Hui Shi’s Thesis #7: I go to the state of Yue and arrived there yesterday.

David Ake calls John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ ‘just one of seemingly countless jazz performance that suggest some version of being subjectivity’.[1] For Ake, this means several things. Coltrane’s being subjectivity in ‘Giant Steps’ is constituted of a persona (Trane) represented by the saxophone in performance. Moreover, it is an episodic, present and egotistical statement of the lone soloist, paying ‘little or no attention to the rest of the ensemble’.[2] To Ake, Trane’s solo is solely self-interested, using the ensemble merely as an anonymous backing track at the point of soloing. The lack of teleological structure in the solo also ensures a lack of conclusion or pay-off, choruses can either cycle forever or stop at any point, not concerned with a sense of movement or conceptual development. In other words: the soloist is God, and in this instance that soloist is Coltrane, expressing one vision of Self (Trane) through the saxophone.

But something doesn’t sit right. Trane-as-persona itself is problematic, because it suggests that within improvised musics there are multiple subjects at play within a Self – an ‘I’ performing and a detached ‘I’ narrating that performance. To engage in improvisation as a persona is an impossibility that denotes auto-editing on a subconscious level as well as an Adornian envisioned subjectivity ‘owing its existence to the sacrifice of the present to the future’.[3] For improvised music is a self-consuming act, vanishing as it is communicated, it relies entirely upon the present, unfolding as it dies, unedited. While Ake notes that Coltrane was a retired quiet man and Trane-of-Giant-Steps was brash and bold, surely this represents Coltrane’s expression of Self beyond the confines of quotidian social interaction?  

The groove still isn’t settled. Lacunae in Ake’s argument are conspicuous. Most notably, perhaps, is Ake’s discounting of the Community inherent in the jazz ensemble – an unavoidable series of Selves – collectively musicking.[4] To Ake, Coltrane’s solo is a performative Cartesian iteration: ‘“I am – creative, intelligent, fearless and in-charge – right here right now”’, Ake puts into Coltrane’s mouth. Coltrane’s choruses on ‘Giant Steps’ are a singular ‘ludo ergo sum’, in place of ‘cogito ergo sum’. The stark similarities between Ake’s argument and Descartes’ proposition mean that all criticisms that have been historically levelled at Descartes can here also apply to Ake. As an example, Kojin Karatani emphasises the insubstantial nature of Cartesian dualism, of ‘cogito ergo sum’, declaring that ‘it cannot be spoken of positively; no sooner than it is, its function is lost’.[5] ‘Cogito’ – and thus ‘ludo’ – function purely structurally, not as a substantial entity, but an empty space. As such it can only emerge through the interactions of extensive communal systems. ‘There is thus an intrinsic link between the emergence of the cogito and the disintegration and loss of substantive communal identities’.[6] Not only does ‘ludo ergo sum’ fragment the Community in improvisation, but also the Self, since it necessarily asserts the existence of a Self whose sole purpose is contained in the ‘ludo’.[7] Plus, the mere notion of the ‘ludo’ presupposes the ‘I’ which is to play. One cannot perceive it to be an ‘I’ that plays and thus exists without first identifying the ‘I’ itself. The existence of a grounded consciousness is ventured before its own argument.[8] This is to say nothing of the inevitable reversals of Descartes’s argument throughout Western epistemological history – here, evolving ‘ludo ergo sum’ into ‘est ergo ludo’.[9] Ake’s understanding of Coltrane’s being subjectivity, as a totality of selfish subjectivity, ignores the 'public' 'private' dichotomy entirely.[10]

Nonetheless, Ake progresses his interpretation of the being subjectivity of bebop soloing as an egotistical act by stating that 'it is not much of a stretch to say that this presentation/subjectvity gave rise to the prevalent jazz narrative of the "great man"'. It is not Ake digging another hole, but deepening his readily prepared one. Again, Ake ignores the collective nature of group improvisation. Lucid and long-argued inadequacies of the theory of ‘great men’ notwithstanding, I will use Ake’s own rhetoric against him.[11] As one of the most culturally significant 'great men' of jazz (after perhaps only Louis Armstrong) it is widely accepted that Miles Davis' utter skill was in fact the collection and combination of other players into unified wholes. It certainly wasn’t his technical ability, despite his popularity.[12] Davis himself claimed that 'that was my gift, you know, having the ability to put certain guys together that would create a chemistry and then letting them go; letting them play what they knew, and above it'.[13] Davis' own prevailing narrative, in fact, is the ability of 'great men' to play beyond themselves. 

Ake’s counterpoint of becoming subjectivity does not fare well either; Tommy Flanagan’s notorious ‘Giant Steps’ solo is used as a parallel to Coltrane’s. Becoming subjectivity in improvised music, to Ake, holds more of an over-reaching teleological structure. An act of ontic becoming through musical development. Whereas Coltrane’s choruses are episodic, Flanagan’s will ‘always stumble and gradually weaken’ because of its uncertain nature. Regardless of Ake’s descriptions, both Coltrane and Flanagan’s solos are expressions of singular subjectivity, locked into a sonic artefact they cannot develop. So Ake’s distinction between a solo expressing being subjectivity against a solo that suggests becoming subjectivity perhaps has more to do with Gunther Schuller’s infamous hierarchical reading of Sonny Rollin’s ‘Blue 7’.[14] In Ake’s own terms, surely, once recorded, all improvised solos become being subjectivities, regardless of their original contextual positioning? And, in parallel, all solos in live performance are becoming subjectivity. Once seen in this way, Ake’s reading of ‘Giant Steps’ reveals itself as either a panegyric of Coltrane or a critique of Flanagan’s technique. In whichever case, the analysis is somewhat two-dimensional.

In fact, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that Flanagan’s jolted solo occurs precisely because he attempts the level of auto-editing that Ake avows Coltrane/Trane inhabits. Again, Ake’s sense of the temporal within improvisation is distorted. In Ake’s understanding of ‘Giant Steps’ and therein the recorded improvisation, one can simultaneously find a view that is intrinsically proleptic and analeptic. In his being subjectivity, Ake relies upon a fixed historical eventuality to illuminate a listener’s understanding of Coltrane-as-Trane; and in the proleptic becoming subjectivity Ake places faith in the future to ameliorate the aporia of the past.[15] In other words, Ake’s Trane is a finality of Self, an ultimate, essential realisation of Self. We again encounter questions in Ake’s argument that can be disputed by older philosophical questions. Notably the understanding of Romantic art – surely vital in contextualising any readings of subjectivity in art.[16] As Schlegel articulates, art ‘is still a process of becoming; yes, that is its real essence, that it can eternally only become, can never be completed. It cannot be exhausted by theory’.[17] Being subjectivity can only be understood as a synchronic artefact, captured on a recording.

From here we can appreciate why even the status of the recording as a worthy document of improvised performance is often questioned. A paradox of documented transience.[18]

I hate making records … because to me the way I play is really a kind of momentary thing, an in-person momentary thing[19]

What recording produces is a separate phenomenon … divorced from its natural context. What is the importance of a natural context? The natural context provides a score which the players are unconsciously interpreting – a score that co-exists inseparably from the music[20] 

SEE ALSO: