Alice Coltrane - Universal Consciousness
- Issue #221 (July '02) | Reviews
- By: David Toop | Featuring: Alice Coltrane
Universal Consciousness is one of those albums that pushed deep into the unknown, then returned with riches that seemed impossible to evaluate. 30 years later, are we any the wiser?
ALICE COLTRANE
UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
IMPULSE! AS9210 CD
Evaluating Alice Coltrane without prejudice is problematic. Her relationship to John Coltrane, both as his widow and musical collaborator, is at the centre of the difficulty, if not the crux. Conservative jazz fans finds it easy to dismiss her: she orchestrates for string ensembles - always suspect; she plays organ and harp - instruments that lie at the outer edges of jazz orthodoxy; like Yoko Ono, she fulfils the role of the 'destroying wife' who supposedly emasculates a lost genius, then administrates his legend; she defines herself as a spiritual seeker with an enthusiasm that goes beyond the masculine reserve of other religious believers within jazz. Worst of all, she indulges in melodrama and sentimentality.
Most of these criticisms can be trashed right off without unwrapping them. Melodrama and sentimentality are less easy. Masculine sentimentality is commonplace in jazz ballads, a maudlin feeling of wounded withdrawal that passes for romanticism; it's hard to enjoy jazz without accepting this. Alice's sentimentality is more a mystical yearning for the new age. The feeling of being overwhelmed by a 'cloud of unknowing' is pivotal in her work. You either love it or loathe it. I'm not a religious person but find the oceanic, immersive force of her work thrilling. 'This 'cosmic libido' or oceanic sensibility is intimately connected with ecriture feminine,' wrote Joy Press and Simon Reynolds in The Sex Revolts, 'writing that privileges flux and fluidity.'
So if men really are from Mars, women from Venus, where to place Universal Consciousness in the context of Alice's recorded output? Universal Consciousness is striking because musicality of extraordinary quality, both by Alice herself and by drummers Clifford Jarvis, Jack DeJohnette and Rashied Ali, and bassist Jimmy Garrison, lies beneath the psychotropic flux of its surface. Recorded in three days during 1971, the production, engineering and mixing of its six tracks are absolutely stunning. Rather than allowing all the contradictory elements to dissolve into mystical soup, Alice and producer/mixer Ed Michel maintained clear space for individual touch. This is particularly marked in the high and low registers: cymbals sizzle and ring, while bass tones really drive the rhythms. In one sense, this is an album of apocalyptic sound painting, yet most tracks resolve into modal blues grooves, equal in power to Jimmy Smith or Shirley Scott.
Universal Consciousness is free jazz in the sense that it continues the trajectory unleashed by John Coltrane - a turbulence of rhythms, rushing through the landscape like a twister - but that turbulence is aligned with a kind of free funk. Listen to the loose groove established during the second part of 'Sita Ram', the speed chess game between Alice's organ bass pedals and Jimmy Garrison's double bass, the stuttering push and pull of Clifford Jarvis's brushwork and bells. This was a new way to play rhythms - and its resolution of the contradictions between stability and flux is a revelation.
The groove of 'The Ankh Of Amen-Ra' is even stronger. Essentially this bluesy duet between Alice and Rashied Ali is an exercise in telepathy, the two players stretching the invisible cord that joins them to breaking point without losing their unity. If Alice's assertive bass pedals anticipate the low end of more recent records, other aspects of the album prefigure New Age music. Magisterial melodies abound, either played by Alice on organ or the string quartet of John Blair, Leroy Jenkins, Julius Brand and Joan Kalisch. The melodrama of its thematic statements has a clear origin in John Coltrane's unequivocal passion for an emotional tune, the still centre of chaos pursued (in some cases, to the point of redundancy) after his death by saxophonists like Pharoah Sanders, Carlos Ward and Gato Barbieri. Perhaps the biggest influence at that moment, though, was Alice's journey to India. The fusion of sources alive and audible in her organ playing - church, bebop, free jazz and Indian ragas - add up to something truly unique, at times almost unidentifiable. Universal Consciousness is one of those albums that pushed deep into the unknown, then returned with riches that seemed impossible to evaluate. 30 years later, are we any the wiser?
UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS
IMPULSE! AS9210 CD
Evaluating Alice Coltrane without prejudice is problematic. Her relationship to John Coltrane, both as his widow and musical collaborator, is at the centre of the difficulty, if not the crux. Conservative jazz fans finds it easy to dismiss her: she orchestrates for string ensembles - always suspect; she plays organ and harp - instruments that lie at the outer edges of jazz orthodoxy; like Yoko Ono, she fulfils the role of the 'destroying wife' who supposedly emasculates a lost genius, then administrates his legend; she defines herself as a spiritual seeker with an enthusiasm that goes beyond the masculine reserve of other religious believers within jazz. Worst of all, she indulges in melodrama and sentimentality.
Most of these criticisms can be trashed right off without unwrapping them. Melodrama and sentimentality are less easy. Masculine sentimentality is commonplace in jazz ballads, a maudlin feeling of wounded withdrawal that passes for romanticism; it's hard to enjoy jazz without accepting this. Alice's sentimentality is more a mystical yearning for the new age. The feeling of being overwhelmed by a 'cloud of unknowing' is pivotal in her work. You either love it or loathe it. I'm not a religious person but find the oceanic, immersive force of her work thrilling. 'This 'cosmic libido' or oceanic sensibility is intimately connected with ecriture feminine,' wrote Joy Press and Simon Reynolds in The Sex Revolts, 'writing that privileges flux and fluidity.'
So if men really are from Mars, women from Venus, where to place Universal Consciousness in the context of Alice's recorded output? Universal Consciousness is striking because musicality of extraordinary quality, both by Alice herself and by drummers Clifford Jarvis, Jack DeJohnette and Rashied Ali, and bassist Jimmy Garrison, lies beneath the psychotropic flux of its surface. Recorded in three days during 1971, the production, engineering and mixing of its six tracks are absolutely stunning. Rather than allowing all the contradictory elements to dissolve into mystical soup, Alice and producer/mixer Ed Michel maintained clear space for individual touch. This is particularly marked in the high and low registers: cymbals sizzle and ring, while bass tones really drive the rhythms. In one sense, this is an album of apocalyptic sound painting, yet most tracks resolve into modal blues grooves, equal in power to Jimmy Smith or Shirley Scott.
Universal Consciousness is free jazz in the sense that it continues the trajectory unleashed by John Coltrane - a turbulence of rhythms, rushing through the landscape like a twister - but that turbulence is aligned with a kind of free funk. Listen to the loose groove established during the second part of 'Sita Ram', the speed chess game between Alice's organ bass pedals and Jimmy Garrison's double bass, the stuttering push and pull of Clifford Jarvis's brushwork and bells. This was a new way to play rhythms - and its resolution of the contradictions between stability and flux is a revelation.
The groove of 'The Ankh Of Amen-Ra' is even stronger. Essentially this bluesy duet between Alice and Rashied Ali is an exercise in telepathy, the two players stretching the invisible cord that joins them to breaking point without losing their unity. If Alice's assertive bass pedals anticipate the low end of more recent records, other aspects of the album prefigure New Age music. Magisterial melodies abound, either played by Alice on organ or the string quartet of John Blair, Leroy Jenkins, Julius Brand and Joan Kalisch. The melodrama of its thematic statements has a clear origin in John Coltrane's unequivocal passion for an emotional tune, the still centre of chaos pursued (in some cases, to the point of redundancy) after his death by saxophonists like Pharoah Sanders, Carlos Ward and Gato Barbieri. Perhaps the biggest influence at that moment, though, was Alice's journey to India. The fusion of sources alive and audible in her organ playing - church, bebop, free jazz and Indian ragas - add up to something truly unique, at times almost unidentifiable. Universal Consciousness is one of those albums that pushed deep into the unknown, then returned with riches that seemed impossible to evaluate. 30 years later, are we any the wiser?