John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music

I think we all want to be heard and music is a way to let out our inner emotional life, sometimes in a way that can’t necessarily be understood any other way. It functions different than prose or storytelling in that the music has an emotional base to it, even without the words. So you can feel this energy and express whatever’s going on inside of

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I have learned so many things from music about writing. I think there are three important elements: rhythm, harmony, and free improvisation. I learned these things from music, not from literature. And when I started to write, I tried to write as though I were playing music.

Wilson proposed that a booklet of Sonny’s notes be included with the record—a very unusual practice then or now, as musicians are seldom trusted to explain their own work—and he took full advantage of it, filling it with his poetry and various musings. Yet when Sonny suggested the notes be titled “Preparation for Outer Space,” Wilson thought he was

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