Sixty Years of A Love Supreme

On 9th December 1964 – exactly 60 years ago to the day – John Coltrane (ts), McCoy Tyner (p), Jimmy Garrison (b) and Elvin Jones (d) got together to record at Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio in New Jersey. In a single session they created what is probably Coltrane’s masterpiece, A Love Supreme, an album that proved immediately popular and influential when it was released in 1965.

A Love Supreme represents a sort of musical culmination of everything this quartet had achieved and it’s not surprising that they abruptly changed direction soon after making this record. They had said everything they could say in this format. Coltrane’s next great album, Meditations, recorded in 1965, features the same musicians (with the addition of Pharaoh Sanders on tenor sax and a second drummer, Rashied Ali), but it’s much freer in style.

A Love Supreme consists of four sections: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm. As you might imagine from the titles, it’s a deeply spiritual piece. Acknowledgement is based on an 8-bar theme underpinned by a four-note phrase played on the bass that fits the phrase “a love supreme”. Coltrane impovises rather meditatively on this theme, then the group chants “a love supreme” in unison while Elvin Jones elaborates the rhythm in complex double-time. The second movement, Resolution, is based on a different 8-bar theme and Coltrane’s playing and interplay with Jones is much more agitated but it’s in Pursuance that he pulls out all the stops. Harmonically, Pursuance is a blues but it’s taken at a fast tempo and Coltrane plays with the harsh, strangulated tone he had developed by this time. After all this frantic activity he imbues the final section, Psalm, with a radiant solemnity, as he pours out an incredibly beautiful solo, with Elvin Jones providing a perfectly judged accompaniment, the rise and fall of his drum rolls showing wonderful control.

Anyway, these are just words. It’s much better just to listen to the music, as I have done twice already this evening. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3CMgiUPuU

#ALoveSupreme #Acknowledgement #ElvinJones #JimmyGarrison #JohnColtrane #McCoyTyner #Psalm #Pursuance #Resolution #RudyVanGelder

#TIL about Pursuance, a project developing a free code web platform that combines chat and task management functions. According to the blurb on their code forge:

"We are in the process of integrating with Hypothesis, the web annotation platform, so that our users can coordinate crowdsourced investigative resource more effectively."

https://github.com/PursuanceProject/pursuance

#TIL about #Hypothesis too :)

#Pursuance #FreeCode #Chat #TaskManagement

The #pursuance project is a promising approach towards enabling global fluid collaboration of radicals.

To me, this is probably *the* most interesting open-source project on the net because it might just give us the edge in organization we need to radically change the world.

They now have a kickstarter.

One of the more long term goals is #federation, but if enough people throw them some money, this could be accelerated.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/85883596/barrett-browns-pursuance-project

For sure #PursuanceProject is ambitious. It also addresses an important need.

Many activists have asked me about how to protect their #privacy while they organize online. Pursuance is poised to become a valuable part of that toolkit.

"We're building encrypted software to amplify the efforts of activists, journalists, & nonprofits -- anyone fighting for social change." - #Pursuance #Kickstarter here

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/85883596/barrett-browns-pursuance-project

https://twitter.com/DaPeaple/status/1007712675244204033/photo/1

Apparently, there will be a #pursuance session tomorrow at #34c3.

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2017/wiki/index.php/Session:Revolutionizing_Large-scale_Digital_Activism_with_Barrett_Brown%27s_Pursuance_Project

Yay, I just got a test deployment of #pursuance running.

And nothing works! \o/