InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 10

KICKING THE CANON
they’d been taught. By this time, the dynamic within the band
had shifted to something resembling a guru and his pupils.
Coleman’s new cohort was quite a bit younger than him, with
some of them, like drummer Grant Calvin Weston and bassist
Jamaaladeen Tacuma, still being teenagers when they joined.
And, of course, there was Coleman’s son Denardo, the only player
other than Ornette himself to appear on every Prime Time record,
as immersed in his father’s ways of thinking as one could be.
These musicians were more than just sympathetic collaborators;
they were disciples in the school of harmolodics. And on Of
Human Feelings, that change is easy to recognize: All six players
are on their own, playing in differing keys and rhythmic
cadences, but it’s also obvious how deeply they’re listening to one
another. Listen to the guitar interplay between Bern Nix (the
ultra-clean tone in the left channel) and Charles Ellerbee (the
more distorted one panned to the right) on a track like “Him and
Her.” They’re playing off of each other, ducking in
and out of each other’s lines, filling in gaps, but they never lose
their respective individual characters. One can focus on any
combination of players and observe astounding repartee. It’s
ironic, perhaps, given how haphazard the music might sound on
first listen, but Of Human Feelings exists at the apex of musical
connectedness.
Returning finally to the question of album titles, we should
consider Of Human Feelings itself — it doesn’t share the temporal
theme of those earlier titles, but it may be even more elucidating
of Coleman’s concerns. Plenty of art claims to abide by a similar
expressive principle, but few works actually apply that humanist
impulse to something radical, stripping away all conceivable
barriers in pursuit of a pure, liberated expression. If anyone can
be said to have made a music of human feelings, it’s Ornette
Coleman. — BRENDAN NAGLE
17