The Magic of World Galaxy

By Nathan Hilyard

There is a very quiet interest hiding deep inside the work of Alice Coltrane. Upon first listen, the untrained ear takes her music to be another blurt of some expressive, esoteric medium, but once the listener is able to wade slowly into her canon and swim through her discography, the essential ideas and forms she attempts to communicate in World Galaxy begin to take shape. 

Alice Coltrane began formally making solo music after the death of her husband, the renowned jazz musician John Coltrane, in 1967. She began initially as a band leader, with her first works focusing on a traditional jazz sound, but by 1971 she began to compose a quartet for four landmark albums, Journey in Satchidananda (1971), Universal Consciousness (1972), World Galaxy (1972), and Lord of Lords (1972). Within these four works she dives deep into her spiritual practices, incorporating rich orchestration, her signature work on the harp, classical melodies, and electronic organ all into one deeply expressive oeuvre. Honing in more specifically, World Galaxy, which, on November 15th, celebrates 51 years since its recording and 50 years since its release, displays her progression from traditional jazz into spiritual elation.

World Galaxy features just five songs: three original compositions bookended by two covers, all spanning forty minutes. The first cover, “My Favorite Things,” is a far removed interpolation of the Julie Andrews original. In place of the bubbly showtune classic, Coltrane opens the song with minor licks and a developed swing, the iconic melody soon materializing from improvisational electric organ all supported by twiring strings. The entire song circles around these classic melodies presented through these unique instrumentations. “My Favorite Things” was covered by Jazz musicians, one of the more significant covers having been done by Alice’s late husband John Coltrane. John was praised for his ability to contort the original into something so smooth and ironic—his cover of the song becoming of the most recognizable pieces in his canon—and Alice, through her inclusion of the song as the opening track, both enshrines the work of her husband and continues to morph the classic into something of her own creation. Alice’s “My Favorite Things” buds from this same ironic twist presented by John, but features the first whisperings of Alice’s spiritual developments. Towards the end of the piece, the quintessential melody is soon consumed by whirling strings, and the song ends with the huge, confirmative sound. It is full and intense, but in no way uncomfortable, the strings sit atop the melody as a huge observant presence. World Galaxy begins in this grounded way, taking inspiration from a universally renowned classic and developing its sound into this calm conscious realm. “My Favorite Things” is a substantial and well planned opener, setting the pace for the musicianship and sonic experiments of the album while still not straying too far from the original jazz canon. Alice is only gearing up and opens up her true creativity in the subsequent tracks.  

Following “My Favorite Things,” she places three consecutive original compositions, “Galaxy Around Olodumare,” “Galaxy in Turiya,” and “Galaxy in Satchidananda.” All three of these pieces are meditative, mostly composed of strings and harp with bouts of saxophone and organ sprinkled throughout. And these three works are different in tone, but similar in content, focusing heavily on her spiritual experiences and using the sound as a means of communicating these thoughts. After the death of her husband in 1967 she was sent into a depressive episode, experiencing dramatic weight loss and intense emotional strife, and as a result she began to reach out for different means of reasoning with life. These experiments led Alice to her practices of spirituality, all of which greatly informed her subsequent work and lifestyle. She worked extensively with Swami Satchidananda developing her Hindu spiritualism, Swami being featured later in the album. The ideas and practices she picked up during this time are wholly apparent in the music she simultaneously composed. The three central tracks focus on this impulsive spiritual communication, using jazz not as a means of musical expression, but more as a transmission of spiritual ideals. Alice takes jazz and expands upon it using these transcendent contemplations. The three “Galaxy” tracks work to expand the mind beyond the confines of habitual thinking.

After these longform ponderings, she closes the album with a cover of John Coltrane’s career defining work “A Love Supreme.” The song opens with Swami Satchidananda narrating on love: “The entire universe is created with Love, by Love, and in Love” and all the while the strings supply now-familiar deeply meditative chords rumbling under his words. He ends minutes later, just as the rhythm section creeps in saying, “Such a Love is the supreme One / Let that Love Supreme reign over the Universe,” and the song opens into the joyful, contemplative melodies first brought forth by John Coltrane. Alice expands the work of her husband to include such profound statements, and after the first four tracks Swami’s words seem to be more of a repetition of all the things formerly expressed in Alice’s playing now vocalized. By bookeding World Galaxy with pieces so essential to her husband’s legacy, she continues his developments of the genre beyond its former boundaries all while taking such a liberating freedom in their interpretation. 

World Galaxy is pure love distilled, not a love in an exclusive or confusing manner, but love as a holistic, binding force. Alice Coltrane manages to use jazz as the lubricant for development, pushing both herself and the medium into more well developed, aware territories.