Alice Coltrane

Abstract

Abstract Alice became the wife of John Coltrane and became increasingly involved in creating a new “spiritual jazz” for the 1960s. Alice’s works have often been ignored in jazz history because she was a woman and considered less important than her husband, but she created an outstanding body of original work that deserves wider attention. She traveled to India, where she studied with guru Satchidananda, and the chapter explores the ways these Hindu influences appeared in her compositions such as “Journey in Satchidananda.” Alice was also influenced by Sun Ra, and we can see the influence of ancient Egyptian sacred practices in compositions such as “Ptah, the El Daoud.” Alice eventually became a swamini, changing her name to Turiyasangitananda, and founded an ashram in Agoura Hills, California, where she developed a spiritual school where students read sacred texts such as the Bhagavad Gita as well as theosophical texts and where music and singing of Hindu “bhajans” was part of the life of the ashram. Alice Coltrane is an important figure in the development of “spiritual jazz,” and her quest overlapped with the hunger for deeper sacred experiences that defined the counterculture. The chapter features a discussion of Richard M. Bucke’s conception of “cosmic consciousness” and the ways this idea appear in Alice’s works.