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3. Universal Consciousness
- Wesleyan University Press
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64 chapter three Universal Consciousness 3 Several years ago, following a long period of elementary meditating and reading of some of the diverse books on spirituality and world religions, I felt the deepest transcendental longing torealizetheSupremeLord.Thislongingwithinthedepthsofmyheartwassoonacknowledged, for within a short period of time I experienced the first rays of illumination and spiritual reawakening . On the physical plane these radiations opened new avenues of awareness in the brain cells; even subtler were the inner effects of light and the cognizance of a spiritual revelation taking place within me. —Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal After her husband’s untimely death in 1967, Alice assumed the extraordinary task of carrying on John Coltrane’s musical, spiritual, and familial legacy. She never rebelled against this responsibility or tried to differentiate her work from his. On the contrary, she wrote and performed a great deal of music in his memory and continually referred to him—often as “the Father” or by the spiritual name she gave him, Ohnedaruth (compassion)—as her primary musical mentor. She also maintained John’s musical and spiritual philosophy and employed many of his creative strategies in her compositions . She even took up his signature practice of writing confessional, testimonial liner notes to accompany her music. Because Alice made so little attempt to distinguish her music and her spiritual mission from those of her husband, particularly during her early years as a bandleader, she received many negative comments from members of the jazz establishment. For instance, John Litweiler’s criticism of A Monastic Trio (1968), her debut album as a bandleader, was that it was too derivative of John Coltrane’s musical concepts. Moreover, according to Litweiler , John Coltrane was not a musician whom one could or should emulate : “John Coltrane’s music was so very personal, the emotion and lyricism so much a part of the man, the externals of his art so seductive and misleading , that no other modern musician is such a potentially wrong influence on other musicians. There have been other John Coltrane-influenced pianists Universal Consciousness / 65 before this, but on the evidence of ‘Ohnedaruth,’ Alice Coltrane is the first to assimilate his message almost completely into a personal style” (1969, 22). While that statement has some validity, I would argue that as John Coltrane ’s devoted widow and spiritual partner, Alice was not concerned with artistic individuality—the sine qua non for critics’ praise in modern jazz— but rather with honoring her husband’s memory. And much to her credit, Alice actually made extremely constructive use of her husband’s musical example : instead of copying John’s improvisational lines or his phrasing style, as so many other artists did, Alice pursued his creative and spiritual ideology more broadly, ultimately inspiring her to produce extraordinarily innovative works. As discussed in the previous chapter, John Coltrane’s creative philosophy rests on three basic tenets—which Alice fully embraced—of music making based on personal expression: expressing an authentic self as a musician; erasing aesthetic boundaries and proscriptions regarding style; and branching out in an inclusive, pluralistic, and multicultural manner. John Coltrane’s creative ideology is manifested in Alice’s preference for musical freedom and in her treatment of other musicians. Following her husband’s example, Alice never returned to restrictive musical genres such as standards, bebop forms, or instrumental music with rigid tonal implications . She relied heavily instead on free meter, loose formal structures, and open-ended modality, and she encouraged timbral innovations from her instrumentalists. And like her husband, Alice created musical conditions in which her players could fully and spontaneously express themselves. For instance, when she conveyed her intentions to her band members, she did so in a nondictatorial, nondogmatic manner. Both jazz and classical players enjoyed and found uplifting the freedom and validation that she offered them. Her Impulse! producer, Ed Michel, explained her liberal approach in the recording studio: She would usually just play something. At that period, especially among the New York players, they thought of themselves as the free guys. That was where it was headed. You would suggest a harmonic environment, with a bass figure, and open it up from there . . . Especially in the beginning she would do that. She shared that desire to take whatever form existed and find a place where it would naturally, organically open up into what was a tremendously empowering space for musicians, who had the capacity to deal with it. It was an astonishing experience. A lot of the L.A. studio...