for mccoy tyner (8)

for mccoy tyner
(1938 -- )

u were twenty-two when u joined the john coltrane quartet,
but clearly the real mccoy. trane knew this, kept u five years
close, at the core of this most seminal of jazz experiments.
from where did that transcendent piano style come? from
what holy place within? & where did u learn that unique
two-handed harmonic attack & rhythmic charge – yr block
chording low bass left hand stacking fourths & yr staccato
right hand flying thru pentatonic scales, modal structures,
inverted triads & multi-fingered runs – new voicings &
vocabulary for virtuoso jazz piano & growing each time u
played. u shadowed trane thru’ his scales, chordal structures,
melodic phrasings & rhythms, playing mantrically, intuiting
the sacred audible tones to help elevate each consciousness-
raising performance, drawing garrison & jones to u,
transcending & integrating all that had been played before,
fastened securely to his coattails, to his ascension. he took
u to the pinnacle of god consciousness, let u glimpse the
final & highest abode of ishwara, the ultimate revelation of
the self in perfect radiance & release. he would have taken
u further, into formless consciousness & boundless radiance.
but u did not like the free; were not yet ready for the street
of pefume sellers, &like the vagrant who was overcome by
the heady aromas on that street, who could only be revived
by a fecal sal volatile from the street’s gutters, u said all u
heard was noise; that u had no feeling for the new music.
turned away, turned back to yr unabsorbed present, to yr
raw blues & passionate pentatonic; turned back to comfortable
virtuosity, but haunted by an audible image of a seed syllable
where all sound, all music dissolves into perfect radiance &
release & a memory of not a means to an end but the means
& the end.

© Joseph McNair; 2010