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For decades, Alice Coltrane existed in the shadow of a giant — first as the wife of jazz legend John Coltrane, then later as a spiritual seeker who largely withdrew from public life.
But now — nearly twenty years after her death — her music is reaching a whole new generation of listeners.
A new book titled "Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane" traces that journey.
The author is San Antonio-raised writer Andy Beta, now based in New York City.
Beta says his own musical curiosity started while growing up in San Antonio.
“I can think of one of my favorite bands. The lead singer was working at a local book shop and you could just go and talk to him and he would recommend books. And you’d see him on stage, almost like a superhero transformed and bigger than life. And I think that just kindled a real love of music for me that’s carried on to this day,” said Beta.
Alice Coltrane was born Alice McLeod in 1937 in Detroit, MI. A trained pianist, she became immersed in the city’s vibrant jazz scene before meeting saxophonist John Coltrane. They married in 1965.
After John died two years later, Alice began forging a sound and spiritual path all her own. By 1971, she had released five albums as a leader on the Impulse label, combining jazz improvisation with blues, gospel, Indian devotional music and classical influences while performing on piano, harp, and organ.
Many younger listeners connect her music to ambient and meditative new-age sounds. But Beta said he’s listened to Alice Coltrane's 1971 album “Universal Consciousness” hundreds if not thousands of times and hears it differently.
“If you listen to "Universal Consciousness," it is not a calm, reflective, background music. It really kind of grabs you by your collar and yanks you up into the stratosphere,” said Beta.
In the book, Beta points out the misogyny that came from critics beyond matters of taste. One reviewer described Alice as a "virtually talentless lady who married the right man."
“I think in a lot of my research I was just really, like, gobsmacked by just how much vitriol is directed at her as a woman. Underneath it all you know there’s something far more misogynistic at work,” said Beta.
Eventually, Alice moved to the mountains of Southern California, where she founded an ashram in the Vedantic tradition and took the name Swamini Turiyasangitananda.
There, music became part of religious practice.
As part of his research and for a deeper understanding of Alice’s life, Beta visited the ashram.
“Just meeting some of the people that knew her and lived with her and people who had been her students since the late seventies — having those sorts of relationships helped me a great deal in kind of understanding at least that aspect of her,” said Beta.
Alice made devotional music on synthesizers and produced it on cassette tapes to circulate at her ashram. They’re rare, but still available through various channels.
Artists across jazz, electronic and ambient music, and hip-hop have embraced her recordings. Streaming platforms and reissues have introduced younger audiences to albums that once felt almost hidden.
For Beta, writing "Cosmic Music" became more than a biography. It was also an attempt to explain why Alice Coltrane’s music is reaching a new generation of listeners.
“We’re dealing with so much confusion and chaos and racial animus and stuff like that, and I just found her story to be such a beacon and such a ray of hope in this time,” said Beta.
And decades later, Alice Coltrane’s music is still finding new listeners searching for something beyond the noise.
