Collection: Spiritual Jazz

Spiritual jazz starts with John Coltrane, whose music had turned openly devotional by the time of A Love Supreme (1965, Impulse!). After his death in 1967, the musicians closest to him carried that search on. Pharoah Sanders made Karma (1969, Impulse!) with vocalist Leon Thomas, and Alice Coltrane, with Sanders beside her, made Journey in Satchidananda (1971, Impulse!). The sound is easy to recognise once you know it: long modal vamps, hand percussion and bells, chanted melodies, with solos that can settle into calm or break into free playing within a single piece. Impulse! was its first home, but by the early 1970s musicians were releasing it themselves, through Strata-East, founded in New York in 1971 by Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell, and the Tribe collective in Detroit. The revival has been just as strong, carried by Jazzman’s long-running Spiritual Jazz compilations and by Kamasi Washington’s The Epic (2015, Brainfeeder). This collection gathers the Impulse! records, the musician-run labels and the new releases keeping the music moving. For the full story, read The Return of Spiritual Jazz on the Lush Life blog.