Have a listen to this beautiful soaring track by the late Alice Coltrane, “Om Shanti,” appearing on Luaka Bop’s forthcoming collection entitled World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda.
In the early 1980s, jazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane devoted herself to the Hindu tradition, adopting the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda and established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside Los Angeles. There she continued to make deeply spiritual music—merging Vedic Chants with gospel-inspired singing on cassettes she released and distributed privately within the community. The release of The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda marks the first in Luaka Bop’s (a label founded by musician and record producer David Byrne) new series of spiritual music from around the world. The album is out on May 5.