"If music be the food of love, play on."
Soul Trane
Music is subjective, but religion is pretty subjective, too. Jesus Christ has his followers, but so do Ed Wood, various space aliens and a flying monster made of spaghetti. That being said, it’s not entirely surprising that some music lovers take their adoration to the next level.
The Coltrane Church—or more specifically, the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church—came about following a 1965 appearance of the legendary saxophonist at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco when a group of spectators believed they saw the Christian Holy Ghost walking with Coltrane as he came out on stage.
Dr. Nicholas Baham, an ethnic studies professor at Cal State East Bay, began his work with the church from an anthropological standpoint, but his association has since grown. He plays guitar with its band, he does lay ministry; he is writing a book.
Although music and religion have been entwined since the earliest pagans first danced ‘round their fires, along the line conflicting schools of thought emerged. The Greeks began to break art into categories of high and low, says Baham, some that was considered more cerebral, some less. “Your European intelligentsia really had a nice way of organizing how you supposedly thought about the music you heard,” he says. For someone like Baham, who primarily studies African-based culture, this doesn’t necessarily apply.
“In Africa, there wasn’t this sense that grows in Europe over time of the ‘professionalization’ of music … that it’s something that is performed for audiences that sit and listen …. [In Africa] Everyone knows the songs, the dances …it’s a part of who you are,” says Baham. “And you don’t have this high and low thing, because the body isn’t regarded as a low thing.”
The Coltrane church is a fusion. “They’re working on an idiom called jazz,” Baham says. “A word that people presumed meant fucking. It was associated with the red-light district, it was a low music.” The European ideology is that there are places where God will be and places where God won’t. The Coltrane Church picks up on more Afro centric notions: Both good and evil are potentially everywhere. At all times. “So they have no problem taking a music that was considered brothel music and celebrating a saint who was once a heroin addict and playing it in a church to be spiritually uplifted.”
The Coltrane Church—or more specifically, the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church—came about following a 1965 appearance of the legendary saxophonist at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco when a group of spectators believed they saw the Christian Holy Ghost walking with Coltrane as he came out on stage.
Dr. Nicholas Baham, an ethnic studies professor at Cal State East Bay, began his work with the church from an anthropological standpoint, but his association has since grown. He plays guitar with its band, he does lay ministry; he is writing a book.
Although music and religion have been entwined since the earliest pagans first danced ‘round their fires, along the line conflicting schools of thought emerged. The Greeks began to break art into categories of high and low, says Baham, some that was considered more cerebral, some less. “Your European intelligentsia really had a nice way of organizing how you supposedly thought about the music you heard,” he says. For someone like Baham, who primarily studies African-based culture, this doesn’t necessarily apply.
“In Africa, there wasn’t this sense that grows in Europe over time of the ‘professionalization’ of music … that it’s something that is performed for audiences that sit and listen …. [In Africa] Everyone knows the songs, the dances …it’s a part of who you are,” says Baham. “And you don’t have this high and low thing, because the body isn’t regarded as a low thing.”
The Coltrane church is a fusion. “They’re working on an idiom called jazz,” Baham says. “A word that people presumed meant fucking. It was associated with the red-light district, it was a low music.” The European ideology is that there are places where God will be and places where God won’t. The Coltrane Church picks up on more Afro centric notions: Both good and evil are potentially everywhere. At all times. “So they have no problem taking a music that was considered brothel music and celebrating a saint who was once a heroin addict and playing it in a church to be spiritually uplifted.”
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