A Love Supreme: John Coltrane, hope and jazz

"A Love Supreme," John Coltrane Today is the anniversary of the birth of John Coltrane, jazz saxophonist and composer, who was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, in 1926, and died July 17, 1967 on Long Island, New York. "Trane," as many who knew him called him, was one of the giants of the jazz genre, and though he died young, at 40, during his life as a musician, he changed the medium for all time.  

The biography on the his Foundation website states:

"Coltrane felt we must all make a conscious effort to effect positive change in the world, and that his music was an instrument to create positive thought patterns in the minds of people"

Jazz fans and critics all have their own favorite Coltrane recordings, but there is almost universal agreement that one of the greatest jazz recordings of all time was his quartets' "A Love Supreme," with Coltrane on tenor sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.  

The album is a four-part suite, broken up into tracks: "Acknowledgement" (which contains the mantra that gave the suite its name), "Resolution", "Pursuance", and "Psalm." It is intended to be a spiritual album, broadly representative of a personal struggle for purity, and expresses the artist's deep gratitude as he admits to his talent and instrument as being owned not by him but by a spiritual higher power.

Coltrane's personal struggle to successfully conquer his own demons and find inner peace and liberation resonate today with those who hear his message.

I'm neither a musician nor a jazz critic. There are stacks of books, magazines and scholarly articles that can do more justice to Trane's music and legacy than I can.  

But on his birthday I'm musing about how jazz helped shape my thinking, and yes, even my politics. I am thinking about jazz, a music that was birthed in racial alienation, yet incorporated both African and European musicality, and how good it feels today to have a president and first lady in the White House who embrace, celebrate and nurture this music that is so essentially American, and now universal.

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