Monument Eternal: The Music of Alice Coltrane by Franya Berkman (review)

With Monument Eternal: The Music and Life of Alice Coltrane, Franya J. Berkman has undertaken an important and original exploration of a major, if underappreciated, artist. Among Berkman’s many contributions, the most significant is her call for jazz scholars to address the spirituality central to many artists and their music. The examinations of both Ms. Coltrane’s early artistic development in Detroit and the Coltrane marriage are also noteworthy.

While nonacademic intellectuals and writers have long noted the spiritual dimension of jazz music, the secular nature of the academy has prevented the inclusion of spirituality as an analytic category. Berkman, though, provides a critical vocabulary for describing the relationship between spirituality and the creative process, consequently advancing our understanding of the complex and multidimensional nature of musical genres like avant-garde jazz. Throughout, she builds an analytical framework that engages a number of scholarly discourses, including cultural theory, African American history, and Womanist and Black theology. Ultimately, Berkman’s work encourages exploration of the cross-cultural currents that have affected contemporary American composers and musicians.

Her chapter on Alice McLeod’s (Coltrane’s maiden name) Detroit upbringing is especially illuminating, providing an in-depth portrait of the city’s rich history of gospel and modern jazz music as well as the strong sense of family and community that pervaded the metropolis during the postwar years. Alice McLeod became an accomplished church musician, playing for a number of congregations, including denominations ranging from Baptist to Pentecostal, each with its own distinct musical aesthetic and worship style.¹ These churches were not only the site of Alice’s musical education but also the foundation of her sense of spirituality and community. For this reason, the three—spirituality, family/community, and music—would always be linked for Coltrane. The site of a vibrant jazz scene, Detroit also gave the young pianist a number of opportunities to play. By the time she met John Coltrane in 1963, she was a proficient artist and respected bebop pianist who had studied with Detroit native Barry Harris and with Bud Powell. Assessing McLeod’s first set of recordings with Terry Gibbs, Berkman notes that this “is not the work of a young novice, but that of a seasoned musician already disposed toward the emotional, technical, and spiritual intensity that would come to define her playing with her husband” (46).

Berkman’s treatment of the Coltrane marriage is especially significant in its departure from the two more common approaches to writing about women artists who are or have been married to highly regarded male artists. One of these methods all too often casts such women as minor figures whose only real significance is their marriage to great men. In contrast, feminist scholars often portray these women as significant in their own right, absent any real influence from their husbands and lovers. Berkman, however, carves a third route: Alice McCleod, she contends, was already a significant and respected artist when she met John Coltrane, and her musical experience and spiritual sense of self drew her to him and to his music—a relationship that greatly influenced her own artistic vision.

Berkman does not deny John Coltrane’s role as teacher, yet this in no way diminishes Alice Coltrane’s own artistry. Berkman goes so far as to assert Alice’s influence on Trane’s spiritual development and awakening, claiming: “Despite both her prior immersion in the church and her subsequent life as a swami and devotional musician, Alice has largely been left out of the accepted account of her husband’s spiritual rebirth during the 1960s” (49). Yet while Alice no doubt influenced him later, John Coltrane had already experienced his conversion prior to meeting her. Nonetheless, Berkman paints a portrait of a marriage that was a spiritual partnership that encouraged self-expression and could communicate spirituality through music. As Berkman asserts, “Although John taught Alice . . . it is important to realize that their relationship...