I am standing alone on an isolated plot of land in the Santa Monica Mountains, about a 30-minute drive northwest of Malibu, in the small, unincorporated community of Agoura. As I look around, it’s nearly impossible to comprehend that this barren site was once home to the worship community of one of the most celebrated names in spiritual jazz music—or that this entire area had, just seven years earlier, been destroyed by wildfire.
Alice Coltrane acquired this 48-acre property in 1983 and was joined by her small, racially mixed community of devotees, many of whom had been studying and worshipping with her for nearly 10 years. An accomplished pianist, harpist, bandleader, and composer, Coltrane was also renowned as a spiritual leader and guru, inspired by principles of divine love and devotion. She embraced Advaita Vedanta, drawn from the ancient Vedic teachings, which, in simple terms, centers on the supreme truth of Advaita, or nonduality, which says that the individual soul (atman) is one with the eternal universe (Brahman) and that all physical life is illusion (maya). Over time, Coltrane developed her own teachings, often telling her disciples to, as longtime ashram resident Purusha Hickson recalls, “get devotion for God, and everything else will be added unto you.”
Coltrane embarked on her spiritual journey in the early ’70s, following a long period of grief and depression after losing her husband, jazz titan John Coltrane, who died of liver cancer at age 40 in 1967. During this time, she recorded a succession of acclaimed albums for the Impulse! and Warner Bros. record labels, melding modern jazz with Euro-classical music, African American gospel, and Indian ragas. But toward the end of the decade, Coltrane claimed to have received a revelation from God that told her to stop recording commercial music, abandon the secular life, and give herself wholly to worship and spiritual instruction. She took the name Turiyasangitananda—translated from Sanskrit as “the Transcendental Lord’s Highest Song of Bliss”—and self-published devotional books of scripture and commentary. She studied under Indian guru Swami Satchidananda, eventually moving from New York to San Francisco in 1972, where she established the Vedantic Center, an organization dedicated to exploring spiritual matters and world faith traditions. The headquarters were first in a small storefront on Divisadero Street in the Lower Haight for several years before relocating to her new Los Angeles home in Woodland Hills.
In 1983, Coltrane founded the Shanti Anantam Ashram, later renamed the Sai Anantam Ashram, in the Santa Monica Mountains.
LIFE AFTER COLTRANE
The only proof of the ashram that I can find is about a dozen white-painted steps, recognizable from photos I’d seen that had been taken in its halcyon days. These steps once led to a modest white temple, where Turiyasangitananda—or Swamini, meaning “patron,” as her disciples preferred—led worship services, consisting of bhajans (devotional chanting and singing) and spiritual contemplation. The grounds also included a bookstore and simple living quarters for the approximately 30 to 40 full-time disciples and their children. Guests were welcome to visit for scripture studies on Wednesdays or worship services on Sundays.
“We were very much absorbed in the spiritual messages from Swamini—that’s why we were all there,” Radha Botofasina tells me. Initiated by Coltrane in 1978, Botofasina became a permanent resident of the ashram when it was first established. She raised her children there and remained even after Coltrane’s death from respiratory failure, in 2007. Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda was 69 years old when she passed.
Coltrane’s devotees at Sai Anantam Ashram continued as best they could without their Swamini, finally selling the property in December 2017. One year later, the land and ashram structures, including the temple and living quarters, were consumed by the Woolsey Fire, which ultimately burned 96,949 acres, prompted the evacuation of 295,000 residents in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties, and took the lives of three people.
Coltrane’s children, as well as many others who grew up on the ashram, have since gone on to have notable music careers of their own, including her and John’s son, the saxophonist Ravi Coltrane; her daughter and John’s stepdaughter, the vocalist Michelle Coltrane; Botofasina’s son, the keyboardist and composer Surya Botofasina, who recently collaborated with André 3000 on the Grammy-nominated album New Blue Sun; former ashram child resident Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, popularly known as the rapper and singer Doja Cat; and Alice’s grandnephew, the Grammy-winning composer, producer, and Kendrick Lamar collaborator Steven D. Bingley-Ellison, professionally known as Flying Lotus.
THE YEAR OF ALICE
With interest in Alice Coltrane’s work gaining in recent years, record labels, organizers, and curators are finding ways to acknowledge and celebrate her artistic and spiritual contributions and legacy. Coltrane is the focus of a new exhibition, Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal, opening February 9 at Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum. It will be the first show dedicated to Coltrane’s life, music, spiritual journey, and legacy. The multisensory exhibition will feature rare ephemera from the Coltrane family’s personal archive, including handwritten correspondence and sheet music, unreleased audio recordings, and video footage, as well as original paintings, photography, installations, and performances by 19 contemporary American artists inspired by Coltrane’s work.
For Monument Eternal curator and Coltrane admirer Erin Christovale, this exhibition is an opportunity to share—with longtime fans and newcomers alike—the healing power of Coltrane’s music, which Christovale believes is especially timely and needed today. The exhibition will also coincide with the republication of Coltrane’s 1977 autobiographical book, for which the show was named, by Akashic Books earlier this week.
“For all of the reasons in this current world, we are all seeking some form of healing, care, or art that brings us joy or liberation,” Christovale tells me. “And I think her work does that, and I genuinely think that’s why people are really latching on to her in this moment.”
Monument Eternal is part of “The Year of Alice,” a series of events and exhibitions that began in spring 2024. Spearheaded by the Coltrane family and the John & Alice Coltrane Home—a nonprofit preservation organization—“The Year of Alice” includes album releases and concerts in Los Angeles, New York, and Detroit (Coltrane’s birthplace), with live performances by many of her children and acolytes.
Hickson appreciates how Coltrane’s influence as a musician and composer, as well as her legacy as a spiritual pioneer, has been gaining wider awareness and recognition in the 18 years since her passing. “Her message lives on and, in many ways, is being released to the world in greater ways, even though she’s no longer physically here,” Hickson tells me.
ANOTHER FIRE
Today, if you were to drive to the former site of the Sai Anantam Ashram on the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles, you’d pass through the ruins from yet another, much more recent wildfire. The Palisades Fire burned 23,448 acres, destroyed nearly 7,000 structures, and displaced thousands of families from the residential Pacific Palisades community. Other wildfires in the area, including the Eaton Fire in Altadena, also decimated historic communities and uprooted thousands of families.
As I stand on these ruined and abandoned grounds where the ashram once stood, I’m reminded of how precarious life is in this part of the country, where our homes and communities could, at any moment, be reduced to ash and memory. But, as Hickson tells me, Coltrane would often remind her devotees that our time here on this land is only temporary.
“The earth is not your home,” Hickson remembers her telling them. “You come from God—that’s who you come from. And that’s who you’re going back to.”•
ALICE COLTRANE, MONUMENT ETERNAL
February 9–May 4, 2025
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
Santi Elijah Holley is an award-winning journalist and the author of An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created. He is a regular contributor to Alta Journal.
