Serene and soft-spoken, the late Alice Coltrane carried a regal disposition—a sphingine, ethereal air that infused her music and foreshadowed her repute as a true spiritual leader. Widowed in 1967 at the age of 29, she emerged from the shadow of one of jazz’s greatest impresarios to forge her own formidable legacies in music and devout practice. She didn’t achieve the dazzling celebrity that her husband did, but it didn’t matter. For her, there was a far more important calling than fame.
Jazz musician, composer, devotional leader, and muse to her husband, John Coltrane—one of the greatest musicians in American history—Alice Coltrane is once again being drawn into the light, this time in Alice Coltrane: Monument Eternal, a new exhibition at The Hammer Museum at UCLA that aims to both spotlight and contextualize a woman who, through very different tools—the piano, the harp, and meditation—melded the melodious and the mystic.
Coltrane’s spiritual journey is represented via correspondence, articles she authored, videos, and the work of artists (most notably Bethany Collins’s Battle Hymn of the Republic, a stunning series of visual polemics in charcoal and graphite) that frame and build on her work. Vintage brochures, an old yellow cassette tape, and typed instructions at the ashram all show Coltrane’s fierce dedication to the identity of swamini she came to fervidly embrace. (In a 1970 documentary, she said of her devotional practice, “I think it gave me my true independence, that no matter where I go in the world, whatever I do, whatever my involvement, I’m free.”)
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