Jazzman Pharoah Sanders is dead

Saxophonist and composer born in Little Rock (Arkansas) on 13 October 1940, Farrell Sanders, known as “Pharoah” Sanders, died in Los Angeles on 24 September. Coincidence: John Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926. Why, on this near anniversary, do we evoke the name of Coltrane so quickly?

Why do they have this deep South marked by US racism in common? Why do they both overlap the tenor saxophone? Why do they push the tenor, out of spiritual fever, into the smallest of his entrenchments? Without throwing anything away: neither the tendrils of the treble, nor the acute of the treble, nor the raucous bass, nor this vibrato on the notes of “Barina flatulence” (Rabelais), nor the extraordinary musicality of which the tenor saxophone reveals itself, without the knowledge of its inventor, Adolphe Sax (1814-1884), capable?

No: jazz is a transition. It is the music of mothers, transmitted by the voice and the harmonium. The loving desecration of mothers’ music (rhythm’n’blues for black use); its fascinating disfigurement with a bourgeois taste (rock); his ever-renewed ontological rebellion, one of the most notable steps taken by leaps and bounds (Strides of 1960) by John Coltrane. Which makes all kinds of assists: to Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Pharoah Sanders, etc. -, while philosophizing with Sonny Rollins, while a small people with short ideas badly fantasizes them as rivals, jealous, enemies. The deep mysteries of friendship.

Let’s go back: in 1957 Farrell Sanders played in church, college, and piano, in rhythm’n’blues bands. The same year, his hometown was the scene of one of the historic defeats of apartheid: nine African American students entered high school in the most legal way in the world (“white”, as they dare to say), where they are allowed. This right has been enshrined in the law for three years, but in the face of so much hatred in the city, the “Little Rock Nine” can only enter under the protection of the guard. Arkansas Governor Faubus denies this right to the “Nine of Little Rock”. This right displeases him. His friends from the Ku Klux Klan get involved. President Eisenhower is forced to surrender the troop. Global scandal. Featured photo of Evening in France. In 1957, Farrell Sanders was 17. Why, as we weave the legend, do we take so little account of this decisive event?

Revolution in progress

A few months later, his mother’s harmonium for spiritual harmonies, and the Little Rock scandal for music theory, the young Sanders left for San Francisco. He hides in rhythm’n’blues, it’s his destiny, but listen to the real Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.

You still have 66.3% of this article to read. The following is for subscribers only.

–