What is spiritual jazz?

Spiritual jazz is jazz made as a spiritual practice. The music is often long, slow to build and built around a chant, a drone or a single mode. Players use it to pray, to mourn, to search, or to say thank you. You do not need to share anyone's beliefs to feel what it is doing.

Where it came from

The sound took shape in the mid-1960s. In December 1964 John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme, a four-part suite he described as an offering of thanks. It came out in 1965 on Impulse! and changed what a jazz record could be about. Read the full story in The record John Coltrane prayed in four parts.

Others went further. Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity (1964) turned folk-like melodies into cries. Pharoah Sanders, who played in Coltrane's last bands, made Karma in 1969, with its thirty-three minute centerpiece "The Creator Has a Master Plan" (the story). Alice Coltrane took the music toward harp, strings and the devotional traditions she studied, on records like Journey in Satchidananda (1971) (the story).

How it sounds

• Long. Tracks often run ten, twenty or thirty minutes, so the music has room to rise and settle.
• Modal. Instead of racing through chord changes, players stay on one scale or mood and go deeper.
• Chant and voice. Singing, humming and shouted mantras show up often, as on Karma.
• Wide instruments. Harp, bells, hand drums, flutes and strings sit next to sax, piano and bass.
• Everything from calm to wild. Some records are a quiet room, others are a storm.

The labels and scenes

Independent labels carried a lot of this music. Strata-East, founded in 1971 by Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell, let musicians own their work, and it released records such as Billy Harper's Capra Black (the story). Black Jazz Records, started in Oakland by Gene Russell in 1969, added its own groove-heavy take. Our Watch page has short films on both.

Where the name came from

Few of these artists called their music "spiritual jazz" at the time. The label caught on later, as collectors, DJs and reissue labels grouped these records by feeling. That is why the term is loose, and why people still argue over what belongs.

Ten places to begin

A Love Supreme (John Coltrane), Karma (Pharoah Sanders), Journey in Satchidananda (Alice Coltrane), Space Is the Place (Sun Ra), Spiritual Unity (Albert Ayler), Expansions (Lonnie Liston Smith), Capra Black (Billy Harper), Sahara (McCoy Tyner), Black Christ of the Andes (Mary Lou Williams), and The Epic (Kamasi Washington). Our free guide, 10 Spiritual Jazz Albums to Start With, gives a true story about each and the track to play first.

Questions people ask

What is spiritual jazz?

Spiritual jazz is jazz that treats music as a spiritual practice. It grew out of the mid-1960s, when players like John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane stretched songs into long, modal, chant-like pieces about faith, searching and peace.

Who started spiritual jazz?

No one person did, but John Coltrane's 1965 album A Love Supreme is the usual starting point. Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Sun Ra took the idea in different directions.

Is spiritual jazz the same as free jazz?

No. They overlap. Some spiritual jazz is free and wild, and a lot of it is calm, melodic and built on a steady groove or a single mode. What ties it together is the purpose, not the style.

Do I need to be religious to enjoy it?

No. The artists drew on many traditions, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and African music, but you can come to it as plain listening.

Which spiritual jazz album should I hear first?

Try Pharoah Sanders' Karma, starting with The Creator Has a Master Plan, or Alice Coltrane's Journey in Satchidananda. Our free guide, 10 Spiritual Jazz Albums to Start With, gives you ten places to begin.

More: all the Deep Listens, short films, or the listening room.