Art & Creativity Quote by Ornette Coleman

Coleman is sneaking a radical idea into plain speech: “sound” isn’t a talent, it’s a human fact. In his world, a sound isn’t just tone or technique; it’s a signature, a way a person takes up space. By insisting that even people who “don’t play music” have a sound, he blows up the gatekeeping that keeps art safely professionalized. You don’t need credentials to be expressive. You’re already expressive. The only question is whether you’re allowed to count.

The phrasing matters. He’s not preaching from the mountaintop; he’s circling back to a conversation, almost apologetically (“That’s what I was trying to say”). That modesty is strategic. Free jazz was often treated like an assault on tradition, and Coleman was treated like a provocateur. Here he re-frames the provocation as empathy: the point isn’t to scandalize listeners with dissonance, it’s to recognize individuality as the baseline.

Context does the rest. Coleman’s harmolodic approach prized melodic freedom and collective improvisation over strict hierarchy and chordal “correctness.” So “your own sound” becomes a democratic ethic: the band isn’t a pyramid, it’s a negotiation among identities. Subtext: the culture that polices “good taste” is really policing whose voice gets to feel natural, whose has to be trained into acceptability.

He’s talking about music, but he’s also talking about personhood. Not everyone will play a horn, but everyone is already making a mark. Coleman’s pitch is simple: listen like it matters.