Alice Coltrane

https://alicecoltrane.bandcamp.com

Alice ColtraneWorld Sprituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, released 05 May 20171. Om Rama2. Om Shanti3. Rama Rama4. Rama Guru5. Hari Narayan6. Journey to Satchidananda7. Er Ra8. Keshava MuraharaWho can mark with certainty the moment a true spiritual awakening occurs? While on a walk in the woods, or on the road to Damascus? After taking a red pill? From Biblical days to modern times, popular culture likes to think of the transition as the flip of a light switch: click—instant illumination. But to those who chose to devote themselves to a life of contemplation, devotion and ultimately enlightenment, it’s never simply one fateful act, a before and after. Spirituality, to the deeply devoted, is a step-by-step process, along a not necessarily logical path. And if the dedication is steady and unwavering, that path never ends.For Alice Coltrane, spirituality was her path and her destination—and it all makes sense in the long view, as her life unfolded from her first piano lessons to her first gigs as a professional musician, to becoming a wife, a mother, a band member, a widow. A bandleader and then a recording artist. A spiritual acolyte looking to the East for guidance, and eventually, the founder and leader of a community of Vedic worship and study on a generous tract of land in Southern California.To grasp the logic of that sequence is to appreciate the inner strength and resolve needed by an African American woman in a more conservative era, and to understand why the release of the devotional music on this collection is so welcome and overdue. These songs—created in a specific time and place with a specific purpose in mind—reveal not only the spirit of a deeply spiritual and musically fearless woman, but one who was blessed with an abiding sense of generosity and kindness. As necessary as it is to hear the albums Alice Coltrane recorded in the 1960s and ‘70s—music upon which her deserved reputation rests today—one must also sit down, listen to, and absorb the music that she created in the 1980s and ‘90s, the music that comprises a largely unwritten chapter from the life of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda.“I was married to John Coltrane, and he…liked to meditate and we used to meditate together. I think it started with him, because I was born into a Christian family; I spent many years in the church. I was a pianist in the church in Detroit, where I am from. And it wasn’t so much a turning away from that, as it was a direction that I was given to follow.” – Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, 2007Before she was Alice Coltrane, she was Alice Lucille McLeod—born in 1937 in Detroit, the fifth of six siblings in a musical family, raised on church music and schooled in classical music from the age of seven. Her musical enthusiasm and facility on the piano led her to modern jazz. She sat in with groups led by saxophonist Yusef Lateef and guitarist Kenny Burrell, and sometime in 1959 or ’60, began to entertain the idea of traveling to Paris. According to Alice’s daughter and eldest child, the vocalist Michelle Coltrane, the attraction was both to Kenneth “Pancho” Hagood, a singer bound for Paris whom she had become involved with, and to the city itself.She told me about Paris, how it was so hip in that era. Jazz musicians were going there, as it was an artistic, musical kind of hub. But her parents told her what she had to do if she wanted to go with Kenneth Hagood. She said, “I wanted to go to Paris with your father, and [her parents] said that she had to get married. I didn’t have to do that actually…” For her, the music definitely was first, not to discount her relationship, but knowing her as I did I’m sure that it was the drive to be involved in music. She was young.“I think that was really her primary motivation—to go play some music with these elder statesmen of jazz and to learn from them,” says Ravi, Alice and John’s second son.She was there making great music, hanging out with Bud Powell, playing with [saxophonist] Lucky Thompson and [drummer] Kenny Clarke. They’d do a weekly TV broadcast from this club and my mother was featured in a few of those, one where she plays the tune “Woody’n You”. Those clips are on YouTube now. That was the 22-year old Alice McLeod Hagood.Inspired, busy, and soon pregnant, Alice made the most of her time in Paris. But in short order, her marriage fell apart and she returned to Detroit with her infant daughter, eventually joining a group led by vibraphonist Terry Gibbs. In 1962, Gibbs shared a run at New York City’s Birdland club with a group led by the well-known and hugely influential saxophonist John Coltrane, which brought the 25-year old Alice together with her future husband.Their initial spark was fanned by a number of mutual experiences and passions. Both were steeped in the blues and were beboppers at heart, exploring and expanding the musical language that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (and Powell) had introduced. Both came from church backgrounds and were intensely focused on healthy living: Alice a teetotaler and Coltrane having sworn off drugs and alcohol in ’57. Though his father had been a preacher and his grandfather a minister and community leader, Coltrane’s questioning nature had led him to unravel the singularity of his own Christian faith. He read the Baghavad Gita, the Quran and other religious books from different cultures. He developed a personal, spiritual path and a decidedly universalist philosophy that would take musical shape on the 1964 recording A Love Supreme. “All paths lead to God,” Coltrane wrote in the poem that graced the album’s cover. “No road is an easy one, but they all go back to God.”Musically and spiritually, John Coltrane would prove to be one of the most influential forces in the jazz world of the 1960s and for generations after, swaying the direction of an entire musical community through his recorded music. Imagine the impact he must have had on the woman who was at his side day by day, who married him and bore his children, who played alongside him when his music pivoted towards a charged, avant garde sound that challenged even the most stalwart fans.By 1966, Alice’s piano approach developed a startling new side, filled with sweeping, tide-like cadences, much like the approach she soon transferred to the harp; at the same time, she began to follow a spiritual curiosity veering towards Eastern paths, all influenced and encouraged by her husband’s example. Then, in July 1967, John suddenly succumbed to liver cancer and was gone.Alice was just 30 years old, alone with four young children—Michelle, John Jr., Ravi and Oranyan. Yet she not only persevered, but stepped up her schedule and became more public than ever. Before 1968 ended, she learned to play harp, produced an album on the Coltrane Music label her husband founded, finished building and began recording in a home studio, and signed to Impulse Records, the company her husband had helped make famous. Her subsequent albums reveal an exciting musical mix related to, but sonically diverse from the music of John: blending the harp with traditional jazz and Indian instruments, and eventually a Wurlitzer organ with a special tone-modulating effect. Accompanied by an A-list of musicians who had performed with, or been influenced by her late husband—Pharoah Sanders, Charlie Haden, Ornette Coleman, Ron Carter, Carlos Santana—her recordings, from the late ‘60s through the 1970s, chart an expansive, twelve-year musical journey unlike any in the jazz world, before or since. Many of the titles alone suggest the music’s spiritual, mystical, even celestial ambitions: A Monastic Trio; Huntington Ashram Monastery; Ptah, The El Daoud; Journey in Satchidananda; Universal Consciousness; World Galaxy; Lord of Lords; Illuminations; . . . Eternity.At the same time, Alice’s spiritual directive drove her ever deeper into spiritual study, steering herself to the Vaishnavism branch of the Vedic religion, which became her personal path. In ’69, the bassist Vishnu Wood introduced her to Swami

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