Ornette Coleman: Change of the Century

How Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz Revolution Redefined Music and Broke Every Rule

De: Garran P. Oakhurst

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Ornette Coleman was never supposed to fit inside the lines. From the juke joints of Fort Worth to the smoke-filled clubs of New York, his sound tore through conventions and rewrote the rules of modern music. Ornette Coleman: Change of the Century is the definitive deep dive into the life and legacy of one of the most fearless innovators in jazz history.

Born in Texas in 1930, Coleman grew up absorbing marching-band drills, gospel hymns, and the raw blues that poured from every corner of the South. His plastic alto saxophone, cheap and brittle, became a weapon for invention. On hostile R&B bandstands he was mocked for his angular phrasing, yet he refused to bend. When he arrived in Los Angeles and later New York, his radical approach exploded: The Shape of Jazz to Come, the Five Spot residency, and Free Jazz shattered musical hierarchies and unleashed harmolodics, a philosophy that declared every instrument, every note, every rhythm equal.

This book traces the full arc of Ornette’s uncompromising journey: the lean crisis years, the orchestral experiments, the electric funk of Prime Time, and the late global tours that finally brought him recognition. Drawing on history, testimony, and the lived pulse of the music itself, it situates Coleman as both prophet and survivor—a man whose horn carried pain, defiance, and freedom in every cry.

More than biography, this is a study of revolution. Ornette Coleman’s music didn’t just change jazz; it changed the way we hear possibility itself. For musicians, listeners, and cultural explorers, his legacy remains urgent, unfinished, alive.