Ornette Coleman: What Reason Could I Give?

Ornette Coleman's groups in the 1960s and early '70s that included Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, Dewey Redman and others were pivotal to me as a musician in that they seemed to bridge the gap between my early love of folk and rock with the more abstract and highly improvisational elements of jazz. There's a folksy quality to Ornette's music that seems to reflect the early days of jazz when the music was guttural and instrumentalists played lyrical melodies with voice-like tones. On Science Fiction, he used the studio as an instrument, more so than on many of his previous albums. This tune incorporates vocals (from Asha Puthli) in a seamless way. It takes guts to envision this kind of music.