Dancing in Your Head [Import]

I still remember when I first heard this record in 1976, shortly after it's release. I had just gotten into Ornette's early quartet and trio recordings and was mourning what I thought was his permanent retirement from recording. I was listening to the late night jazz program on Minnesota public radio and tuned in to this wild funky music. I was immediately captured by the funky beat, the swirling polyrhythms of the guitars and the astounding melodic bass playing. And overtop of it all was this marvelous saxophone. I kept thinking, "jeez (it was Minnesota after all) this guy sounds just like Ornette. But with a funk band!" Imagine my surprise when I found out that indeed, the plastic-altoed Texas master was back recording...and with such a radical conception.

For me, Prime Time was and is a revelation in the music of the seventies. Though funk and free jazz have many commonalities and the ties between them go back at least to Archie Shepp's and Pharoah Saunders' Impulse albums, the relationship is mostly unnoticed. Miles' early jazz-rock experiments were largely free jazz albums with funky beats. The Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded some potent free-funk in 1968 in Paris of all places. And groups like EWF and especially P-Funk often had extended moments in their jams where the improvisation lost touch with earth for a minute or two and floated freely into the stratosphere. But by 1976 much of the initial creative fever in jazz-funk had died...Miles was retired, Herbie's Headhunters were moving more to disco, and most of the early promise of the movement on the jazz side was sliding towards what would become "smooth jazz" a decade later.

Then Ornette came on the scene with this album and with his translation of the "harmelodic" principal to jazz-funk and a whole new generation of the music was born. Harmelodics is Coleman's much vaunted and little understood idea of how to organize free jazz music. Basically stated, it is an idea that the counterpoint of melodies creates constantly shifting harmonic dissonances, which, along with the polyrhythmic denseness of the rhythm section, creates a rising tension that substitutes for traditional harmonic progression. (It's couched in much more mystical language which serves to obscure the concept to the point where even some of the musicians who've played with him remain confused by it. One of my friends, who actually plays on this album, calls himself a "victim of harmelodics") Applying this principle to jazz-funk creates a sound unlike anything else...it's often dense and polytonal, but as is the case for all of Coleman's free jazz, it's still deeply rooted in the blues and Texas R and B.

Dominated by two long takes of the same melody, "Theme from a Symphony" which is a favorite Coleman tune that has an almost childlike sing-song quality, the music is a dense jam that at times resembles American funk and at other times sounds like Nigerian highlife gone sharply left. Coleman embraces the spirit of real funk here, which at heart is an African-based spirit, in which the individual players express their individuality and yet work together to create a marvelous collective stew. This African inspiration becomes more obvious on the two tracks of improvisation with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Mixing wild free improv over the ecstatic Sufi music creates an almost trance-like feel, though neither track truly gets going before it's time to stop. They are more interesting as experiments and as signposts in Coleman's intellectual development than as successful tracks in their own right.

The electric group on this album, which was to become Prime Time, went on to release several very successful albums, perhaps even more successful than Dancing In Your Head. However this album is essential because of the ground it broke when it came out. Coleman and Prime Time had an electrifying effect on the downtown New York scene when this music started getting around the lofts. Its influence can be felt in the work of Blood Ulmer, Joseph Bowie's Defunkt and any number of Bill Laswell projects. But its biggest impact was on the burgeoning No Wave movement in the punk world. Teenaged Jesus and the Jerks cited Coleman as a major influence, and James Chance actually sounded like a more punky and less talented Ornette when he blew on his saxophone. And with the rise of the neo-no-wave groups out of Chicago the influence continues. Hopefully, with its re-release, Dancing In Your Head will reach an entirely new generation of musicians and continue the party well into the new century.

Chris Forbes

I remember buying this LP based on some review I read in some long forgotten magazine (Stereo Review, maybe?). I was in college at the time and just discovering jazz--you know, "Kind of Blue" and "A Love Supreme" were still new to my ears.

Anyway, I bought this LP and but it on the table and just sat there stunned. I had never heard ANYTHING like this before and really felt almost assaulted by the wave that crashed down upon me. I didn't listen to this record again for about a month and then slowing began to spin it more and more. There is a "goove" here laid down by Bern Nix that is like nothing that came before it--you have to listen to understand. The sing-songy chorus that goes on and ON finally explodes into one of the most astounding Coleman solos ever captured. I listen and listen and still can't get to the bottom of it. I've even transcribed it and it still confounds and amazes me.

Earlier this year my neighbors put their house up for sale and held "open house" every weekend for a couple of months. I got tired of the parade, so I opened all my windows, put the old LP on the table and BLASTED "Dancing in Your Head" at FULL VOLUME all afternoon. It was awesome.

I wasn't going to review this disc, but I felt I had to after reading the one negative review that was posted. This is not the type of music you'll hear on the radio. It is not accessible. However, if you like being musically challenged, if you enjoy opening your mind, than this is an excellant disc. Ornette is not your typical jazz musician. Don't buy this disc if you want more of the same. If you want something fresh and different, than this is the one for you. I've been listening to this disc (I have the original vinyl) for years, and I never grow tired of it. It's for the musically inventive.