John Coltrane
John Coltrane or 'Trane' was an American jazz saxophonist who brought great change to the art of jazz and brought forth a spiritual change to the genre. In his earlier years, he played the traditional rhythm and blues until the 1950's in which he joined with Thelonious Monk to create a culti-style jazz which was liberated rhythmically and melodically from traditional jazz genres. Coltrane's liberation also went towards religion and spiritualism about a decade later and with the composition "Love Supreme", wrote this hymn to God and thus made God the center of his life and music. He later delved into avant garde jazz called 'free jazz' in which the abstractness and free harmonies created his awakening with the work "Ascension". Yet, Coltrane never reneged on his spiritual awakening and conversion to God.
As John Coltrane had a spiritual awakening and converted his life and music to God, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon also hopes to awaken us to living for the sake of God: "My life is for the sake of God. You all should think to live for the sake of God and the world. You shouldn't think to live for the sake of yourselves. You should think about God, True Parents, and human beings". (See: The Standard of the Physical World, The Preciousness of the Physical Body, The Existence of Human Beings on Earth and in the Spirit World, The Completed Testament Age and the Ideal Kingdom, NY: Family Federtion for World Peace and Unification, 1999. ISBN 1-910-62197-7).
John Coltrane lived for others, especially in his novel changes that he brought to jazz in the form of 'free jazz'. This style was called anti-jazz but was an awakening of the genre for abstract improvisation and new sounds and rhythm.teachers and researchers who wish to further pursue these topics from a unification perspective.
