Hey everybody— I’ve become obsessed (addicted?) to Alice Coltrane’s Kirtan: turiya songs since it was widely released last year. For those who aren’t acquainted you can check it out here:
It’s such a great brooding and emotional vibe and all of the songs are just organ and vocals. They have an American gospel vibe, but also have Indian devotional elements and also an old school European spiritual vibe…a blend I love.
Does anybody have any recommendations for other artists or albums that harken to this “flavor” of music at all? Might be a long shot, but throw anything at me that reminds you of this and I’m definitely interested in checking it out….and I may develop a new obsession! Cheers and thanks
I thought of Tony Scott’ music for zen meditation.
tony Scott is a very good jazz musician, most of ‘these kind of album’ feel empty to mee. Just sound.
Music for zen meditation I amazing though.
This is nothing like Alice Coltrane, but it’s aiming at the same general place, though starting from a completely different direction. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was one of the great qawwali singers (Sufi devotional music). In additional to much traditional music, he worked with Peter Gabriel and other UK musicians. His “fusion” album Mustt Mustt (1990) has a similar feel to me. If you like the sound of it, you could also check out his more traditional work, or the work of the Sabri Brothers, also involved with Peter Gabriel.
Not very often that I see Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan talked about on Elektronauts! And on a thread about Alice Coltrane no less, which I was already a bit surprised (and excited) about. I’m not too familiar with Khan’s fusion stuff (mostly heard his traditional music) so I’ll have to check that album out.
I’m not sure if this fits the bill, but it also is based on solo organ, and also merges Western (jazz/classical/minimalism/electronic/…) with Indian music (Terry Riley, like other American musicians such as La Monte Young, studied with Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath).
As in many of his solo works, Riley employs early delay systems, whether digital or tape–I believe this studio recording used a very early digital one–in combination with keyboard improvisation, here on electric organ. The studio album Shri Camel:
And here’s a great video of some of the live performance of Shri Camel, which Riley developed over several years prior to the studio recording (in this video, he’s using tape for a delay system), with a bit of interview also:
Riley has a bunch of other interesting work, some of which is in a similar vein. Shri Camel and its various versions, and Descending Moonshine Dervishes, are my favorites, partially due to the use of just intonation imparting a subtle yet powerful rasa that IMO is much more “in tune” with a deeper character of Indian classical music that most Western music completely misses.
(BTW, Riley actually has some stuff with vocals also, but I personally don’t consider it among his best work.)
I love Alice Coltrane’s Ptah, the El Daoud. The only things that evoked that vibe were certain Flying Lotus tracks and Kamasi Washington’s The Epic, but nothing compares to Alice.
Cool I’ve never checked out music map…I’ll keep it in the back pocket for the future. Unfortunately, in this instance they give similar artists to Alice’s jazzier, groovier, avant- garde and bluesier side.
A next-level feature would be if the algorithm could make suggestions based on music similar to “turiya songs,” which to my ears is quite different to the rest of her catalog
