta have it are, as they say, worth the price of admission.

the track that has really beguiled me for nearly thirty years is "mr. day", as it happens. 'trane's playing is the liturgy, every note of it. but really the whole quartet has this rhythmic urgency that is just unstoppable; it swings as hard as anything ever recorded. what elvin jones does with his hi-hat alone could be studied for hours and hours. and mccoy tyner's playing...okay, get up and go to your nearest piano (an electronic keyboard would do in a pinch) and play these voicings (left to right is lowest to highest):

C#-F#-A#-B-E-G# then

B-E-G#-C#-F#-A#

i mean what the fuck. academically, you have this interesting contrary motion of two major triads in second inversion, okay. but that sound! whaaa?!? this is what excites me.

over the years i have often wondered what non-musicians really hear in music. i guess what i really mean by "non-musicians" is "persons who don't have an analytical understanding of music". this is by no means a question as to the authenticity of anyone's music appreciation; the basic human reaction is at once visceral and cerebral, with no analysis required. it's just that for me, the analytical understanding of what i'm hearing is nearly always there, right alongside the gut reaction. i can't separate the two, nor do i wish to. so i wonder what replaces that in other listeners. it seems that for me, music's evocative power is strengthened and broadened by my understanding; there are certain chord progressions and harmonic structures that make me cry whenever and wherever i hear them, and i know what they are, and i can hear them coming, and they still get me every time. i can sit at a piano or pick up a guitar and bring them on at will. how does this work for other persons?

similarly, i wonder what non-saxophonists hear when they listen to john coltrane (to pick a saxophonist totally at random). me, i can feel every note in my teeth and face and throat and chest. it's warm and dry and completely exhilarating, bordering on the painful even (beginning around 1965, that is). of course, i can feel wayne shorter and archie shepp and dexter gordon and sonny rollins and wardell grey too, and it's those different feelings that make it all so fascinating. so how do you get fascinated when you can't feel these things? again, i don't doubt the fascination exists, and is genuine and compelling. i just wonder, that's all.