Afro-Spiritual Jazz: A Sonic Return to Self

From Saturn to the Soufside: More than an art form; its expression of self & the collective

Afro-spiritual jazz is an experience that invokes ascension. 60’s and 70’s Afro-Spiritual jazz was more than just an art form. It was black people’s expression of self and the collective. A portal into the existence of black consciousness and the healing and state of African people in the Americas. During a time of awakening around the world, the use of psychedelics, and the expansion of consciousness, artists like Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra, Horace Tapscott, and more used their minds to cultivate a spiritual experience. An interpretive and expressive journey to a return of self, spirit, and identity. An ode to black existence. Rooted in African cosmology, infused with Eastern mysticism, and shaped by Black struggle, it created sonic portals for a people yearning for freedom: not just political, but universal and cosmic freedom. Consciousness.

Black spaces where black minds can create black artistic expressions are needed to be held together. The Black Conscious movement on a spiritual level was and is the release of shackles both physically and metaphorically speaking. A release of emotions and labels that have been put onto us rather than embraced by us and a return to names and meanings we choose for ourselves. You can hear the pain, joy, love, understanding, hurt, and gratitude in the art forms. Music, writings, films, all alike. The strength and mirroring of dynamics and fusion of emotions and thought. An escape and freedom of the mind not just the physical freedom of the Black community.

While white America was finding transcendence through LSD and acid rock, Black artists were remembering something older: altered states have always belonged to us. We didn’t need lab-made drugs to travel. We had the djembe. We had fasting, incense, prayer, breath, and rhythm. Sun Ra didn’t trip; he time-traveled. He spoke of being from Saturn and meant it. His band wore space robes and played music that felt like a future we hadn’t caught up to yet, a future where Egypt and the cosmos became one liberation zone. Afro-spiritual jazz wasn’t escapism; it was recovery. Recovery of identity, power, and ancestral technology. It was Black psychedelia rooted in survival and freedom, not indulgence.

In an America that told Black folks we were disconnected, rootless, and disposable, this music became proof of the opposite. Afro-spiritual jazz said: "You are rooted in the stars, the continent, the divine. To each other. It told us our grief could be sacred and dissonance had a place in healing. Freedom wasn’t just marching in the streets; it was happening within, in the spaces the West couldn’t colonize.

Shout out to Kamasi Washington, Angel Bat Dawid. You feel it in Black folks turning back to Yoruba, to Islam, to the divine feminine, to community healing. You feel it in the silence between notes, in the wail of a saxophone that knows pain but still reaches for God.