Jiving (June)

Charlie Haden died last July and now Ornette Coleman in June this year. Obituaries laud how “melody can thrive outside predetermined structures”, with “no preconceived chord sequences”, “jazz played as an idea rather than patterns”, the players having their “own tonal centres”. Meanwhile Roy Eldridge is quoted, “I think he’s jiving, baby.” Jiving’s a word with opposite meanings, the perfect harmony of all the elements, but is also used to mean deception and lies. In jazz, jiving is a positive, on the street it’s a negative. Ornette Coleman was one of the greatest composers in American classical music, no nonsense.