John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960's [Paperback]

Frank Kofsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1998

John Coltrane's role in spearheading innovations in jazz that were an expression of the new cultural and political ferment that marked the rise of the mass struggle for Black rights.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Released in 1971 as Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music, this book is essentially a compilation of articles published in Jazz Review. LJ's reviewer took exception to Kofsky's racist notions but nonetheless asserted that he wrote well (LJ 6/1/71). This would make a good companion to Kofsky's recent Black Music, White Business: Illuminating the History and Political Economy of Jazz, also from Pathfinder.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Must reading for all serious students and fans of American jazz. --Midwest Book Review

Extremely informative book about the role of blacks in the creation of jazz.... Combines music and politics and discusses their relationship. Recommended as a must.... --Kliatt

Firebrand of a book. --Publishers Weekly

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Pathfinder Press (NY); Expanded edition (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873488571
• ISBN-13: 978-0873488570
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,013,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Well-intentioned but misdirected, April 15, 2003

By 

Tyler Smith (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960's (Paperback)

Kofsky's effort in this book is to tie the avant-garde jazz music that emerged in the sixties to the politics of black nationalism that were boiling up at the same time. His essential thesis is that jazz is an African American art form that is and always has been by its very nature a form of protest against the physical and ideological shackles placed on black people by an oppressive society. He asserts that the musical freedom that black jazz artists searched for in the '60s went hand-in-hand with the efforts of Malcolm X and others to create a new, Afrocentric society that would presumably free black people to nurture their cultural identity.

As the title suggests, Kofsky saw John Coltrane as the key figure in this movement. He is unstinting in his praise of Coltrane's music, so much so that even I, a hard-core fan of Trane's for more than 30 years, found myself yearning for a more leavened approach. Kofsky certainly knows Coltrane's music well. But he makes, in my opinion, a fatal error in investing that music with a political consciousness and aim that Coltrane himself never professed. In fact, in an interview included in the book that Kofsky conducted with the saxophonist, he (Coltrane) makes clear that he does not subscribe to Kofsky's thesis, despite the writer's repeated attempts to put words in his mouth. Some years ago, I secured a tape of this interview, and it's startling to hear how insistent Kofsky becomes in attempting to lead his subject where he clearly doesn't want to go.

Another key weakness of the book is that it gives short shrift to so many fine musicians of the period. Charles Mingus, for example, a key influence on the avant-garde, is barely mentioned. If you read the book and had never heard of Miles Davis, you'd come away thinking that he was just another planet circling the Coltrane star instead of one of the formative influences on the saxophonist himself. And of course solid and influential musicians who made incremental contributions to the music -- Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Lee Morgan, Jaki Byard, Herbie Hancock (the list could go on and on) -- receive nary a word. Meanwhile, Archie Shepp is lionized, first and foremost because of his radical politics.

Lest anyone think I'm taking a shot at Archie, I hasten to add that I think he's made a number of fine albums, and I own quite a few of them. The point is that one realizes early on that Kofsky is less interested in understanding the creative process and analyzing the relative musical merits of jazz musicians than he is in developing a social critique and applying his political litmus tests to the musicians of the era. Viewed in this light, the book is not very informative. A long critique of the "cockroach capitalism" practiced by jazz club owners 40 years ago doesn't carry much weight today. And alas, the socialist revolution that Kofsky proclaimed was imminent has somehow failed to come to pass, yet jazz has endured. Is there a lesson there?

In the end, Kofsky manages to minimize the artistry of the musicians and make them appear to be guided inexorably by Marxist ideology. That's pretty flimsy and it certainly in my mind is a disservice to the many great musicians of the '60s who could never be pinned down to one influence. In fact, their stubborn resistance to being pinned down, and to be endlessly open to new ideas, is precisely what made them jazz musicians.

For a much better insight into the life of the jazz musician, I would suggest A.B. Spellman's "Four Lives in the Bebop Business," and for a balanced analysis of Coltrane's music, Eric Nisenson's "Ascension."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The African-Americaness of jazz, September 6, 2001

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960's (Paperback)

The late Frank Kofsky was a radical historian, and a lover of Jazz. This book is based on articles he published in Jazz magazines in the middle 1960s, interviews he did with Coltrane.

Despite its weaknesses, this book is important in that it stresses the importance of the African American nature of Coltrane and modern jazz, and its links to Black militancy in the 1960s. It places Jazz not just in the historical links to aFrican American musical survivors but the Jazz of the 50s and 60s in the context of the ferment in the Black community arising from the civil rights and Black power movements.

As such, it is a good answer to the current Wynton Marsalis-Stanley Crouch-Albert Murray mafia's insistence that Jazz is not African American, but a product of 'greatness" of American capitalism and that Jazz needs to acquire the forms, conventions, and practices of European classical music.

. . And this is vital to Coltrane's importance in the advancement of Jazz completely against these conventions.
This book has weaknesses. Kofsy's analysis is distant from Marxist cultural theory, especially as he tries to identify artistic validity with political content. Kofsky seems unaware of the question of class within the African American people or among jazz musicians. Kofsky never really lets the reader know how religion and spirituality became central to John Coltrane and his music in his later years.


Still, this book is part of the defense of the place of John Coltrane in the history of Jazz, and of Jazz's own place in history.

While this book is not always available on Amazon, it is always available from BooksfromPathfinder, an Amazon Z store that you can get to by clicking on New and Used further up this page!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A powerful but frustrating read, November 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960's (Paperback)

This is an essential book for Coltrane lovers, especially because of the interviews with Coltrane, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones. As for the rest of the book, it is at times illuminating but too often frustrating. Kofsky's dogmatic Marxism does not help his overall points about the role of racial issues in the Jazz revolution. His anecdotes about the musicians are great, but his analyses of them are too one-sided. He doesn't consider the possibility that for some of them, the revolution was more about art than politics (not that the two can't be related). The interviews with Tyner and Jones show this as well -- Kofsky keeps trying to get them to say that their artistic decisions were politically motivated, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

This book is definitely worth reading, but be prepared to disagree with Kofsky's approach, unless you're a Marxist.