Alice Coltrane - S/D

I'm interested in why Alice Coltrane is having her moment now. Like, what's coming together that makes her speak to so many that she's moving from being a cult artist to a widely adored artist. Like the Robert Johnson moment in the late 80s, culminating in the reissue, or Gang of Four circa 2001.

I think it must at least partially have to do with L.A., Flying Lotus, Kamasi & neo-spiritual jazz, etc.

I 'own' all the ashram records, but have never really experienced them as discrete experiences, as such - partly due to the fact of owning them digitally, I guess. Anyway, in reflection I like the group chant exercises well enough, but it's Alice on her own with minimal swelling synth backings that transport me. Of the tracks on the new compilation, it's 'Keshava Murahara' that utterly destroys me.

i like this new compilation a lot. tuomas off the money

Geeta Dayal posted this early footage on twitter yesterday, great to see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H6sRYIaChw

Picking up the comp on Monday.

damn that is awesome

wow

Cool.

did i ever write itt abt alice playing w arthur russell

it is a mystery anyway

hyped to hear this record !, these tapes are so beautiful but i don't think i ever got my blogspots in a row to hear every last thing

I'm sure this has been linked here before - maybe even by me - but it is wonderful. I think her piano version of Giant Steps might be my favourite version ever. And the interview is charming.

I would definitely buy Turiya Sings if they ever come to reissuing it, since with that one it really is impossible to find a copy. Seems like the comp only has one song from that album though?

Yes - the "vinyl only" bonus track, which is lame (I want this on CD)

Double shot of "Om Shanti" and "Rama Rama" is just an incredible 15 minutes of music

Will buy all the single-disc reissues if / when they materialize

I hear the Sade thing

The last few minutes of "Journey to Satchidanada" get kinda "Janitor of Lunacy," don't they?!

Amazing music

Forgot to post my link above http://www.npr.org/2011/09/23/140743198/alice-coltrane-on-piano-jazz

i love this performance, esp the middle minutes and closing section where she's complimenting the glissandos with the single-plucked harmony. there's no way (for me) to describe it without sounding like a jackass but she creates a tremendous feeling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XNG7tmIQx4

great stuff

I finally just picked up Transcendence on ebay for a decent price. Looking forward to hearing it. I think the only pre-ashram LP I'm missing now is World Galaxy, which used to be common and cheaper, but is now fetching bigger $$$, not sure why.

Kind of a grey day here in the old Orange County, so I ventured over to Barnes and Noble to grab a cup of coffee and see if they might have stocked this by total chance.

And they did!

Listening now, wonderful, and totally complimentary to today's mood.

Tuomas — what the hell's your problem, man?

Tuomas, like, many an ilxor, is the self-styled protector of certain artist's discographies. In his case the list of artists include Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders. By logical extrapolation this might also include McCoy Tyner, but I'm not sure.

I figured it may have something to do with the now "less obscure" status of this material and his bitterness about that. Snobs gots probs.

This music, though: so haunting, so gorgeous.

There was a doublepack set of live stuff upped to Dime over the last few days. 1 28 minute track from '71 and 4 or 5 tracks from '74 I think. Credits were a bit confused.

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=592823

I figured it may have something to do with the now "less obscure" status of this material and his bitterness about that. Snobs gots probs.

Thanks for telling me how I'm being snobby and bitter when I didn't even know it myself, how illuminating!

I'm perfectly happy these albums are getting a wider release cos now people can objectively judge whether they really are worthy of their semi-mythical status. I bought Infinite Chants and Divine Songs a couple of years ago, and since I love both Alice Coltrane and good New Age music, I really wanted to to love them, but to my ears they're not just that special. Some nice overdriven synth sounds played by Coltrane, but most of what makes her jazz albums so distinctive (her innovative arrangements, deep cosmic/gospel grooves, her harp playing!) just isn't there. Take away the synths and the rest of it sounds like the stuff I heard at the local Hare Krishna temple in the '90s when I went there to mooch on the free vegan food they were serving. It's pleasant, functional music for service, but it's hardly as inspired as her jazz material, and there's plenty of b

...there's plenty of better, freakier and more idiosyncratic New Age music available too along these lines.

Found the vegan.

yo stevolende could you cut n paste the info about the 71 and 74 live sets? thanks! curious -- i've heard the carnegie hall "africa" and then there's another pretty lo-fi 71 tape in Berkeley. Don't think I've heard anything from 74.

Found these two Alice Coltrane shows online as a set. Both sets remain unissued, and thus are suitable for dime. The first track is from a private tape of the 1971 Carnegie Hall performance, which had 4 songs total.
Full info for first set here (only Africa is included in this .torrent, I would love to get the rest if anyone has it) http://www.angelfire.com/id2/laotan/1971.html
Ed Michael, producer of this and many other recordings of Pharoah, Alice and John coltrane writes on his web site: "This was a recording made at a concert to celebrate Swami Satchidananda's birthday, presented by Sid Bernstein, which also featured The Rascals and Laura Nyro. Amazingly, it remains unissued."
In addition he says: "These were running times from my stopwatch at the concert, so may not be absolutely precise. The whole thing does exist. It was recorded on 4-track tape, and Alice Coltrane has a copy of the 4-track, and, if I am not mistaken, the original master as well."

Dug a little deeper for the info on the second set and also found the included PDF which contains some original ad for the event. Apparently it was the 5th Annual UC Jazz Festival at Greek Theatre, University of California. Seemingly the whole set is here. Other acts that night included Sun Ra and The Last Poets to name a few.

---------------------------
ORIGINAL INFO:

Alice Coltrane
Carnegie Hall
February 21, 1971

FM

Alice Coltrane - piano, harp
Pharoah Sanders - ts, ss,fl, perc, fife
Archie Shepp - ts,ss,perc
Jimmy Garrison - b
Cecil McBee - b
Clifford Jarvis - d
Ed Blackwell - d
Tulsi - tamboura
Kumar Kramer - harmonium

1. Africa (28:35)
____________________________

Alice Coltrane
Berkeley, CA
April 23, 1971

Audience
The torrent seed itself says 71 and 74 but the info all says 71. So maybe it is all 71. I thought the players in the band might be wrong for 74.
anyway this is copied straight from the site.

Alice Coltrane, p, harp
Archie Shepp reeds
Pharoah sanders reeds
Frank Lowe reeds
Jimmy Garrison bass
Clifford Jarvis drums

2. Journey in Satchidananda (Alice Coltrane) 11:47
3. unidentified 7:36
4. Africa (John Coltrane) 25:33

thanks! ok, yeah, i think that berkeley tape is the one I've heard -- great performance, pretty distant sound. worth hearing though.

that just posted in a weird way, not sure why the info got in front of the comment from me which was

The torrent seed itself says 71 and 74 but the info all says 71. So maybe it is all 71. I thought the players in the band might be wrong for 74.
anyway this is copied straight from the site.

yeah I was confused about that 71/74 difference as well (shrugs)

this ecstatic music comp is amazing. I really want to sample and loop certain bits for some nice saer-style house music

In my ongoing personal Alice Coltrane revival, I think I've come to the realization that Transcendence from 1977 is her overall prettiest album, and therefore, ranks pretty highly for me.

agreed, could have titled it 'Ambient 5: Music for Ashrams'

I believe there is a Panduranga Henderson album recorded with Alice Coltrane at Shanti Anantam Ashram coming soon too.

the new ecstatic comp was the opening music last night at the Swans concert, right before they went on. earlier (and after) it was Terry Riley's 'Shri Camel' and Monk's 'Dolmen Music'. good company.

and here it is

https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/product/panduranga-john-henderson-ocean-of-love

whoa

after getting assed out on that sun ra exotica set I should pick this up before I have to seek it from an ebay vulture

fwiw the Sun Ra set is available digitally on Bandcamp

Being on Luaka Bop.it should be around for a while, no. But I'm not bothered about vinyl so it's easy to be blasé.

I wonder if Inner Path had original copies of this sitting around all that time.

yeah i've been listening to it like crazy - it's great (xp)

so much late pass but after 'liking' alice coltrane for a long time i feel like she's finally starting to click for me in a major way. turiya sings but also ptah the el daoud, which just feels like a place of refuge to me now.

"Turiya & Ramakrishna", off of ptah the el daoud, is so beautiful. it is one of the songs of 2018 for me

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=619318

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda: The Ashram Experience
March 24, 2018
Knoxville, TN @ St. John's Cathedral - Big Ears Music Festival

internal mics > Zoom H1 > WAV > CD Wave Editor (tracking) > FLAC

01. Invocation
02. Introduction by John Schaefer
03. Sivaya
04. Rama Rama
05. Krishna Japaye
06. ???
07. Journey To Satchidananda
08. Om Shanti
09. ???
10. ???

The Sai Anantam Ashram Singers
??? - keyboards
??? - drums

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda: The Ashram Experience
The Sai Anantam Singers will guide an intoxicating journey through Alice Coltrane’s devotional music with Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda: The Ashram Experience. These profound performances—publicly available at long last—will be a rare treat for Big Ears audiences.

Alice Coltrane died in 2007, exactly four decades after her husband and collaborator, the saxophone titan John Coltrane. In the years immediately after his death, Alice admitted, she struggled immensely, a single mother of four mourning the loss of an extremely creative partnership. She began to heal, though, when she stumbled into the teachings of an Indian guru and the spiritual peace offered in the practice and customs of Hinduism. She traveled to India, founded a spiritual center in San Francisco, and eventually relocated to an expansive ashram in the hills of Southern California. Alice Coltrane—the jazz musician whose Journey In Satchidananda had become a cult classic—became Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, the leader of a religious practice that depended upon, as one might imagine, traditional devotional songs given an unlikely soulful update.

The eight tracks of 'The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda'—the first release in a series of spiritual records from Luaka Bop, the eclectic bastion launched by David Byrne—were culled from a set of cassettes Turiyasangitananda released for her followers between 1982 and 1995. The crowd gathered for the service becomes an ad hoc choir for these bhajans, or songs of devotion, with Coltrane’s warm mahogany voice leading them in spirited recitation. Funky handclaps and circular drums, astral synthesizers and droning tamboura wrap beneath the words, alternately suggesting primal Detroit soul and trance-inducing calm. The songs seem to smear time itself, so that ten-minute spans seem to pass in a perfect moment. A decade after her death, Coltrane’s Sai Anantam is selling its land and disassembling. But these profound performances—publicly available at long last and revived live by a longtime group of devotees in rare concerts—will last forever. The ensemble will perform twice at Big Ears 2018.

sing me awake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17P-gSE66TI

There's a 2CD set coming out on Friday, Spiritual Eternal: The Complete Warner Bros. Studio Recordings, which includes three albums, Eternity, Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana, and Transcendence.

Eternity is an out-there album in a discography full of them

far out eternity may be, Om Supreme is one of my favourite pieces of music of all time

agreed, it’s so wonderful. That fat keyboard sound when it hits the lower registers combined with the ethereal voices is just the best.

man I don't think I've ever heard that one! the only one of the original run I'm missing.

somebody tell me about this mystery record with no date:

https://www.discogs.com/Terry-Gibbs-Alice-Coltrane-El-Nutto/release/7080116