Her later approach to chordal instruments – piano, organ, and harp – had few precedents, and even fewer followers. Alice Coltrane may have grown up in the post-bop, jazz world of the late 1950s, but by the end of the 1960s, when she recorded the first recordings bearing her name, she had already begun to create her own sonic signature. In fact, relative to her more famous husband, it can be argued that her music was more original, more ground-breaking. More than a dozen years since her passing, Alice Coltrane continues to serve as the embodiment of what it means to be truly, musically unique – distinct from John Coltrane, and the entire jazz world as well. I habitually compartmentalize, until an artist so singular and unrooted reminds me to reboot my thinking.
And Trane begat so many generations that followed.
I catch myself placing musical heroes along lines of influence and succession, a Levitical approach – so-and-so begat so-and-so. Duke Ellington excoriates the practice in his memoir from a number of angles. To catalogue and create systems may merely be a human response to help process the multitude of music that’s out there. Forgive me father, for I have categorized.
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