Journey in Satchidananda

Released

This album marks a point in Coltrane’s own spiritual development, as well as a moment in the process of jazz finding the borders of its freedom. Over time, Journey took a third identity: yoga studio staple. This anecdotal fact is not presented to denigrate Coltrane’s work but to be concrete about how fully this album transitioned into the 21st century. People who do not know any other energy-based jazz know this album. And what they know, most likely, is Cecil McBee’s stately opening bassline and the friendly buzz of Tulsi’s tamboura. More of the album’s voice is in Pharoah Sanders’s saxophone, as Coltrane sticks to shifting clouds of sound with her harp and piano. What Journey proposes is that the intensity of free music—or “fire music,” as Archie Shepp called it in 1965—can be contained within gentleness and not lose its flame.

Sasha Frere-Jones

Suggestions
The 7th Hand cover

The 7th Hand

Immanuel Wilkins
Improvisie cover

Improvisie

Paul Bley
Silver Ladders cover

Silver Ladders

Mary Lattimore
Trout Mask Replica cover

Trout Mask Replica

Captain Beefheart
Belladonna cover

Belladonna

Mary Halvorson
New York 1982 cover

New York 1982

Charlie Morrow, Derek Bailey
In Plain Sight cover

In Plain Sight

Songs for a Tired City
Automata II cover

Automata II

Between the Buried and Me