Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, Divine Songs, 1987

Avatar Book Institute cassette, 1987
"Accompanied by voices of students of The Vedantic Center"

1 Rama Rama
2 Keshava Murahara
3 Er Ra
4 Madhura Manohara Giridhari
5 Deva Deva
6 Chandra Shekara
7 Om Shanti
8 Rama Guru
9 Hari Narayan

Alice Coltrane, vocal, organ, synthesizer, harp on 3
Students of the Vedantic Center, vocal accompaniment and perc
Strings?

"Chanting is a devotional engagement, one that allows the chanter to soar to higher realms of spiritual consciousness. Chanting is a healing force for good in our world, and also in the astral worlds. Chanting can bring the person closer to God because that person is calling on the Lord. When one calls to even a friend, a mother, or any other relative in a kindly way, he gets the response, also in a reciprocal way." --Alice Coltrane/Swamini Turiyasangitananda in the original liner notes

Thus Alice Coltrane matter-of-factly states it: when you call out to a friend, you get a response; and so when you call out to God, you get a response as well. This extremely rare cassette recording is one of Alice Coltrane's calls to God. In the lyrics to "Om Supreme" on her first Warner Brothers album "Eternity," she was similarly up front, and I'm paraphrasing slightly: "When I call you to come to California, you know I will meet you in California. When I call you to the Divine realms, you know I will meet you there as well."

The first Alice Coltrane album I ever bought was her eye-opening 2-LP Impulse! anthology "Reflections on Creation and Space" back in the 1970s. My mind was blown by the music, and I didn't quite know what to make of the bits of what seemed at the very least a highly eccentric philosophy contained in her notes and titles. I was a young college student and not particularly spiritual at the time, and while I found her music irresistibly compelling I set aside its reference points. The cover portraits on this and the rest of her catalogue which I subsequently devoured always unnerved me: She seemed in those pictures unbelievably serene, almost like an iconic saint, if also distant, uncomfortably otherworldly, and frankly, a little kooky.

Now many years after my first encounter with her music, and, sadly now, a couple years after her passing, I have come to understand her a little better. Even though her Hindu spiritual path has not been a specific religious calling for me, the universality of her spirituality is clearly self-evident. I set aside my skepticism about her eccentricities and have come to understand that she was the real deal. Her consciousness indeed spanned the planes of being, and the music was a kind of teaching, not only another way of saying "if you call out to a friend you will get a response" but the actual shout out itself to both God and us, her listeners, her friends, seeking that response.

The music here is not jazz, though it is deeply soulful. Like her other devotional recordings it is mostly Alice Coltrane singing Sanskrit chants against various instrumental backgrounds. As with her later recording "Glorious Chants" also featured here at Ile Oxumare, there is a raw synthesizer whine on a few tracks but unlike that record it's less dominant overall. And her singing, still almost heartbreakingly soulful, is less tentative than it was on "Turiya Sings," also an Ile Oxumare first. On one song she plays her trademark harp. There are strings on many tracks; although the label doesn't credit live strings only synthesizers, they sound in places too sensitive to my ears to be entirely electronic.

The background vocals are mostly sparse and tasteful; there's a couple more rousing chorus-and-Indian percussion numbers that might make the casual listener a little more sympathetic to the robed Hare Krishnas still found occasionally here in NYC.

Take this music as it was meant: not as an artistic statement or bit of entertainment (though it is both), but as the evidence that Alice Coltrane was in fact some kind of sainted holy woman. It's not that this music will cure your aches and pains, protect you against swine flu, nor give you an "e-ticket" into the religious paradise of your choice; and nor should it convince you to give away your belongings and linger about in airports dressed in pastel robes, but let it be your proof that if you call out to the spirits of peace, and wisdom, and serenity, you will be answered.

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