The final reference to this book I will make is Peter Goodwin Heltzel’s (professor of theology) essay on John Coltrane’s work as an improviser. Whilst he centres a large part of this essay around the parallels found between jazz and religion, it was his explanation of the origins of jazz that stood out as most relevant in regards to the direction I may take for my aural paper’s title. Jazz, if traced back long enough, takes us to the blues of the Mississippi Delta. The ‘Delta Blues’ arose as an outlet for slaves of African descent to express their struggles and longing for freedom. From here jazz eventually emerged from blues and a host of many other genres, as a result of French colonisers intermarrying with Native Americans, African Americans and the Spanish ‘to create an unprecedented zone of intercultural interaction’. This intercultural movement gave rise to Creoles, whom integrated with African people in New Orleans in the 1890s, influencing one another musically and culturally, paving the way for jazz culture. Through this short recount of the history of jazz, I found that I became increasingly aware of how important racial and cultural mixing, bred from themes of ‘religious transcendence and political opposition’, was in birthing this new genre. Jazz, as a counter cultural practice, is also rooted in the very act of improvisation. A form of improvisation summed up by the term ‘creation continua’, meaning ‘a continual creation drawing on existing materials to make music in new ways’. In the same way, multiple genres were refashioned to create an exploratory and progressive form of music, cultures and old practices intertwined to form a new dialogue relating to equality and resistance to oppression.
The essay goes on to mention John Coltrane and his rendition of the jazz standard ‘My Favourite things’. His musical conversation with pianist Mccoy Tyner in this specific song is an example of the canvas jazz provides for exploration into improvisation and spontaneous expression. Heltzel describes musical improvisation as something that is unique to the surroundings and existential state of the musicians in question. From this statement we can then understand why he goes on to say that the traditional view that the composer is the most important figure within a piece of music is not necessarily true, as even the musicians are interpreting the composer’s score in their own way, through the constraints applied to them. Moreover, improvisation is a dynamic process, and one that is not only limited to the players, but also the audience, as it requires collaboration with every element and being within the space at hand.