Ravi Coltrane carries a legacy of music in his name alone.
He's the son of legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, whose centennial birthday is on Sept. 23, and jazz harp pioneer Alice Coltrane. Ravi is also named after Ravi Shankar, a giant of Indian music.
But Ravi is a remarkable artist in his own right. Before a performance at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley last year, Ravi spoke with KNKX about his life in music and how he’s made his own mark on jazz.
Ravi's music is a summation of his experiences in the classroom, on the bandstand, and in his life.
John was born 100 years ago this month, and he died in 1967, just before Ravi’s second birthday. Ravi learned about his father through recordings his mother would play around the house. But jazz was just one style young Ravi heard as a child.
“[My mother] was very affected by Stravinsky’s music,” Coltrane said. “Also, everyone in the sixties was affected by Motown music, James Brown’s music…so those became my earliest memories of music: 'Firebird Suite' and 'Make it Funky.' I turned my kids on to that the minute they were born!”
Ravi started to play saxophone in high school, then, when he was 16, his older brother John Coltrane, Jr., died in a car crash. He now had two voids in his life with the loss of his brother and father.
“It was a real shock to the system,” said Ravi.
Ravi briefly dropped out of school and didn’t return to the saxophone until he was 21. Then, he found his way to the California Institute of the Arts. His mother told him to study with her “great musical partner of the time" Charlie Haden.
“Over time, I started to hear the music,” Ravi said. “I started to react to the music very differently. It was calling out to me in a way, and I went toward it.”
The inspiration was inside Ravi all along.
“Once you really start to hear it, you’re really going to want to immerse yourself and go deeper with the music," he said. "The deeper I got, really connecting as a listener, I felt I should try to play it [and] learn more about jazz improvisation.”
Ravi considered his early musical experiences a sort of experiment.
“I didn’t have any plans or intentions of being a musician,” he said. “But with each moment, each year, it was like ‘Yeah, the music is very fulfilling!’ I realized I wanted to be a part of the jazz world.”
Like his father, Ravi spent several years as a sideman before forming his own band. He recorded with drummer Elvin Jones, a veteran of John’s bands, and also fellow saxophonists Steve Coleman, David Murray, and his biggest influence, Ralph Moore.
“When I heard Ralph, it’s like, ‘That’s how I want to play. This guy’s got it,'" he said.
But Ravi quickly learned that copying other musicians was the wrong path.
“I remember telling him, ‘I only want to play like you,’ and he looked at me with disappointment. He said, ‘Man, you can only play like yourself,’ and I understood exactly what he was saying," Ravi said.
Ravi's philosophy is that your own sound stems from the things you experience, your collaborators, and the music you choose to play.
"And another part should be, ‘All right, what is inside me? What do I have to offer that’s unique?’ We have to embrace who we are as creative players and creative beings," Ravi said.
Ravi is still developing his sound, and it's a "beautiful struggle."
“I’m still working on it. My only goal is really to just be a part of this music," he said.
Ravi continues to be an important and impactful part of the jazz world. One concert review in All About Jazz called him “a great jazz musician and band leader who has made his own legend.”
On Sept. 23, John’s 100th birthday, Ravi will perform the entirety of his father’s spiritual jazz masterpiece “A Love Supreme” at St. Andrew’s-Wesley United Church in Vancouver, B.C. September 28.
