Coltrane himself discussed setting up a cultural center with Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji and multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef shortly before his death in 1967. These groups produced and distributed records, published newsletters, and engaged in education and community programs. At the time the Seattle recordings were made, organizations like the Jazz Composers Guild, the Advancement of Creative Musicians ( AACM), the Black Artists’ Group ( BAG), and the Union of God’s Musicians and Artists Ascension ( UGMAA) sought to find alternatives to corrupt clubs and record contracts while challenging the music’s waning place in Black communities, a decline attributable to the rise of rock ’n’ roll-a white usurpation of Black music-urban “regeneration” projects, and the beginnings of the war on drugs. Throughout the history of jazz, its musicians have been subject to systematically exploitative labor conditions.
The release last week of a previously lost live version of A Love Supreme, recorded at the Penthouse Club in Seattle in October 1965, provides an opportunity to redress the balance, locating the saxophonist within a collective history still not often told. Yet overemphasizing the Coltrane’s individual aura obscures the true force behind his music. JOHN COLTRANE IS OFTEN HELD UP as a sui generis figure, A Love Supreme his magnum opus.
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