Africa/Brass - The John Coltrane Quartet

Africa/Brass
The John Coltrane Quartet
1961








Africa/Brass is a John Coltrane album that is largely only interesting as documentation of his evolving musical ideology. It has some 1950s hard bop, a little foreshadowing of what he will be doing, a la the Live at the Village Vanguard stuff, and one part trying out the larger ensembles of his later 1960s recordings. The result is a somewhat muddled effort, not bad music, but the album as a whole has a sort of tentativeness to it that makes me think that Coltrane didn't quite know what he wanted to do with it. What is interesting is that taking each song individually yields a different verdict than does considering the album as a single entity of Coltrane music.

(I am only reviewing the three tunes on the original Africa/Brass since that was what was originally released, the others will be dealt with later, when the second volume is released with the other recordings from the session.)

The track listing for this recording is confusing when you consider its gestalt, and it shows that Coltrane was only just starting to move into the next era of his music. "Africa" - a tone poem that was inspired by an African album he had been listening to; "Greensleeves" - nothing more than a cheap follow-up to "My Favorite Things"; "Blues Minor" - a tune that is the best on the album if only because it doesn't veer too much from what a Coltrane tune is expected to be and therefore benefits from the listeners comfort and familiarity.

"Greensleeves" actually makes me a bit angry because it comes across as nothing more than a weak attempt to follow up on the popular success of "My Favorite Things" from earlier in 1961 (though that was released through Atlantic). Coltrane does this at least one more time, when he records "Chim Chim Cheree" (1965) from Mary Poppins.

I suppose there are two different perspectives for these types of Coltrane-interpreted tunes. The generous one is that Coltrane decided to use them as a basis for his increasingly trippy and challenging music to increase the accessibility factor for the average fan. The less-generous perspective is that "My Favorite Things" was a popular hit and Coltrane kept beating that horse. "Chim Chim Cheree" probably deserves the more generous perspective. "Greensleeves" is too normal and straight-ahead; he record that to take advantage of his very recent success with "My Favorite Things".

"Greensleeves" just doesn't fit with the two other tunes. In fact, none of them go together. Aside from the really large ensemble used on these tracks (essentially a big band instrumentation without the saxophone section) there is no connection between these tunes. It is a muddled album.

"Blues Minor" is a pretty good hard bop tune. It isn't particularly creative, it isn't particularly boring, it is just a standard Coltrane tune that doesn't change anything about his music. There is no forward movement, which isn't always a bad thing. When I listen to it, and manage to isolate it from the rest of the Africa/Brass songs, it reminds me strongly of the stuff on Coltrane's Blue Train recording from 1957. To be fair, that is about all I can say about this one.

"Africa" is fascinating for a Coltrane devotee. It is an intellectually compelling recording for the simple fact that it is the junction of the old Coltrane, who was innovative, but who wasn't breaking all that many of the rules yet, and the new Coltrane of the 1960s who was wasn't so much going to break rules, as he was going to pile them in the center of the recording studio, douse them in gasoline and burn them to ashes. I can't say that I like this song - but it intrigues me to be able to see a little bit of the process that Coltrane went through that is going to terminate in Kulu Se Mama and Ascension and stuff like that.

Listening to this song reminds me of the quote about laws and sausages, its better not to see them being made. "Africa" isn't bad, but unless you are a serious Coltrane fan, you aren't going to get anything out of it - it is liable to just frustrate you. If you like his early stuff from the 1950s, this one is just going to be weird. If you like his crazy stuff from the late 60s, you will feel like he is just holding back.

I am a serious Coltrane fan. I like the songs on this album, I just don't like the album. Thankfully I live in the age of the iPod and I don't have to listen to the album as a whole. (I don't care what Coltrane's plan was for this record, I am in charge of what I listen to.) I have a playlist of early Coltrane stuff - that is where Blues Minor plays. I have a playlist of moderately crazy Coltrane stuff, "Chim Chim Cheree" for example - that is where "Africa" is. "Greensleeves" isn't anywhere - I have to admit I don't really like that song. But those kinds of categorizations are what you have to do sometimes with such a dynamic musician. Coltrane changed. Frequently and wildly. And sometimes he changed so quickly that you can see it in the course of one album.