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2003. All Rights Reserved
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of John Coltrane
September 23, 1926, 5:00 p.m., Hamlet NC
On December
9, 1964, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and the members of his quartet
entered a recording studio in Englewood Cliffs NJ at 8:00 p.m. for
a four and a half hour session. The music he taped that night - his
classic, spiritually inspired suite A Love Supreme - was
conceived and performed as a personal testimony to God.
A
Love Supreme session chart:
December 9, 1964, 8:00 p.m., Englewood Cliffs NJ
“All Made
From One”
As a composer and instrumentalist, Coltrane used music not only to express
himself emotionally, but also to communicate spiritual and ideological
concepts through non-verbal means. A consummate innovator, he was always
discovering new sources of inspiration.
For A
Love Supreme, he adapted musical passages from lyrical structures
(1) – specifically, the suite’s title itself as well
as the text of a poem Coltrane included in the album’s packaging.
This approach to composition enabled him to transcend music’s
abstract quality and speak directly to his listeners.
The suite’s
first section, Acknowledgement, explores a three-note, four-beat
melody (based on the suite’s title: a-love-su-preme) that,
at the piece’s climax, Coltrane randomly repeats in all twelve
Western musical keys. According to jazz scholar Lewis Porter, this
was done to convey a particular spiritual message: “he’s
telling us God is everywhere – in every register, in every
key.” (2)
Also,
during Psalm, the suite’s final section, Coltrane’s
improvisation was based on the rhythmic pattern of the poem included
on the album jacket. Again, always purposeful, he explained in the
liner notes, “Words, sounds, speech, men, memory, thoughts,
fears and emotions – time all related...all made from one.”(3)
Spiritual Awakening
In A Love Supreme’s liner notes, Coltrane refers back to an
epiphany he had seven years earlier as the suite’s source of inspiration:
“During
the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening
which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At
that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and
privilege to make others happy through music.” (4)
In early
May 1957, Coltrane retreated for a two-week stay at his mother’s
house in Philadelphia, to tackle his substance abuse problems - specifically
alcohol and heroin addiction. He had just been fired for a second
time from Miles Davis’ quintet, with whom he had been playing
for a year and a half, due to his habits having compromised his playing
ability.
Davis,
himself a recovered heroin addict, had been willing to overlook his
musicians’ habits – to a degree. But as he described
Coltrane at the time he was fired, “Here was Trane (Coltrane)
up on the bandstand sometimes nodding out...he’d be playing
in clothes that looked like he had slept in them for days, all wrinkled
up and dirty...showing up late, sometimes not at all.” (5)
Coltrane’s
subsequent musical growth after emerging clean and sober from his
two-week spell in Philadelphia was nothing short of miraculous. Over
the next few months, he played in composer Thelonious Monk’s
band, and also recorded his first classic solo album, Blue Train.
By the end of 1957, Miles Davis was so impressed with Coltrane’s
development, he invited him to re-join his group.
Coltrane
remained in Davis’ band for another two years, where they recorded
some of the most memorable music in jazz history. Once Coltrane went
out on his solo career in 1960, it wasn’t long before his own
group eclipsed Davis’ as one of the most popular and influential
bands around.
A Love Supreme
On June
29, 1964, five months before recording A Love Supreme, Coltrane
was saddenned by news of the mysterious accidental death of his good
friend, multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy. Dolphy, who had been in
Coltrane’s band during 1961 and had since played with him intermittently,
though never diagnosed with diabetes, died of insulin shock in a
Berlin hotel room.
Curiously,
just two months after Dolphy’s death, on August 26, 1964, Coltrane’s
first son, John W. Coltrane, was born. Immediately following the
birth, in early September, Coltrane disappeared into his workshop,
emerging a few days later with the completed score for A Love
Supreme.
It is
no simple coincidence that Coltrane’s compositional tribute
followed a personal experience with the cycles of both death and
birth. A Love Supreme expressed his spiritual gratitude
not only for his musical gift, but for the second chance he had been
given to make something of his life.
From his
awakening of May 1957 to his death ten years and two months later,
Coltrane was relentless in the pursuit of his musical vision. His
dedication to music was so intense that, during nightclub engagements,
he was known to continue practicing in the bathroom between sets.
Having
faced his mortality at the hands of self-destruction, then through
Dolphy’s tragic end, Coltrane had learned to make the most
of life’s brief and cherished opportunities. In gratitude for
his gift, he made A Love Supreme as “a humble offering
to Him.” (6)
Recurrence Transits
The story
of Coltrane’s musical life leading to the recording of A
Love Supreme can be used to demonstrate the use of recurrence
transits in astrology.
Most astrology
books and articles that discuss planetary transits to a natal chart
usually refer to what I call “zodiacal contact”. If,
for instance, someone has the planet Jupiter at, say, the 13th degree
of Leo in their natal chart, and the planet Neptune comes around
by transit and moves to the same degree of the opposite sign (Aquarius),
then any astrologer will tell you that the person has just had a
Neptune to Jupiter opposition transit.
However,
recurrence transits refer to times when specific planetary combinations
(aspects), such as Jupiter-Neptune oppositions, are repeated in the
sky on a given day or series of days.
If someone
has a Jupiter-Neptune opposition in his or her natal chart, and Jupiter
and Neptune are opposite at a given time, then that person’s
natal opposition gets “activated”. That is, there is
some form of event or set of circumstances that somehow reflects
whatever
the Jupiter-Neptune opposition means in that person’s life.
What is
special about the recurrence transit is the fact that this “activation” will
occur even if the transiting aspect doesn’t make any kind
of contact or aspect to a point in that person’s chart.
Needless to say, if someone has a recurrence transit of any kind
that does make “zodiacal contact” to a given point in
that person’s chart, then it is likely to coincide with something
really big in his/her life.
Jupiter-Neptune
Opposition
John Coltrane
has a Jupiter-Neptune opposition in his horoscope (in Aquarius and
Leo, respectively), in a grand cross configuration (i.e. two oppositions
square to each other) with another planetary opposition: Mars in
Taurus and Saturn in Scorpio.
Jupiter
and Neptune were also in opposition during the recording of A
Love Supreme. As Jupiter’s cycle lasts around twelve years,
Jupiter-Neptune oppositions occur every twelve to thirteen years.
Both Jupiter and Neptune are often associated with spiritual qualities,
though with important distinctions between them:
Jupiter
has more to do specifically with one’s relationship with the
universe, a supreme consciousness and/or a deity/deities. Jupiter’s
character, by virtue of representing a sort of “unbroken” or “eternal” principle,
is related to faith itself, in that it signifies anything that an
individual believes to be true – our “relationship” with
eternity.
In a personal
horoscope, Jupiter represents an individual’s sense of favor
or disfavor with these forces, hence it is also associated with matters
like luck and personal confidence.
Neptune,
on the other hand, represents “universality”, an awareness
of all life as a connected whole. Neptunian spirituality has more
to do with the spirit that links human consciousness: culturally,
politically and spiritually. Neptune blurs the lines of distinction
between the individual and the masses, and at a higher level, between
humanity and the universe.
The Jupiter-Neptune
opposition in a given horoscope represents a polarity between one’s
personal faith and the zeitgeist that appears to be governed by the
greater human collective. An individual with this configuration is
driven to reconcile one’s spiritual life with the force of
the human collective.
Acknowledgement
The Jupiter-Neptune
opposition, relative to Coltrane’s horoscope, has much to do
with his spiritual concerns, which were inextricably connected to
his musical life.
He told
interviewer Frank Kofsky in 1966, “...I think that music, being
an expression of the human heart, or of the human being itself, does
express just what is happening. I feel it expresses the whole thing – the
whole of human experience at the time that it is being expressed.” (7)
Both of
Coltrane’s grandfathers had been Methodist ministers, and his
upbringing included regular Sunday visits to church. His maternal
grandfather, Reverend William Wilson Blair, was a community leader
with a strong academic presence and had a particular influence on
Coltrane’s spiritual sense, as well his intellectual curiosity.
As he
told a Japanese interviewer in 1966, “I am (Christian) by birth;
my parents were and my early teachings were Christian. But as I look
upon the world, I feel all men know the truth. If a man was a Christian,
he could know the truth and he could not. The truth itself does not
have any name on it. And each man has to find it for himself, I think.” (8)
As an
adult Coltrane read all kinds of spiritual texts, from the Bhagavad-Gita
to the Torah – he was even interested in astrology, as evidenced
by such composition titles as Equinox and Fifth House, as
well as a whole album, Interstellar Space, with musical
sections named after each of the planets.
Connected at Birth
and Re-birth
Coltrane
began playing the clarinet for his school band in the fall of 1938.
On December 11, 1938, his grandfather, Reverend Blair, died - followed
in the next few months by the death of Coltrane’s father, uncle
and grandmother. Thirteen year-old Coltrane’s profound sense
of loss drove him further into practicing his new instrument, setting
him firmly on the long path to musical mastery.
Interestingly,
Coltrane’s long-time pianist, McCoy Tyner – who played
with Coltrane from 1960-1965 – was actually born on December
11, 1938 – the exact day Coltrane suffered from the first of
three deaths in his family. Tyner had actually first played live
with Coltrane at a local club in Philadelphia in May 1957, just as
he had emerged from his self-enforced addiction recovery.
McCoy
Tyner:
December 11, 1938, time unknown, Philadelphia PA
These
coincidences that connect Tyner to important times in Coltrane’s
life reflect the tremendous musical bond they shared. As the death
of Coltrane’s grandfather represented a sort of symbolic birth
of his musical life (though he had begun playing his instrument about
three months previously), Tyner represented a sort of “twin” to
that life.
Given
Coltrane’s interests and beliefs, it is not a stretch to suggest
he may have viewed Tyner – a devout orthodox Muslim – as
an extension or possibly even a new incarnation of his late, religious
grandfather. Regardless, Tyner ‘s musical value was clearly
felt by Coltrane, having been his first choice for a pianist (9)
once he left Davis’ band, and the first member of his eventual
classic quartet to join up.
Note that,
like Coltrane, Tyner’s natal Jupiter is in Aquarius. However,
Tyner’s natal Jupiter is much closer in opposition to Coltrane’s
natal Neptune than Coltrane’s own natal Jupiter, which is about
seven degrees apart from an exact opposition. Indeed, Tyner’s
added presence – the implied incarnation of Reverend Blair
- emphasized the music’s spiritual power.
Resolution
In expressing
his sense of the distinct polarity between Jupiter and Neptune during
the opposition recurrence transit, Coltrane produced the sound of “a
man facing God with the gift of his music.” (10)
Sparked
by the incidents of death and birth in his life, he was compelled
to communicate his vision of spiritual life through his music: the
omnipresent power of a supreme consciousness, the universe as a loving
creator – what he called “a love supreme”.
Sources and Notes
Data Sources
John Coltrane’s
birth data quoted from his birth certificate, which is reprinted
in Lewis Porter’s John Coltrane: His Life & Music;
also available from Astro DataBank, rated AA. Data for the death
of Coltrane’s grandfather, Reverend William Blair, also quoted
from Porter’s book (p. 16).
Data for the recording
session of A Love Supreme quoted from the schedule book
of recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, as reported in Ashley Kahn’s A
Love Supreme/The Creation of John Coltrane’s Classic Album.
McCoy Tyner’s
birth data (no time given) quoted from website bio provided by booking
agents: http://www.internationaljazzproductions.com/mtyner.html,
as well as in Len Lyons’ The Great Jazz Pianists (Da Capo,
1983).
Biographical Sources
A Love Supreme/The
Creation of John Coltrane’s Classic Album by Ashley
Kahn (Granta, 2002)
John Coltrane: His Life & Music by Lewis
Porter (University of Michigan, 1998)
Ascension/John Coltrane & His Quest by Eric
Nisenson (Da Capo, 1995)
Miles/ The Autobiography by Miles Davis with Quincy
Troupe (Touchstone, 1989)
John Coltrane & The Jazz Revolution of the 1960s by
Frank Kofsky (Pathfinder, 1998; see also http://www.room34.com/kofsky/jcint.html)
The Great Jazz Pianists by Len Lyons (Da Capo,
1983)
Notes
(1) This wasn’t
the first time he had employed this technique: the previous year,
his composition Alabama - inspired by the tragic church
bombing in Birmingham that killed four small girls – was constructed
from the rhythmic pattern of a speech given by Martin Luther King
Jr. about the incident. (Kahn, p.79)
(2) Porter (p.
242)
(3) A Love
Supreme, liner notes by Coltrane
(4) A Love
Supreme, liner notes by Coltrane
(5) Davis & Troupe
(p. 212)
(6) A Love
Supreme, liner notes by Coltrane
(7) Coltrane interview
with Kosky (http://www.room34.com/kofsky/jcint2.html)
(8) Nisenson (p.
212)
(9) Tyner wasn’t
immediately available, so Coltrane played with Steve Kuhn for a couple
of months; however, Tyner states that he and Coltrane had a longtime
understanding that he would be Coltrane’s pianist once Coltrane
left Davis’ band for good. (Lyons, p. 238)
(10) Bono from
U2, quoted in Kahn (preface, p. xxii)
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