THE MAN WHO WALKED IN BALANCE An Article By KALAMU YA SALAAM Poet Kalamu Ya Salaam wrote a piece in the Sep/Oct 1992 issue of Coda Magazine, which combined his reviews of the current reissue of a bunch of Coltrane works on CD (box-sets), some other histories and his personal Trane journey. It's the first time I've seen the Major Works on CD and Live in Japan on CD critiqued in a major publication. Live in Japan rates highly with Kalamu. He also theorises that Coltrane was a Black revolutionary musician. If you compare with Bob Thiele from another article in the same magazine, Thiele believed that people were reading too much into his music, and he wasn't an anti-establishment guy like LeRoi Jones. Certainly, contemporaries like Archie Shepp and Max Roach were more active, and vocal in their actions and beliefs. Trane was a revolutionary musician, and Black. For sure Coltrane felt aggrieved at the injustices of the time, but it's still debatable the scale of its influe...
Jamo Spingal