Dancing in His Head: The Evolution of Ornette Coleman's Music and Compositional Philosophy

Ornette Coleman (1930-2015) is frequently referred to as not only a great visionary in jazz music but as\ud also the father of the jazz avant-garde movement. As such, his work has been a topic of discussion for\ud nearly five decades among jazz theorists, musicians, scholars and aficionados. While this music was once\ud controversial and divisive, it eventually found a wealth of supporters within the artistic community and has\ud been incorporated into the jazz narrative and canon. Coleman’s musical practices found their greatest\ud acceptance among the following generations of improvisers who embraced the message of “free jazz” as a\ud natural evolution in style. Performers such as Jamaaladeen Tacuma, David Murray, Pat Metheny and John\ud Zorn incorporated the techniques of spontaneous group improvisation and what Coleman described as\ud “harmolodic” organization into their own performance.\ud This dissertation traces Coleman’s rise from relative obscurity to a place of greater celebrity in jazz\ud and other musical circles. Coleman’s acceptance by the academy, other composers, notable jazz musicians,\ud and the public is discussed in terms of how these shifts were made, and in what ways Coleman—who often\ud felt victimized and mistreated by record company executives, critics, and musical establishments—\ud transcended the gaps in his musical training in order to create his own distinctive and influential\ud compositional style. This “harmolodic theory” was then refined over a period of nearly 55 years.\ud v\ud The work discusses harmolodics in detail by building on the taxonomic models described by\ud Ekkard Jost and Peter N. Wilson. It describes the variations in compositional practice as Coleman’s style\ud evolved from 1980 until his death in 2015. The analysis supplements transcriptions and harmonic analyses\ud with spectrograms and waveforms in order to illuminate specific areas of Coleman’s work. These graphic\ud representations clarify observations made through transcription and reinforce some of the concepts\ud embodied in Coleman’s unique philosophy of music