ALICE COLTRANE - World Spiritual Classics

"This week, 10 years after Ms. Coltrane’s death in 2007 at age 69, Luaka Bop will release the sounds of the ashram on “World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda,” a compilation culled from four cassettes she recorded between 1982 and 1995. Only available at the ashram, and now out of print, the cassettes have long been sought by collectors, selling for as much as $450 apiece on the internet. The collection illuminates a missing phase in Ms. Coltrane’s remarkable musical journey from bebop to free jazz to New Age...

The newly remastered recordings feature Ms. Coltrane singing for the first time on record, leading a large choir through Eastern-influenced devotional music, with lyrics chanted in Sanskrit but shaped by the African-American church tradition. “That touch of gospel feeling in there never existed with the Hare Krishnas, I can promise you that,” said Baker Bigsby, a Los Angeles audio engineer who worked with Ms. Coltrane for over 30 years. “It’s a little bit of Detroit inserted into this Indian music...” - New York Times