Monument Eternal

by Alice Coltrane, Ashley Kahn (Foreword by)

Overview

The long-awaited reissue of Alice Coltrane’s original spiritual teachings and reflections, which provide powerful insight into her transcendent music, cherished by millions across the globe 

ALICE COLTRANE (1937–2007) was a composer, master of various musical instruments, improviser, spiritual leader, and wife of John Coltrane. Throughout her adult life, she worked within and combined a broad range of musical genres, including gospel, R&B, bebop, free jazz, Indian devotional song, and Western art music. She recorded more than twenty full-length albums for Impulse and Warner Bros. Her music speaks to her experiences as a child playing for church congregations in Detroit; the transcendent and mind-bending avant-garde improvisations she performed with John Coltrane; and her religious pilgrimages to India. 

When Monument Eternal was originally published in 1977, Alice Coltrane was living in Southern California and had recently become a swami, building and nurturing an alternative spiritual community. In these pages, she says that the book is “based upon the soul’s realizations in Absolute Consciousness and its spiritual relationships with the Supreme One.” Monument Eternal offers deep insight into Coltrane’s tremendous musical output, and shines a light on her transformation from Alice McLeod, Detroit church organist and bebopper, to sage thought leader Swami Turiyasangitananda. It also reflects the extraordinary fluidity of American religious customs in the mid and late twentieth century. 

Akashic’s long-awaited reissue of Monument Eternal includes a new foreword by Ashley Kahn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636142258
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	02/04/2025
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

ALICE COLTRANE was born in Detroit in 1937. Her interest in music started at a young age when she began playing organ at the Mount Olive Baptist Church. By the early 1960s she was a professional jazz musician playing with her own groups and also collaborating and performing with Charlie Haden, Ornette Coleman, Carlos Santana, and many others. She married John Coltrane in 1965, and not long after that she joined the John Coltrane Quartet, replacing pianist McCoy Tyner. Together, the Coltranes embarked on a deeply spiritual journey of musical exploration and forged a new genre of musical expression. In 1975, after a trip to India, Alice founded and was the director of the Vedantic Center; she would later establish a spiritual community in the Santa Monica Mountains. She passed away in 2007.

ASHLEY KAHN is a music historian and author of A Love Supreme:The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album.

 

Editorial Reviews

"In the past two decades, Alice Coltrane’s significance has been rightly elevated into the highest echelons of the jazz pantheon, where her influence is now often mentioned in the same breath as her husband’s."

Quietus

"Great music lifts us off this plane of existence to a higher level of transcendence and love. Alice Coltrane is a sonic guru who here uses prose to help us understand her journey and show a path to join her there."

Nelson George

"In the ten years that followed [John Coltrane’s death], Alice Coltrane released about a dozen albums . . . many of them masterpieces that imagine a meeting point between jazz and psychedelic rock, gospel traditions and Indian devotional music . . ."

New Yorker

"Monument Eternal is a singularly honest, insightful portrayal of a spiritual awakening. Alice Coltrane’s courage is not only evident in her life story but also here, in her choice to share her search for transcendence with the world."

Brandee Younger

"Monument Eternal relates, in meditation, the sacred dialogue between Mother Turiya and the Supreme Lord. It is a profound insight into her journey through severe austerities to divine enlightenment."

Sita Michelle Coltrane

"In her book, Alice Coltrane’s personal path—from darkness to light, from sacrifice to physical and spiritual well-being—is what matters most. That, and an abiding sense of discovery, divine bliss, and individual purpose: the idea of fitting into the matrix, of being part of the plan . . . Monument Eternal also brings to mind another John Coltrane parallel that deserves to be emphasized. As a universalist who—like Alice—grew up in the Black church, the saxophonist espoused more of a philosophy than a specific path on the 1964 spiritual self-declaration A Love Supreme."

Ashley Kahn

"This is the founding document of a personal religion, and a rendering of grief hung among the stars."

Harper's Magazine

"This slender volume—an archetypal account of wrestling with cosmic forces first published in 1977 and now reissued with a foreword by music journalist Ashley Kahn—offers an essential key to Coltrane’s often overlooked yet profound and fascinating life and work."

Booklist

02/01/2025

Initially published in 1977, this sparkling new edition of Coltrane's book follows her spiritual journey during a long period of overwhelming grief after the death of her husband, jazz musician John Coltrane. The first of three books written between 1977 and 1997 is described as a spiritual exercise. A celebrated jazz harpist, pianist, and composer in her own right, Alice Coltrane (1937–2007) became a widow at 30, with three children, after her husband died in 1967. Thanks to critically acclaimed albums and concerts, her music career (which extended from jazz to gospel, R&B, and Indian devotional music) began to really blossom in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, grief and loneliness continued to haunt her, she writes here. She found spiritual enlightenment when she began following a Vedic spiritual path, specifically Advaita Vedanta, a practice led by guru Swami Satchidananda. By the late 1970s, she abandoned her storied music career to live in an ashram in California, later becoming a Swamini. Readers should not expect a conventional memoir, though Coltrane does discuss family, her music, and memories of her husband. Instead, this book explores faith, delivered in deft and, at times, opaque terms. VERDICT Coltrane's winning spiritual exercise will appeal to readers looking for a wonderful memoir about music and personal faith.—Leah K. Huey

Library Journal