Journal of Transnational American Studies

This article examines the impact of Neo-Vedanta philosophy on Black jazz musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, with a special focus on Alice Coltrane. By using what I have come to understand as a decolonial analysis, I situate the artists whose works I discuss in the context of a wider decolonial turn in the late twentieth century. In addition to tracing the transmission of Neo-Vedanta philosophy, guru-sisya (guru-disciple) relationships, and ideas about universal religion into the US, this article also traces how various Black artistic and political figures rethought religion and spirituality in terms of radical liberation. Amid this convergence of new religious movements and Black activism, artists like Alice Coltrane became more open to Eastern spiritual transformation, and her own work ultimately made no distinction between spirtual and music practice. While this is a historical essay, I bookend my historical analysis with personal reflections on how I have received this lineage in my own artistic practice.