#firespitters

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deity locution (and everything else in here) from inconstant sol

this record is an opportunity to explore a point that feels both tangential and central to this week; it's been rough trying to write about cortez without mentioning the relatively brief period that she was married to ornette coleman, and/or mentioning denardo coleman, their son. on one hand, it's fucked up to reduce a woman to her relationships with the men around her; that those relationships be wife and mother is extra trife, and so diminishing a woman who dedicated her life's work to dynamiting the world of exploitation and abuse that reduces women to these roles as a matter of course is added insult. it might be helpful to try to imagine a male pioneer of cultural forms and seismic social movements dying at near 80 years old, and then being most frequently eulogized as the ex-husband of someone he married at 18 (and divorced 10 years later), and/or as the father of their child. or, in real life, see how deep a bio of ornette goes before cortez gets mentioned (if she gets mentioned).

on the other hand, jazz was foundational for cortez. she was an afficionado and musician in her youth, and established herself as a self- identified "jazz poet"- in form and content her work bore this out. in some ways, the mentions of ornette and denardo coleman serve to situate cortez in the jazz pantheon, among other relevant contexts. these biographical details lend some insight as to why the work that all three were producing in the late 70s and onward sounded the way it did; here they are, playing together on maintain control, somehow sounding very much like themselves/ not unlike each other. and coleman is such a colossus (his standing relevance to this blog should be self-evident) that he almost always bears mentioning. for context, it's also rare that any of the other musicians on the shape of jazz to come are discussed without reference to their time in the quartet.

all this to say that inasmuch as it's disrespectful to grant jayne cortez recognition and esteem on the basis of her ex-husband and son, recognizing these as human relationships allows us to hear even more in her work. this record, the only one on which she and ornette coleman play together, is an excellent piece for an intentional listen.

the world lost a laureate/ luminary in jayne cortez, who died on december 28, 2012 [obituary]. born in 1934 in arizona, cortez went on to live in the watts neighborhood of los angeles, new york city, and dakar, senegal, and she traveled a wide swath of the globe beyond that writing and performing poetry, making music, writing books, and [seguing nicely from last week] fighting for justice and liberation.

although she was a creative polymath from her youth, cortez established a community and found acclaim with her poetry, which along with the work of leroi jones/ amiri baraka, nikki giovanni, gwendolyn brooks, sonia sanchez, et. al. comprised some of the most significant elements of the black arts movement. before all that, she was married to ornette coleman for 10 years, which- unfortunately for the reception of the amazing work she did later in her life- is hard for people to ignore. she formed her backing band the firespitters in 1979 with their son denardo coleman on drums (at the same time denardo played with his father in prime time). cortez founded her own publishing house, bola press, in 1972, and she released many of her books and records on the label; she also founded the organization of women writers of africa in 1991 with the ghanaian author ama ata aidoo. this week follows hashtag #jazz fan looks back, an homage to cortez's poem and 2002 book by the same name.