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  3. The vaulting-off point of Ben Ratliff’s biography is the belief that John Co

The vaulting-off point of Ben Ratliff’s biography is the belief that John Co

游客2024-01-02  12
问题     The vaulting-off point of Ben Ratliff’s biography is the belief that John Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophonist, was not only a towering performer but also the last major figure in the evolution of jazz. Indeed, jazz seemed to lose its way after he died in 1967, aged 40.
    Mr. Ratliff, jazz critic for the New York Times, leaves Coltrane’ s private life largely alone. For a jazzman, he kicked drugs and drink pretty early and afterwards led a remarkably suburban life. Rather, it is a biography of the Coltrane sound: an urgent, non-vibrato intensity that the saxophonist constantly reinvented—unlike most jazz musicians who professionally settle into a comfortable groove or who reinvent themselves at most once or twice in their lives.
    The Coltrane sound, unlike Charlie Parker’ s, did not spring fully formed on the listening public. Coltrane was something of a late and hesitant starter. He was nearly 30 when an assuredness settled in and he was able to harness his phenomenal technique and mastery of jazz lore to his urgent driven style, soloing in riffles and cascades of scales and arpeggios. The late 1950s were exceptional years for jazz. Though rock-and-roll had not yet swamped it, jazz big bands were no longer commercially viable. The jazz was in small clubs where quartets and quintets played live, and Coltrane was lucky to be hired by two superb bandleaders and teachers, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.
    But for Coltrane, all this was the beginning of the journey, not the end. At first he attempted to cram ever more into the Western harmony of jazz tunes: an ever-denser architecture of chord changes. Before long, even his technique exhausted those possibilities. He began to abandon harmony, turning to modes that seemed to speak of older things: African and native-American history, Eastern spiritual power, universal love. Then even the modes started to go. Many of his audiences lost him as he encouraged younger, more wayward players into his regular group; then his regular musicians went. Asked by a Japanese reporter in 1966 what he wished to be in ten years’ time, Coltrane replied simply that he wanted to be a saint.
    And that, in many circles, is what after his death he became. To the cult’ s adherents, Coltrane ’ s music by the end had ascended to a plane of intensity that was close to godliness, and could not be questioned. A Church of St John Coltrane exists in San Francisco: the founders first claimed that the musician was an incarnation of god, but later demoted him to sainthood.
    Mr. Ratliff’ s biography is particularly good in exploring Coltrane’ s afterlife. Coltrane’ s musical presence remains so powerful that even today jazz musicians, particularly horn players, are influenced by it—unless they define themselves in sharp contradistinction to it. But Mr. Ratliff investigates the charge that, if jazz as an evolutionary folk form died with Coltrane, it was he who killed it: pulling down its harmonic structure, destroying its sense of swing and knocking the pleasure and fun out of it in an ecstasy of self-indulgence. The late Robert Lowell, an American poet, spoke of "the monotony of the sublime" ; this could be applied to Coltrane.
    On the charge of destroying jazz, Mr. Ratliff finds Coltrane not guilty. But it is hard to escape a sense, both among those jazz players who followed him out to the wilder edges or those who struggled to bring the idiom back to its earlier harmonic forms, that jazz has been chasing its tail ever since he died. Had Coltrane’ s life not been cut short, where would his sound have chased next?
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答案                             追忆科尔特兰
    本-拉特里夫传记的核心思想是认为高音、次中音萨克斯管演奏家约翰、科尔特兰不仅是杰出的演奏家，同时还是最后一位重要的爵士革新家。的确，1967年，年仅40岁的他辞世后，爵士乐似乎迷失了方向。
    《纽约时报》的爵士乐评论家拉特里夫对科尔特兰的私人生活未作评价。作为一名爵士音乐家，他早早便戒毒戒酒，后来过着典型的郊外生活。更确切地说，这是出自科尔特兰一家之言的一部传记：与满足于个人专业巅峰状态或只在生命中至多进行一到两次创造的大多数爵士音乐家不同，科尔特兰作为一个萨克斯管演奏家不断创造急促而无颤音的音乐强度。
    科尔特兰与查理-帕克的声音不一样：他的声音并未在听众中完全定型。科尔特兰有点大器晚成，起步晚而且犹豫不决。他开始有信心时已年近30，他能把杰出的表演手法和对爵士知识的掌握融为一体，形成音调急促的曲风、短促的独奏、音阶和琶音的层叠。20世纪50年代末是爵士乐的特殊年代。尽管摇滚乐还没有完全侵入，但大型爵士乐队在商业上风光不再。只活跃在小型俱乐部里的是四重奏和五重奏的现场演奏。科尔特兰很幸运地受到两位高超的伴舞乐队指挥和老师——迈尔斯-戴维斯和赛罗尼斯-蒙克的雇佣。
    但对于科尔特兰来说，所有这些都只是爵士之旅的开端而不是终曲。首先，他试图融入更多的西方和谐爵士曲调，这种曲调是一种越来越密集的和音变化的体系结构。不久以后，他的演奏技术无法实现这些曲调的融合。他开始放弃和谐曲调，转向那些似乎在诉说古老传说的风格。比如：非洲和土著美国人的历史、东方的精神力量和博爱。
    然后，这种风格也逐渐被放弃了。当他鼓励更年轻、更任性的演奏者加入他的正规演奏乐队时，很多听众纷纷离他而去。后来，很多正规的音乐家也转身离去，不再追随于他。1996年，当一个日本记者问他10年后想成为什么样的人时，科尔特兰简单地回答说他想成为一个圣人。然而，几经波折，在他辞世以后却实至名归。对祭礼的信徒而言，毋庸置疑，科尔特兰的音乐最后已经上升为近乎天籁之音。在旧金山有一座圣约翰-科尔特兰教堂：教堂奠基人首先声称科尔特兰是上帝的化身，但随后又将他降为圣人。
    拉特里夫的自传在对科尔特兰后期的生活方面的刻画达到了极致。科尔特兰的音乐表达形式给后世留下了深远的影响，至今，仍然有爵士音乐家，尤其是管号音乐家深受其影响，尽管他们认为自己的音乐与科尔特兰的音乐有很大不同之处。但是，拉特里夫还调查出对科尔特兰的“如果说爵士乐这种革新音乐随着科尔特兰的辞世而消逝的话，那么正是科尔特兰自己葬送了这种音乐。"这一指控，是因为他推翻了音乐的和谐构造，极尽纵容地剔除了摇摆乐和击打乐中的欢快、愉悦感。可将美国后期诗人罗伯特-罗威尔写出的“单调至极”运用到科尔特兰身上。
    拉特里夫发现在对科尔特兰摧毁了爵士乐的这一控诉上，科尔特兰并非无辜。但人们也无法否认：(包括那些追随爵士乐至狂野或努力重回和谐之道的爵士乐手)认为自从科尔特兰辞世以后，爵士乐的发展日益衰败。倘若科尔特兰不是英年早逝的话，那么他将追随的下一种音乐又会是什么呢?
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