I have been reading about, listening to, and researching John Coltrane since I began celebrating his birthday yesterday. I knew of the Love Supreme and his contributions to the Modern Avant-garde Jazz scene, at least a Reader’s Digest version of that narrative. That is always awe-inspiring, and as I get older, these works become much more meaningful to me. I was not aware, however, of his later period contributions, mostly after he had a spiritual experience that freed him from addiction in the late 1950s followed by meeting his second wife Alice and his immersion in world and Hindi music and philosophy (including reading Autobiography of a Yogi). This Coltrane piece, inspired by him and his wife Alice’s exploration in Hinduism and Indian music, is like listening to the birth of the universe. It is so incredible. I have so many feelings about it. Why isn’t this more widely known, hailed as the revolutionary music that it is? This was recorded during the same period when the Beatles discovered Indian philosophy and music and when the psychedelic age was launching some of the most innovative new music based on new recording technologies and ancient flows and tools. The New Age was actually an Archaic Revival, as Terrence McKenna put it. But why was Coltrane not seen as a central figure in this movement too? His sound was coming from his horn with no electronic tweaking. Could it be that his life and trajectory didn’t fit the narrative template of the African-American man in the late 1960s? He had totally liberated himself from the confines of any set prefixed system or compartment or role. He was civil rights and human liberation fulfilled. Could it be that he had traveled the world and was seen as a world musician? Could it be that European forces of control wanted to dominate, control, and co-opt the message of psychedelia? youtu.be/Xfi7MTaI9d4
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 21:07:29 +0000
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