Coleman’s breakthrough provoked jealousy because he bypassed jazz’s apprenticeship hierarchy

Evidence

John Cage made music identical with sound (or the absence of sound). Ornette Coleman did something similar by subtracting melody and abstracting jazz into pure sound. He inspired similar outrage but also, unlike Cage, professional jealousy. From a musician’s point of view, Coleman not only rendered even the most contemporary jazz old-fashioned but skipped the well-trodden career path, having paid no dues as sideman to an acknowledged master. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 91

Categorization

• XREF: Chimes with the book’s core thesis that avant-gardes arise from conditions, not earned credentials — Coleman skipped the dues-paying path and still broke through, which is the inverse of the gentrification/establishment story.
• DEFINE: Spells out the specific structural reason Coleman’s heresy differed from Cage’s: jazz ran on an apprenticeship (sideman) ladder that Cage’s world lacked.