The dawn brushes the first morning lights onto the wall, filtered through the curtains, and the scents from the stove slip through the half-closed doors, insinuating themselves into the nostrils. Sita Michelle Coltrane is still in bed; soon she will have to get up to go to school. Everything is so extraordinarily ordinary except for that sound that wasn't there yesterday. Alice sits in the dim light of the kitchen, amidst the crackle of bacon and the steaming cup of coffee. Her fingers barely skim the taut strings with such elegance and speed that they seem still.
Magic has the power to make possible what the mind dares not; it is of the same substance as dreams but often prefers to mingle with reality.
"If paradise is like this, I will certainly be ready to welcome it when I have the chance."
This is what Sita Michelle thinks, awakened and captivated from sleep by her mother's deeds, and she remembers it distinctly today, fifty years later. The harp generates a cascade of golden drops that illuminate the shadow theater in that room, and Sita takes a snapshot to gift it to her future memories.
The story goes that John Coltrane ordered that harp for his wife but died before it arrived. Deeply affected by her husband's passing, Alice begins to live a life devoid of life, suffers from insomnia, has continuous visions, and loses several pounds. Her existence thins like a rope precariously sustaining her, teetering like a tightrope walker on the precipice of existence.
But every dark abyss has its cracks that allow light to pass through and correspond to always different but equally salvific coordinates.
Alice's turning point is found in India, in a small village called Chettipalayam, where she meets the guru Swami Satchidananda, very renowned and acclaimed in the East, who spoke and enchanted the oceanic gathering at Woodstock. His advice and spiritual dictates calm and soothe Alice, who soon becomes his disciple. She embarks on an inner journey into the depths of her existence, deeply attracted by the power of the spirit, hers and that residing in others, the spirit of things.
inevitably, the transformation reverberates in the music, in the compositions that begin to characterize themselves with a psychedelic mood, drawing from traditions from all over the world but remaining faithful to the bebop framework acquired in her youth in Detroit and when she performed as a pianist during intermissions at the Blue Note in Paris.
This is the context in which Journey in Satchidananda is born. Explicitly dedicated to her spiritual sage, it is the turning point album, the work that establishes a definitive transformation of Coltrane's sound. In truth, it has many elements in common with previous albums, such as the exploration of mythology and religion, but the element of the journey revealed in the title is an absolute novelty. A journey meant as an inner and artistic path, a transition, a process of transformation, a flow without a beginning or an end. The proof positive is the self-titled track that opens the record, a transcendental loop that could last forever, crystallized in the litany of Tulsi's tambura. Alice Coltrane writes in the liner notes: "Anyone who listens to this selection should try to imagine themselves floating on an ocean of love by Satchinandaji," inviting the listener to remain through the entire album lying down with closed eyes.
Three buzzing notes of tambura anchor the title track, capturing the listener within the complex grammatical framework of her music. Alice's harp, like a spirit absolved of its chains and freed from established constraints and paths, plays with chasing, intersecting, and confusing itself with the saxophone of the divine Pharaoh. Coltrane focuses her studies on modal, setting aside functional harmonies in favor of virtuosity unveiled around a fundamental note and experimenting with Indian scales and other non-diatonic ones. Essentially, the tracks, like the entire album, revolve around the initial tambura motif. "Shiva-Loka" restarts from the spiral around the three notes, reigniting the kaleidoscope of lights and colors that also contaminates "Stopover Bombay."
Then comes a calm that saturates the record and tempers it. The lights dim. This is for John, her John. She wipes off the sweat. Places the harp on the ground and goes to sit at the piano. A sip of water, and the enchantment is once again on scene.
In music, anything is possible; things can happen that do not occur in reality, and some people need to love as much as they need to breathe. One of these is Coltrane.
Many tracks that wrote jazz history were born from a drunkenness, in the dregs of a gin glass. "Something about John Coltrane" comes straight from the depths of Alice's soul. She gently presses her fingers on the shiny ivory, modulating space and time, a lazy and placid time that always reserves an edge somewhere. An intense emotion that takes you in every direction without following any while Sanders's sax is busy pouring out nectars of notes. McBee's double bass climbs in impossible virtuosity while the brushes behind him obsessively caress the snare.
The rhythms expand. Alice returns with her thoughts to the Hindu gurus in the crystal canyons of California, to the Ashrams of Bombay, to the smoky clubs of Manhattan soaked in incense. The last track, recorded live on July 4, 1970, at the Village Gate in New York, is all a gushing of transcendence, harmony, and pain. Yes, pain, so much pain. Vishnu Wood's oud phrases lightly like a breeze, trapped in the gloomy harp embroidery of Alice, until the end, where applause begins.
Journey In Satchidananda is a journey without a destination towards all destinations, an all-encompassing place, and a metaphysical space, light and shadow, life and death, the refuge of a tormented spirit, a floating on an ocean of love by Satchinandaji.
Lying on the ground.
With closed eyes.
Loading comments slowly
