After posting Pharoah Sanders last week, the obvious direction to go from there is to play something from Alice Coltrane's collaboration with Pharoah, and I can't think of a better thing to post (or music to listen to on this cold, wintery night in Georgia) than the incredibly beautiful Journey in Satchinananda.
After John Coltrane's untimely death, his wife Alice continued the spiritual journey she had started with her late husband. Indian spirituality and mysticism played a very important role in the couple's life and on the musical side, it manifested in a new type of music where ragas, harp and chants blended seamlessly with avant-garde jazz notions. Alice's spiritual path eventually led her to lead an ashram in California. Alice passed in 2007, but next March we'll be hearing members of her ashram perform some of her devotional music in Knoxville, Tennessee.
We have infinite respect for any musician, much less a woman, who manages to find her own unique voice and style while surrounded by the legendary jazz figures of her time. John Coltrane was obviously a towering figure in the world of jazz, and it must have taken a lot of courage and self assurance for his wife not to be just a curator of John's music, preserving the tradition and protecting his reputation, but instead to be so true to her own muse or muses and boldly go where no one had gone before.
We don't normally post entire albums in this Old School Friday series, but it would be almost criminal to leave any portion of this magnificent recording out of the mix.
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