Alice Coltrane Chose Spiritual Devotion Over Jazz. Her Previously Unheard Ashram Tapes Remind Us of That.

If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside.Learn about Outside Online's affiliate link policy (Photo: Michael Ochs Archives | Getty Images) Jazz legend Alice Coltrane is also renowned for her meditative recordings, and curiosity about her spiritual side has renewed in recent days following news that Matador Records will release the previously unheard Ashram Tapes, recorded by Coltrane in the 1980s and 1990s. “The recordings blend gospel, traditional Indian chants, and avant-garde jazz using synthesizers, organs, and the Ashram choir,” according to Matador’s announcement. A release date has yet to be announced, although the tapes take on even more meaning with an understanding of what led to Coltrane’s spiritual expressiveness through music. The following article from our archives chronicles her decision to dedicate herself to the sacred following the passing of her husband, John Coltrane, in 1967. More than 50 years after it was written, we can appreciate and respect how Coltrane, a Black woman and spiritual leader, chose to act outside societal norms even as coverage tended to frame her story through the lens of her marriage. This article first appeared in the November-December 1982 issue of Yoga Journal. —Renee Marie Schettler She and John had met in 1962, when Alice, a self-styled jazz pianist, was touring with vibraphonist Terry Gibbs and his quartet. She and John married a year later, and within four years they brought three sons and a daughter into the world. At the same time, John, a tenor saxophonist who had worked with such greats as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, was experimenting with avant-garde music that went beyond jazz. Alice eventually replaced McCoy Tyner on the piano in the Coltrane quartet, and worked closely with her husband in his musical discoveries. The two of them made discoveries in another realm as well. Together, they became involved in meditation and spiritual philosophy, which developed into an ascending relationship with the divine. “Near the end of his life,” Alice said, “he sought to make his music an acceptable offering to God.” The years following John’s death were difficult ones for Alice, a tall, soft-spoken woman who was born into a Baptist family in Detroit in 1937. She has emerged from these difficulties, however, and taken John Coltrane’s music as a point of departure for the development of her own talents as an artist on keyboard and harp. She has also embarked on a spiritual journey which has culminated in her initiation as Swami Turiyasangitananda, and the founding of the Vedantic Center in Woodland Hills, California. For Alice, spirituality and music are inseparable. “Music can be very complex, very technical, very experimental, but it can also be very spiritual,” she said. “Out of all these considerations, spirituality, as music, is what I appreciate most.” Not long before his death, John Coltrane rented a harp, which he kept at home. Alice was instinctively drawn to it. “I sat down and I began to play, although I had never received any formal training as a harpist,” she said. “I discovered a whole new kind of music, using tunings that are very uncommon in harp music.” Alice’s sweeping and powerful glissandi can be heard on the Warner Brothers album, Transcendence, which contains her original music. When John heard Alice play, he decided to order a harp for her as a present. Because it was completely hand-crafted, it was over a year before it arrived. During that year, John Coltrane “left the body,” as Alice expresses it, succumbing to a liver ailment. The arrival of the harp as his last worldly gift to her became a symbol of special significance for Alice, a way for her to continue with the free-form innovations that John had begun, as well as an inspiration for her to create a new kind of music of her own. Although John and Alice shared an interest in prayer and meditation, Alice’s real spiritual awakening began after his death. “As long as I had duties as a wife,” she said, “I was going to attend to those duties, which somehow are first and foremost in the home.” John’s death left Alice free to follow her own spiritual path. As a widow and the mother of four small children, Alice entered into a phase of her spiritual life called tapasaya, or cleansing by fire. The ordeals she experienced between 1968 and 1970 resemble a form of self-inflicted torture that could be called masochistic. However, Alice interprets this phenomenon differently. In her 1977 book, Monument Eternal, she states, “I had to endure many operations of penance, austerity, renunciation, sacrifice and suffering. Trials and conflicts were created to test the strength and endurance, to measure and weigh all spiritual faculties, capacity and tenacity of the soul.” The process of tapasaya, which also means “the taking upon one’s self of voluntary suffering for some spiritual good,” can take the form of long fasts, extended meditations, sleepless vigils, and periods of isolation from family and friends. Although Alice is careful to say that tapasaya is not for everyone, she also believes that “everyone who is seriously seeking God must at some time approach Him on the sacrificial level.” During her meditations, Alice had a vision of herself with Swami Sivananda outside his ashram in Rishikesh, India. She knew then that she would someday have a Vedanta school. In 1972, following directives received through meditation, Alice and her children moved from New York to California, and the Vedanta school soon became a reality. She was initiated as Swami Turiyasangitananda, which means “the transcendental Lord’s highest song of bliss,” and in 1975 she opened the Vedantic Center in Woodland Hills, a suburb of Los Angeles. The Vedantic Center is located in a modest house in a residential neighborhood, next door to the house Alice and her children live in. At the center, Alice teaches approximately 25 students with their spouses and children in a cluster of households in the surrounding area. There is a strong feeling of unity as a spiritual family in this racially-mixed community. As one resident put it, “The family is in God, and in that way, it never leaves you.” Members of the ashram receive spiritual guidance from Turiya, as well as instruction in meditation and the study of the Vedic scriptures. Every Sunday afternoon they have a group service that includes music and singing. In addition to performing ashramic duties such as meditation, fasting and yoga, most of Turiya’s followers hold jobs in the outside world as schoolteachers, electrical engineers, etc. There is a rotating child care arrangement within the center for the younger children, who also attend an ordinary preschool outside the ashram. Turiya is involved in the lives of the children, and often helps parents make decisions about child-rearing. The evening we visited, my husband and I were asked to wait for an hour while she spent time drawing mandalas with the children. Unlike some contemporary gurus, Swami Turiyasangitananda resists the limelight and remains a very private person. Perhaps for this reason her music has not attained the popularity it deserves. However, her standards of success are measured on a universal rather than a worldly basis, since her work is done in the service of the Lord. Turiya also resists exercising power over her students. She considers free will to be crucial to genuine spiritual growth, and believes that loyalty should arise from love rather than the use of intimidation, which occurs today in some ashrams. Although she is a teacher, Turiya continues to be a student as well. Every winter she makes a month-long pilgrimage to India, “witnessing and observing Satya Sai Baba’s ministry; it has a great deal of significance to me,” she said. She usually sits quietly in the background and takes pains not to draw attention to herself. Ashramic life in India is basic and traditional, as it was in ancient days, with no windows, carpets, furniture or other conveniences of modern life. She calls this yearly retreat a “pilgrimage, an isolation, and a chance to undergo austerities and fasting.” There, she basks in the elements; she lives in a house made of earth, carries her water from its source, bathes outside in the river and feels the grass underfoot. Turiya calls herself a scribe as well as a teacher. Her inscriptions are transmitted to her through meditations, a recent collection of which has been published as Endless Wisdom: Volume 1. The verses are given in almost biblical language, and are intended to bring divine truth down to the level of everyday life. Her directives were often so clear that she could ask the voice speaking to her to give spelling corrections! “I was never told to promulgate or proselytize,” she said. “I was simply told to share this message from the divine.” As a companion to Endless Wisdom, Turiya has released a new tape of Sanskrit chanting entitled Turiya Sings. Turiya brings all her musical talent as Alice Coltrane to life in this production, which consists of deep, melodious chanting, with echos of rhythm and blues. The cadences between major and minor harmonics are ethereal and enchanting, and call for total surrender on the part of the listener. This music is a delicious experience. Alice Coltrane’s diverse talents can also be enjoyed on many other albums, including Transfiguration, Illuminations (with Carlos Santana), Journey in Satchidananda and Lord of Lords. Although John Coltrane died 15 years ago, Alice Coltrane/Turiyasangitananda feels that he is still present, in another form of existence. Recently, her spiritual maturity was once again tested in the face of death. On August 7, 1982, her oldest son, John Coltrane Jr., was killed in a car accident at the age of 17. The accident occurred one week after he and his brothers, Ravi, 16, and Oran, 15, performed with Alice at UCLA’s Royce Hall. It was the first performance of their newly-formed group, Sons of Coltrane. John Coltrane Jr., who lived at home in Woodland Hills, was a promising jazz musician. “He had a lot of similarities with his father,” Alice said. “He had the ability to be a great musician.” Alice Coltrane’s spiritual journey has not been an easy one. It has been a process of awakening, of transformation from the human to the divine. Her world is an inner world that is difficult to penetrate, but within it lie dimensions of musical and spiritual understanding that are rare on this earth.