Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda: The Ashram Experience
March 24, 2018
Knoxville, TN @ St. John's Cathedral - Big Ears Music Festival

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01. Invocation
02. Introduction by John Schaefer
03. Sivaya
04. Rama Rama
05. Krishna Japaye
06. ???
07. Journey To Satchidananda
08. Om Shanti
09. ???
10. ???

The Sai Anantam Ashram Singers
??? - keyboards
??? - drums

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda: The Ashram Experience
The Sai Anantam Singers will guide an intoxicating journey through Alice Coltrane�s devotional music with Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda: The Ashram Experience. These profound performances�publicly available at long last�will be a rare treat for Big Ears audiences.

Alice Coltrane died in 2007, exactly four decades after her husband and collaborator, the saxophone titan John Coltrane. In the years immediately after his death, Alice admitted, she struggled immensely, a single mother of four mourning the loss of an extremely creative partnership. She began to heal, though, when she stumbled into the teachings of an Indian guru and the spiritual peace offered in the practice and customs of Hinduism. She traveled to India, founded a spiritual center in San Francisco, and eventually relocated to an expansive ashram in the hills of Southern California. Alice Coltrane�the jazz musician whose Journey In Satchidananda had become a cult classic�became Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, the leader of a religious practice that depended upon, as one might imagine, traditional devotional songs given an unlikely soulful update.

The eight tracks of 'The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda'�the first release in a series of spiritual records from Luaka Bop, the eclectic bastion launched by David Byrne�were culled from a set of cassettes Turiyasangitananda released for her followers between 1982 and 1995. The crowd gathered for the service becomes an ad hoc choir for these bhajans, or songs of devotion, with Coltrane�s warm mahogany voice leading them in spirited recitation. Funky handclaps and circular drums, astral synthesizers and droning tamboura wrap beneath the words, alternately suggesting primal Detroit soul and trance-inducing calm. The songs seem to smear time itself, so that ten-minute spans seem to pass in a perfect moment. A decade after her death, Coltrane�s Sai Anantam is selling its land and disassembling. But these profound performances�publicly available at long last and revived live by a longtime group of devotees in rare concerts�will last forever. The ensemble will perform twice at Big Ears 2018.

https://sinceileftyoublog.tumblr.com/post/171555529272/the-ecstatic-music-of-alice-coltrane

https://bigearsfestival.org/alice-coltrane-turiyasangitananda-ashram-experience/


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