Stop Smiling: What do you feel about the possibilities for music as a healing power in the universe?
Ron Carter: I'm not sure music can do that. I'm not sure that Beethoven's Fifth or Miles Davis' Kind of Blue played in Congress is gonna make them stop the fuckin' war, man. Or make the Shiites and the Sunnis not shoot each other. We hear musicians and people who look for ways to solve problems say that music is the answer. But music has so many different possible interpretations that I don't see how its possible for a tune or note to discourage a guy from robbing this grocery. I hope my examples don't seem simpleminded, but I don't think that music has the kind of life-changing force to make the world what I would call a better place to be. I can't imagine a person- a hedge fund manager- would go to the Village Vanguard and hear different bands for a week and be so moved by this music that they'd give the Village Vanguard their million dollars so they could operate for a year without taking any money off the door. I wish I could play a chorus and make the robbers stop robbing. I wish I could play a chorus and make all the gangs come to my gig at a nightclub and say, "Man, we gotta stop doing this." It's going to take something else to make that happen. And I don't think music is the means to make that take place. There was a jazz fundraiser at the White House this year (2007) and President Bush said he enjoyed the music, but the war's still going on, man. Kids are still getting killed. The music didn't stop his thought process at all.
excerpted from Peter Relics' talk with Ron Carter
as published in Issue 34 (April 2008) of Stop Smiling magazine
Coltrane read different kinds of theoretical books, about music, religion, the occult, science, mathematics. In workbooks, he made correlations between times of day, sunrises and sunsets, and musical notes (he didn't press any of this research on his musicians, though he shared some of these interests with Sonny Rollins and Yusef Lateef.) Among the books he owned was the extended edition of "Music: Its Secret Influence Through the Ages" by the English composer Cyril Scott, published in 1958. Scott was influenced by Theosophy, and Coltrane first came into contact with Sun Ra when while he passed through Chicago on tour with the Miles Davis Quintet; they would continue to meet after Sun Ra moved, with his Arkestra, to New York in the early sixties. Whatever else, Coltrane absorbed from Sun Ra, it seems certain that they shared some philosophical interests).
Scott believed that music, properly used, brings humans in touch with the Devas, the angels or gods form previous ages. He also argued that music easily and effectively changes human psychology; he argued that human behavior is affected not only by the emotional content of music but by its form, and that such forces are pervasive: one need not be within earshot of music to benefit from its effects. Scott wrote about music (even 20th century music) in religious and semi-sceintific terms, without bringing up the subject of art much. He did talk about jazz, though, with priggish racialized scorn (he felt that it "closely resembled the music of primitive savages").
excerpted from "Coltrane: The Story of a Sound" by Ben Ratliff
as published in Issue 34 (april 2008) of Stop Smiling magazine.
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