Day 373: Alice Coltrane – Universal Consciousness

I’m still bedbound today and not feeling very good, so I’ll give myself the gift of a shorter write-up. I needed to pick an artist who I’ve already covered so that I can skip the introduction, so I thought I’d listen to a bit more Alice Coltrane today – I think if there’s a type of music that could knock this flu out of me, it just might be spiritual jazz.

Album cover courtesy of Impulse!

For more background info on Alice Coltrane, please see my write up about her 1971 release Journey in Satchidananda here. Her fifth album, Universal Consciousness, was released later that year in September 1971, and it’s the first one where you can hear her going absolutely ham on a Wurlitzer organ. It was released shortly after she’d gone on a personally impactful trip to India where she’d experienced a spiritual awakening and discovered instruments and music that would be profoundly influential to her work.

I don’t know if it knocked the flu out of me, that’s a pretty big ask, but it’s definitely done something. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this project, it’s that I don’t like my spiritual jazz too aggressive or noisy, and this one strikes the perfect balance between being soothing and harmonic, while also being wild enough to feel like it’s shaking the cobwebs off of you. And long-time readers will know just how I feel about an organ, come on, this is right up my street.

I love how spiritual jazz has given me another tool into my wellbeing arsenal, and this album is a perfect example of why it’s so good – if you pop on a pair of headphones, lay down, relax and just let the sounds wash over you, you will at the very least feel something. And I sometimes struggle with meditation because my mind gets so busy it just tries to fill any empty space with thoughts, but even on my worst days of rumination, this could help me clear my head completely and just be for 40 minutes. Alice Coltrane is great, it’s a transcendent album, I’m giving Universal Consciousness a 9/10.