Coltrane's curiosity

[gvopedz]

“The importance of curiosity for creative genius can also be seen in case studies of eminent figures…For example, the 20^th Century jazz musician John Coltrane was deeply fascinated in religious faiths, studying Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, many of the influences of which can be detected in his music.”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221028-why-theres-more-to-being-smart-than-intelligence

[JSngry]

He was also curious about other musics than what he played.

He was also curious about physics and math. Equations.

[Gheorghe]

Well Coltrane was one of the most creative geniuses of the 20th Century. I have heard that his was fascinated in diferent religions. Like his follower Pharoah Sanders too, who got his own. 
I love to hear their works like "Love Supreme" and "The Creator has a Master Plan" and so on, and one thing that prooves their charisma is the fact that I´m a completley non-religious person, not an atheist, there can be something, but not bound to any church. And nevertheless I hear some religious message in those art works.....

About math. and physics, I heard that quite a lot of musicians excelled in those materies in high school (Monk, Miles maybe, ). 

 

[clifford_thornton]

8 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

I love to hear their works like "Love Supreme" and "The Creator has a Master Plan" and so on, and one thing that prooves their charisma is the fact that I´m a completley non-religious person, not an atheist, there can be something, but not bound to any church. And nevertheless I hear some religious message in those art works.....

 

I feel the same as you. It's really inspiring.

[Pim]

Same here. Not an atheist per se but far from religious. I do feel a spiritual vibe in Coltrane's music. His music affects me in a way no other musician can touch me. 

So I cannot describe the feeling. It's just there....

Edited November 10, 2022 by Pim

[Gheorghe]

@Pim and @clifford_thornton: 

I don´t exactly know how it´s called , I think my later father once said he is an "agnostic". I never heard my parents talk about God or religion so I didn´t grow up with anything like that, but my father who only listened to classical music also was very moved if he heard some Bach or Handel or Bruckner, who wrote compositions dedicated to Got or Jesus Christ whatever....
So maybe we fell the same if we listen to some of the later Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders or Alice Coltrane works,  it moves me. I once spinned Pharoahs "Healing Song" for my then 90+ years old mother who also did not have that church thing and she loved it. She loved Coleman´s "Loneley Woman", Mingus´ "Meditations on Integration" and Pharoah´s Healing song. 

[Pim]

Yeah agnostic means you're nor atheist nor religious. You just don't know. I feel that way I think. The universe, it's complexity, the coherence of all physics: I would not state there is nothing. I just think none of the religions on earth have the answers let alone the institutions that represent them. 

I still remember the first time I heard the suite of the Transition album. It gave me a very special feeling. There was something emotional happening with me. Same thing with Dearly Beloved on Sun Ship. I'd like to call that a spiritual experience.

[felser]

I'm very Christian, yet experience the same thrill from the same works (and just as much or even moreso from Billy Harper).  The power of God is beyond our full understanding, yet glimpses of it are revealed to us, and we are all created in his image and share in common grace.  Probably not a coincidence that Harper and Coltrane are preacher's kids.  Would love to discuss at length offline.

[AllenLowe]

I go in the other direction music wise. Religious music, yes, but the key to the fire and cry in Trane's sound (and Bird, and Ornette and Julius Hemphill and Albert Ayler) is black Pentocostal music. Eastern music my butt. Listen to classic storefront gospel, like Bessie Johnson, and tons of other 1920s gospel, or any COGIC recording or the (white) Old Regular Baptists, or the Holy Rollers, and you have all you need. It is visionary, delirious, rolling in the aisles, speaking in tongues (and there is, interestingly enough, also lots of white religious music of this stripe, on YouTube). This to me is the soul of American sound, deeper than the blues.  Even if you are not a believer, well, it doesn't matter. This is the music that I hear in my head when I play.

Edited November 11, 2022 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Funnily enough, I went to get my teeth cleaned today, and my hygienist (who I've been using for about 20 years now) was playing some lame "calm" music over Pandora in her room today, and I asked her what THAT was, and one thing led to another and I found out that she was raised Assembly of God in Wichita Falls, had kinda moved beyond that, HATED "contemporary Christian music" and had never been exposed to Black Gospel. So I told her, hey you got Pandora in here, try checking out The Five Blind Boys. Much to my surprise, she stopped the cleaning went straight to her workstation, opened up Pandora, and next thing I knew, she was asking me, "Alabama or Mississippi?". Pick one, I told her. She picked Alabama and as soon as the music started playing, I could tell that she was getting it. I knew, because she told me almost right away, oh my god, this is IT!

So, yeah. There it is.

(as for "god" itself, I'm willing wager dollars AND donuts that if we ever figure out what it is, it will end up being all about vibrations, frequencies, equations that like Pi, go on into infinity, because any equation that you use that ends in a finite answer gives you a finite world to put it in. Yet, Pi is real, and Pi never ends. That's a helluva lot more awe-inspiring to/for me than any religion, doctrine, or dogma. Something that is real yet cannot be fully defined, THAT'S infinity, and the more you can get your vibrational spectrums orientated in that direction, the less tied to this earthly hell you become. And isn't that what salvation is, really? A release from the troubles of THIS finite hell of a world?)

Oh, btw - we both were kinda gobsmacked to discover that there are also The Five Blind Boys Of Montana!!!

 

[mikeweil]

Nice way to open Pandora's box.

[JSngry]

Coltrane was very curious about equations.