
This appears to be Coleman's only recorded use of the suona, a kind of wooden oboe with a distinctive loud and high-pitched sound. An important folk instrument in northern China, it is occasionally still used to accompany weddings and funerals, as part of wind-and-percussion ensembles known as chuida or guchui. In Taiwan, it forms an essential element of the ritual music that accompanies Daoist performances of both auspicious and inauspicious rites, ie, those for both the living and the dead. The suona has a conical wooden body, similar to that of the European oboe, but uses a tubular brass or copper bocal to which a small double reed is affixed, and possesses a detachable metal bell at its end. The instrument is made in several sizes. Since the mid-20th century, "modernized" versions of the suona have been developed in China; such instruments have keys similar to those of the European oboe, to allow for the playing of chromatic notes and equal tempered tuning (both of which are difficult to execute on the traditional suona). The suona doesn't appear on any of Coleman's official releases, and thus we have to turn to a single track from a bootleg collection of live performances, recorded in Italy in 1968, initially released on LP as 'The Unprecedented Music of Ornette Coleman' (with sleeve design by Japanese free saxophonist Kaoru Abe), and subsequently on CD as 'The Love Revolution'. Given that Coleman had started to employ trumpet and violin alongside his more familiar <b>...</b>
Ornette Coleman
suona
shehnai
musette
David Izenzon
Ed Blackwell
Charlie Haden