Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Randolph Denard Ornette Colemanwas an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, a term he invented with the name of an album. Coleman's timbre was easily recognized: his keening, crying sound drew heavily on blues music. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSaxophonist
Date of Birth9 March 1930
CityFort Worth, TX
CountryUnited States of America
You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.
The human being receives the pleasure from music, not from the argument over what it is.
I decided, if I'm going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I'm going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.
I wasn't so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That's why I'm broke.
I'm interested in music, not in my image. If someone plays something fantastic, that I could never have thought of, it makes me happy to know it exists.
I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. 'Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.
It's just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression.
I'm having this conversation with you now. I'm talking, but I'm thinking, feeling, smelling, and moving. Yet I'm concentrating on what you're saying. So that means there's more things going on in the body than just the present thing that the person's got you doing.
Making music is like a form of religion for me, because it soothes your heart and increases the pleasure of your brain. Most of all, it's very enjoyable to express something that you can only hear and not see, which is not bad.
It seems the activity of expressing sound to do with music has just started blooming - and because of that, the beginners feel like they're professionals, and the professionals feel like they are beginners, which is very healthy.
Sound has no parents.
Jerry Garcia was one of the original American icons. He played naturally and beautifully.
Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.
I've never had a relationship with a record executive. I always went to the record company by someone that liked my playing. Then they would get fired, and I'd be left with the record company. And then - because they got fired - the record company wouldn't do anything for me.