Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal

This volume unpacks the cultural legacy of musician, spiritual leader, wife and mother Alice Coltrane. Accompanying the eponymous exhibition at Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, the book takes its title from Coltrane’s 1977 autobiography and devotional text, Monument Eternal, in which she reflected on her newfound spiritual beliefs and the path to healing and self-discovery. Coltrane was “ahead of her time,” as her son, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, says: she was “one of the first people to move outside the mainstream, and certainly one of the first female, Black, American jazz musicians to record her own music in her own studio, and to release music on her own terms.” Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal explores themes including spiritual transcendence, sonic innovation and architectural intimacy. The project juxtaposes works from 19 contemporary American artists with pieces of ephemera from Coltrane’s archive—including handwritten sheet music, unreleased audio recordings and rarely seen footage—to honor her cultural output and practice. Alice Coltrane was born in Detroit in 1937 and took up music at an early age, beginning piano lessons at seven years old. In 1967 her husband, saxophonist John Coltrane, gifted her a harp, on which she went on to record seminal albums including Journey in Satchidananda and A Monastic Trio, making her one of the very few harpists in the history of jazz. Coltrane moved to Southern California in 1972 and founded the Sai Anantam ashram. She lived and worked in Los Angeles, where she died in 2007 at age 69.