East Greets West: Ravi Shankar’s Impact on John Coltrane
The 1960s were defined by monumental intersections in art and culture that would go on to transform the landscape of society forever. Peace and free love were themes that permeated every aspect of life, opening up hearts and minds to new experiences. Intertwined in this was an explosion of cross-cultural exchange. Western culture began to adopt Eastern philosophies and Ravi Shankar found himself at the center. Among the myriad of venerated titles attributed to Shankar throughout his life and career, one that so often stood out is the “Godfather of World Music.”
While many are familiar with Ravi’s relationship with George Harrison, his influence and reach stretched far beyond Beatlemania. Before he ever gave lessons to Harrison, Shankar’s raga mesmerized listeners and artists from all genres, resonating particularly with jazz musicians. Jazz in the 60s underwent a paradigm shift, substituting traditional scales for something less structured and more improvised. A new style emerged, called modal jazz. Where traditional jazz relied on a fixed tonal center, modal jazz emphasized improvisation which allowed musicians to translate unspoken emotion into their music in unpredictable and even spiritual ways. This evolution in jazz spurred many artists to explore Hindustani raga which contained many of the same principles. This heightened interest in raga led many musicians to seek Shankar’s guidance.
One of these musicians was none other than iconic jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane. Miles Davis’s 1958 album Milestones, on which Coltrane played, marked the world’s first major introduction to modal jazz. After its release, Coltrane began to incorporate this new avant-garde style into his own recordings and led him to explore Eastern styles of music with a similar vein. Coltrane’s fascination with classical Indian ragas and its spiritual framework became clearly evident with the release of India in 1961. Through his study, he developed a profound admiration for Ravi Shankar which resulted in a fateful meeting in 1964. A deep connection quickly formed between the two which led to Shankar taking Coltrane under his wing, teaching him about the philosophies and nuance behind raga.
As Shankar reminisced, “In our sessions he asked me many questions about the basis of our music: the way we learned from the beginning, how much was written down, how much was memorized, how much was fixed, how and when we started improvising, etc.”
Their relationship left an immutable impact on Coltrane. His 1964 masterpiece, A Love Supreme, brims with a spiritual energy that can be directly attributed to Shankar’s influence. All of Coltrane’s subsequent work would go on to embody the same spiritual and emotional journeys. His reverence for his friend and mentor went so far as the naming of his second child, Ravi Coltrane.
Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane kept in close contact up until the Coltrane’s death in 1967. Their friendship, mutual admiration, and distinctive legacies reverberated through all of art and culture. This fusion of Eastern and Western styles would go on to inspire musicians to explore new sounds and instruments for generations to come.