Music and Structure
"Ogunde" is a free jazz ballad; however, literary historian Kimberly Benston notes that the song deviates from the traditional "expectations of closure aroused by the underlying ballad structure". Jeff Pressing of the University of Melbourne notes "Ogunde" as an example of a song that "juxtapose lyrical directness with eruptions of broken quasi-atonality".
PopMatters reviewer James Beaudreau further notes that Coltrane's performance in "Ogunde" reflects the personal style that he evolved prior to his death: "ecstatic, brightly focused, and with a kaleidoscopic vibrato". According to Beaudreau, the starting phrase of "Ogunde", which features Coltrane, "sounds like an ending, as if the whole of the music could be summed up in a single noble cadence". The song is characterized by a sequence that features multiple performers and sounds and includes a fourteen-minute period, starting at 2:40, for which Coltrane is completely absent, and which is dominated by the sounds of Sanders' saxophone and Alice Coltrane's piano, as well as lengthy solos by Coltrane, Sanders, and Alice.
When Sanders finally relents at about 10:00, Alice Coltrane’s piano comes to the fore ... . Her sound is quick and colorful, intelligent and playful. When Coltrane returns at 16:40 and hovers around the same scale for a minute, the result is like the sun breaking out after a storm. His extraordinary solo builds majestically through the restatement of the theme at 25 minutes and a coda startling for its power and inventiveness. His last phrase sounds electrified—something like Jimi Hendrix might have played, but with a depth of the darkest blue and technique that in earlier times might have been thought diabolical. —James BeaudreauRead more about this topic: Ogunde (song)
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