Alice Coltrane - S/D

Also lots of people haven’t ever really heard jazz before — it’s not absurd!

I think lots of people have heard jazz but haven't listened to jazz, which is a different thing altogether.

Wow! Thanks for the Sarathy Korwar heads up.

Here's another version by Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra

https://matthewhalsall.bandcamp.com/track/journey-in-satchidananda

yeah that one is great ... !

xp @ KM yeah i figured, was just being silly, sorry.

a really rare combination of strange, accessible, and good

i agree !

beautiful 15 minute documentary from 1970

Alice Coltrane Black Journal segment

"The 16mm color film print is a short documentary made for a segment of National Education Television's Black Journal television program. The segment focuses on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz magician John Coltrane. This film was shot sometime during 1970; three years after the death of John Coltrane."

yo, thanks for this!

this is incredible

it really is. amazing, thanks for sharing. that shot at the end of her waving goodbye in the yard with her kids, so beautiful.

does anyone know what she's referring to at the very end of the interview, about being within an inch of her death?

yessssss, goddamn, this should be a two-hour doc!

xp she is probably referring to this period:

In quick succession, Alice suffered the loss of both her husband and her half brother Ernest. Her account of her spiritual awakening between 1968 and 1970 in her self-published tract, Monument Eternal, is harrowing: her weight plunged from 118 to 95 pounds, and her family worried for her well-being. In her telling, her weight loss was not the result of grief and depression but due to extreme austerities undertaken for spiritual advancement. It leads to detached remembrances, like: “During an excruciating test to withstand heat, my right hand succumbed to a third-degree burn. After watching the flesh fall away and the nails turn black, it was all I could do to wrap the remaining flesh in a linen cloth.”

The rainbow-covered booklet makes no mention of her jazz music career, her husband, or her travels to India. Instead, she matter-of-factly details making a doctor recoil in horror at the sight of her blackened flesh, what occurs when one experiences supreme consciousness, the nuances of various astral planes, her ability to hear trees sing, and scaring the family dog with her astral projections. Amid this, her family feared for her sanity: “My relatives became extremely worried about my mental and physical health. Therefore they arranged for my return to their home for ‘care and rest.’” Later she adds: “Communicating with people was found to be like suffering judgment. In fact, it was almost impossible for me to dwell upon earthly matters, and equally impossible for me to bring the mind down to mundane thoughts and general conversations.”

(from https://pitchfork.com/features/from-the-pitchfork-review/10009-transfiguration-and-transcendence-the-music-of-alice-coltrane/)

alice was WAAAAAAAAY out there

xp thanks tyler!

love the faces on the kids when pharoah is going wild

i wonder if there's a full concert tape somewhere

man if they had footage of that entire show, it'd be on the level of Aretha's Amazing Grace concert doc ...

so great, thanks

SOOOOO GOOD!

Great taste in cars too.

Amazing. I met Rashied Ali a couple of times in the ‘90s and he *looks exactly the same in the film*!

Bless the Coltranes.

are there any available recordings of this two-bassist lineup?

also, the footage of her harp improv is :O

might be mistaken, but I think McBee and Garrison are both on the Carnegie Hall 71 recording.

xp bill wood AKA vishnu wood plays oud on "journey in satchidanda" but apart from that i don't know much about him or this lineup

nice doc! there's got to be more footage of that concert out there somewhere.

CAPTION
This 16mm film is a documentary segment focusing on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz magician John Coltrane.

:)

thanks for this, Brad.

A photo I'd never seen before, of John and Alice in Japan:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbS0OuQXYAE_hQD.png

<3

Nice.

right click save as

#goals

https://img.discogs.com/CI6Hr_1-XmVhPLvIC8EcetPmd60=/fit-in/600x800/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6599602-1422902810-8507.jpeg.jpg

the perfect prescription

Alice is great but I still wouldn’t mind that pill tbh

Impulse! is doing a big 60th anniversary self-celebration campaign and among other things, they're doing something pretty cool:

This summer, Impulse! Records will release a true rarity, Turiya Sings, by Alice Coltrane. Turiya Sings is a record of devotional chants recorded in the early 1980s at her ashram – the only place it was ever available. It is Alice Coltrane at peak spirituality and features her playing organ and chanting.

A version of this music was released on cassette in 1982, with synth and strings added, but never released after. For the first time ever, Turiya Sings will be released in its purest form – just organ and voice –as Alice’s son and reissue producer Ravi Coltrane has long wanted to do. This was the wish of her son and jazz musician Ravi Coltrane who heard the original tapes. Turiya Sings (Deluxe Edition) will feature both versions of this spiritual recording – both remixed, remastered and released for the first time digitally and physically on CD and LP.

I have two of her other devotional albums, Divine Songs and Infinite Chants, but not Turiya Sings, so I'm looking forward to checking that one out. I suspect I'll probably like the original version better than the stripped-down remix, but I definitely want to hear both.

oh hell yeah, it's the best one IMO

^^

and hell yeah, i can't wait for that. wonder if they'll make a cassette version as well?

oops, didn't mean to replicate the hell yeah! but i am pumped as well

Best album ever

This is literally the best news i have heard in 2021.

hell yeah

hell yeah

― That's not really my scene (I'm 41) (forksclovetofu), Thursday, February 11, 2021

This is literally the best news i have heard in 2021.

― stirmonster, Tuesday, February 9, 2021 6:18 PM

psyched

Any news on the Turiya Sings reissue? I can't find any info on it on the Impulse! homepage, and it isn't available as preorder on Amazon either. Has there been any release date set for it?

This Brooklyn Vegan piece has a list at the end which mentions:

Remixed, Reimagined Rarity from Alice Coltrane Turiya Sings Never Before Released Digitally or on LP, CD (Summer 2021)

Turiya Sings is so wonderful. And I don't think any of the tracks ended up on that Luaka Bop compilation, right?
I love her whammy bar organ playing - it seems to me it's like her doing the harp glissandi only proper glissandi... and so mournful.
I haven't got a spiritual bone in my body but this stuff is absolutely moving.

"(Summer 2021)" I have no idea what this means though. Not just Northern Hemisphere chauvinism, but in Australia we don't really have seasons. It's cold now, but I guess winter is... later.

I get PR emails from Impulse! regularly and haven't heard anything about this reissue yet.

Summer 2021 starts next week.

Major labels usually announce releases 6-8 weeks before street date so at this point you should expect it in late July or August at the earliest.

i am praying to all deities that this actually happens.

And now the announcement is out.

Never-before-released Alice Coltrane album of devotional music to be issued on Impulse!

Fans of spiritual jazz are in for a treat as Impulse! announce Kirtan: Turiya Sings, a never-before-released recording made by “the godmother of spiritual jazz”, Alice Coltrane, will now see the light of day. Recorded in 1981, yet never shared in this form publicly, Kirtan: Turiya Sings is a collection of nine devotional songs, featuring the never-before-heard combination of Coltrane’s voice and organ. Released on 16 July on Impulse! Records/UMe, the record issued as part of the legendary label’s 60th anniversary celebrations this year

Though known by many as the musical partner and wife of John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane is revered for her groundbreaking contributions to spiritual jazz with her legendary Impulse! recordings Journey in Satchidananda and Ptah, The El Daoud, among others. Throughout the 1970s, in addition to maintaining the busy schedule of a recording and touring artist, Alice Coltrane was immersing herself in Eastern philosophies, mythologies, and Vedic religious practices. By the early 1980s, she had become a guru and spiritual teacher and began to make music exclusively for her community at The Vedantic Center, northwest of Los Angeles.

The original recording of these songs, Turiya Sings, was released exclusively on cassette in 1982 for the students of the ashram. In addition to Alice’s voice and organ, the recording included synthesizers, strings, and sound effects. In 2004, Alice’s son and producer of this record, Ravi Coltrane, found mixes he’d never heard before of just Alice’s voice and her Wurlitzer organ. He knew this is what the world had to hear.

“In this setting I felt the greatest sense of her passion, devotion and exaltation in singing these songs in praise of the Supreme. In that moment, I knew people needed to hear Turiya Sings in this context.” Ravi continues, “as her son, growing up and hearing her playing these songs on the very same Wurlitzer you hear on this recording, I recognize this choice maintains the purity and essence of Alice’s musical and spiritual vision. In many ways, this new clarity brings these chants to an even higher place.”

The "single" is "Krishna Krishna":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn36bzFZeg4