To understand the music of John Coltrane you must understand the long genealogy of the genre of African Diasporic cultural expression—called Black (or American) Classical Music or jazz as it is often labeled particularly, as it moves back and forth on the time/space continuum. From the Now moment. To the Future moment as yet seen. To the complexities of the past. Back to Now. Never in a linear path.

You must listen to Sun Ra. Diz. Bird. Sonny. Brother Ah. Abdullah Ibrahim, Celia Cruz, Tito. Hugh Masekela. Abby. Max. Ella. Nina. Holiday. De La. Tribe. Guru. Heavy. The birds. The Wind. The rain.

You must be able to map the material and non-material experiences…often improvised in response to the conditions within which Africana peoples found themselves.

You must understand the deep ancestral, historical, and spiritual memory of a people to simultaneously be aware of these conditions while also seeing a world beyond those conditions.

John Coltrane—the person, the musician—is a vital link in the long chain of humanity—a representation of an African vibration of humanity.

Amiri Baraka in his article John Coltrane: Why His Legacy Continues? writes: “Why does his legacy continue to influence our lives, our music, and the arts?...Trane emerges as the process of historical clarification itself, of a particular social/aesthetic development…When we see him standing next to Bird and Diz, an excited young inlooker inside the torrent of the rising Bop statement, right next to the chief creators of that fervent expression of new black life, we are seeing actual point and line, note and phrase of the continuum. As if we could also see Louis and Bechet hovering over them, with Pres hovering just to the side waiting his entrance, and then beyond in a deeper yet to be revealed hover, Pharoah and Albert and David and Wynton or Olu in the mist, there about to be, when called by the notes of what has struck yet before all mentioned. Trane carried the deepness in us thru Bird and Diz, and them, back to us. He reclaimed Bop fire, the Africa, Polyrhythmic, Improvisational, Blue, Spirituality of us…the Free Jazz! Was parallel to Free Angela! Free Huey! The Ballot or the Bullet! Free Black People!” (192: Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music)

---Amiri Baraka adds more clarity---I love Music (For John Coltrane)--

For Amiri Baraka, and others, “Trane still sounds inside us as the freedom we seek, the total expression of our lives as the expression of the Human headed soul, teaching that the flaming paradise of his music is in us to create the world we live in” (194: Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music)

But above all of this…more than any of this…to understand Trane you must understand his wife, Alice Coltrane. You must listen to her organized vibrational melodies that seek in their own space to free people, who did not know they needed to be freed, and as of yet still not know they need to be freed.

Today, we will listen to a radio documentary produce by the Pacifica Archives, titled Trane Lives. We hear Alice on Trane…and Trane, less than a year before he moved beyond.

For complete program: https://www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recording/pz065901-02

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Image: Alice and John Coltrane: no copyright infringement is intended