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THE NATION January 2, 1995
San Francisco Jazz Festival
by Gene Santoro
There were two things that drew me to the tail end of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, now in its twelfth year: a night showcasing young bands from the city's much-rumored-about "New Jazz" scene and the world premiere of a multimedia work by the godfather of jazz's postwar vanguard, Ornette Coleman. Well, actually, there was a third thing, unrelated to the festival proper: the Church of St. John Coltrane, out toward the Haight district.
The City by the Bay thrives on tourists like me, which is a major reason the San Francisco Jazz Festival lights it up every fall. Like New Orleans and Montreal-hosts for jazz-based festivals that are the Bay Area fest's only real rivals as far as breadth and depth of the presentation go-San Francisco uses music to enhance tourism. And every year, the number of tourists coming to the event has grown, hitting an estimated 35,000 this year. So perhaps it's not surprising that a festival that started as a regional talent showcase lasting three days has swelled to a two and a half week series of events boasting virtually all national acts. Among this year's diverse headliners: Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, Don Pullen, Charlie Haden,
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sheer sweep of views of the bay and its framing bridges, the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate, that are the payoff the toiling up the often nearly vertical inclines that this town calls streets.
So it was with great anticipation that, the day after Ornette's self-composed ritual, I took a bus with my colleague Francis Davis, who's writing a biography of John Coltrane, to St. John's African Orthodox Church, accredited in t he jurisdiction of the West twelve years ago as participants in the Antioch Rite by Patriarch Ignatius Peter III. (From 1971 until then, it was known as "One Mind Temple Evolutionary Transitional Body of Christ.") This storefront at 351 Divisadero Street holds some sixty celebrants for its hours long services every Sunday, which begin somewhere around noon. Decorated with Byzantine/medieval-style icons of Trane holding a tenor or soprano sax with flames (a symbol of inspiration by the Holy Spirit), the ceremony at St. John's is almost as syncretic a ritual as Ornette's, if far less self-conscious.
The church uses Trane's music-especially the later, "A Love Supreme"-era material-as the basis for freewheeling celebration, which adapts elements of Baptist, Holy Roller and other rituals to its needs. One young man, for instance, kept pogo-ing and screaming, "Thank you, Jesus, praise God, thank you, Jesus," in between bear hugging other attendees. But the service's center is the saxophone, as played by Bishop F.W. King, the church's black presiding minister, or his ordained aides, both white, or his son. While the young rhythm section thumps and drones, one or the other-or sometimes two of them at a time-scream and wail, ululate into the kind of ecstatic tongues Trane's late playing strove to re-create in jazz's more secular space. It was remarkable enough that nearly all the players were at least competent, and several-the Bishop himself on soprano sax, his son and priest on tenor-quite a bit better than that. It was remarkable that I suddenly realized I'd been swaying to the music, with the floor trembling beneath me, for two hours, when I felt like I'd been there for maybe forty minutes-and we hadn't yet gotten to the Introit.
When I went out into the street, wet from a loving hug by the pogo-ing ecstatic, the day was gleaming pure with blue light washing the sides of Twin Peaks, from which the beautifully serrated rest of San Francisco fell away toward the ocean and by the bay, poised like the postcard of a city from a place only in the mind of God. |
