Musician, wife, mother, daughter, sister, grandmother, collaborator, guru, iconoclast: Alice Coltrane is one of the most forward-looking yet misunderstood artists of the last fifty years.
For most of her life – and even in the decades since her passing – she was seen merely as the widow of the late John Coltrane, one of jazz’s ‘great men’ who has long been worshipped with an almost religious fervour and devotion. Yet ever so slowly, that level of love and appreciation is also being bestowed upon Alice. Her influence can be felt on new generations of musicians, especially women, people of colour and artists who seek to combine jazz with other musical forms. In Coltrane’s music, we can observe the transformation of Black American music in microcosm: the gospel roots giving rise to jazz and bebop, then intermingling with soul and R&B, then onto rock, modern classical, psychedelia and new age.
Cosmic Music is both the first full-length biography of Alice and a long-overdue corrective to the historical and critical record. Based on extensive research and scores of new interviews by acclaimed music journalist Andy Beta, it is the definitive account of a visionary whose influence is only just beginning to be appreciated in full.
For most of her life – and even in the decades since her passing – she was seen merely as the widow of the late John Coltrane, one of jazz’s ‘great men’ who has long been worshipped with an almost religious fervour and devotion. Yet ever so slowly, that level of love and appreciation is also being bestowed upon Alice. Her influence can be felt on new generations of musicians, especially women, people of colour and artists who seek to combine jazz with other musical forms. In Coltrane’s music, we can observe the transformation of Black American music in microcosm: the gospel roots giving rise to jazz and bebop, then intermingling with soul and R&B, then onto rock, modern classical, psychedelia and new age.
Cosmic Music is both the first full-length biography of Alice and a long-overdue corrective to the historical and critical record. Based on extensive research and scores of new interviews by acclaimed music journalist Andy Beta, it is the definitive account of a visionary whose influence is only just beginning to be appreciated in full.
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Reviews
Andy Beta's work on Alice Coltrane clarifies and contextualizes a still-extraordinary presence in American music
With lyrical and cinematic storytelling, Andy Beta takes us on a peripatetic journey in the footsteps of one of the most significant musical innovators and spiritual leaders of the past century
The significance of Alice Coltrane's presence in 20th century music cannot be overstated. Andy Beta's Cosmic Music is a remarkable detailing of this visionary woman's vocation in devotion to a sanctified art. From her childhood playing piano in the community of Pentecostal and Baptist churches, where ecstatic transcendence was at the heart of practice to her engagement with the Detroit Jazz scene, and finding a kindred spirit in a life shared with the great John Coltrane, her music expressed a timeless expression of both divinity and dignity
Andy Beta brings Alice Coltrane out of her famous husband's shadow, giving us a richly contextualized arc of her fascinating life. His deep research, clear-eyed insight, and poetic language make the abstractions of improvised music and spirituality into the stuff of story. Cosmic Music is a major contribution to the literature of music and spirituality
An accessible, definitive biography of Alice Coltrane, [the] misunderstood jazz musician and guru ... Beta's book does a valuable service in its precision, empathy and musical understanding, the book scours off the condescension that's clung to her reputation and reveals her anew. An invaluable life of a pioneering artist, only now beginning to be fully understood
For decades Alice Coltrane's life has been as elusive as her art, but Cosmic Music is the definitive text, bringing her into vivid detail while losing none of her fantastic mystery: a must read