Spirituality and John Coltrane Essay

'Salvation', by Langston Hughes is part of an autobiographical work written in 1940. The author narrates a story centering on a revival gathering that happened in his childhood. During the days leading up to the event, Hughes' aunt tells him repeatedly that he will be 'saved', stressing that he will see a light and Jesus will come into his life. He attends the meeting but when Jesus fails to appear, he is forced by peer pressure to lie and go up and be 'saved'. Hughes uses his story to illustrate how easy it is for children to misinterpret adults and subsequently become disillusioned.

Evidence has linked a strong relationship between spirituality and medicine. There is a positive correlation between a patient’s spirituality or religious commitment and health outcomes. A spiritual assessment as a part of a health assessment is a practical step to incorporating patient’s spiritual needs into practice. The FICA Tool and HOPE Questions provide serve to assist clinicians in the spiritual assessment process. By examining the research done using these tools, it has been determined that the FICA Tool is easy to use and provides basic data on a patient’s spirituality. The FICA tool is both reliable and valid. The HOPE Questions are

James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” is the authors most studied and critically analyzed piece of literature. The majority of these analyses focus on the obvious themes of the book such as jazz music, the unnamed narrator, or the rift that divides Sonny and his brother. Little critique has ever gone into the biblical and religious themes that run throughout the story of “Sonny’s Blues.” Furthermore, it is even more astonishing that there is little critique given Baldwin has such a strong history with the world of Christianity.

During this time Coltrane's heroin addiction increased. Once, while on tour with Gillespie's band, Coltrane passed out and had to be revived by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation by another band member (18). He pawned items for money to buy drugs, and he would many times show up late for gigs. At a show in Canada, Coltrane didn't even show up (19). He finally left the band in May 1950 (Wild).

Salvation is defined as the deliverance from sin and its consequences. In a Christianity sense, salvation is when a person accepts the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior, and they believe the fact that he died for the sins of Christians. The term of salvation is often referred to as being “saved”. Salvation is when one delivers not only their body in a physical to the church and God, but it is also a committee to Jesus mentally and spiritually. Getting saved can be a very pressuring and life changing decision. That is sometimes forced upon young adolescents. Ultimately it can cause one to question their spiritually sometimes even damaging their belief in Jesus. In Langston Hughes’

Like Sonny a lot of musicians were under the impression that heroin had a positive effect on the way their music sounded after shooting up (Davis). They also believed that by imitating certain musicians they would be like them, for example Charlie Parker. This meant that for them to be seen as cool in certain jazz circles they had to shoot heroin like

The book, The Spirituals and the Blues, by James H. Cone, illustrates how the slave spirituals and the blues reflected the struggle for black survival under the harsh reality of slavery and segregation. The spirituals are historical songs which speak out about the rupture of black lives in a religious sense, telling us about people in a land of bondage, and what they did to stay united and somehow fight back. The blues are somewhat different from in the spirituals in that they depict the secular aspect of black life during times of oppression and the capacity to survive. James H. Cone’s portrayal of how the spirituals and the blues aided blacks through times of hardship and adversity

African American religious music is the foundation of all contemporary forms of so called “black music.” African American religious music has been a fundamental part of the black experience in this country. This common staple of the African American experience can be traced back to the cruel system of slavery. It then evolved into what we refer to today as gospel music. The goal of this paper is to answer three main questions. What are the origins of African American religious music? How did this musical expression develop into a secular form of music? What is the future of African American religious music? These questions will be answered through factual research of African American traditions, artists, and various other sources.

Born on May 26, 1926, Miles Davis is considered to be one of the most influential jazz musicians in history. Being a trumpeter, keyboardist, composer, and band-leader, Miles is responsible for the popularization of many styles of jazz throughout his long and prolific career.

     Before even hitting a year as a soloist, Miles Davis put out his first album as a soloist named Birth of the Cool. This was definitely something to be marked down on the timeline of Jazz. The album was accurately named, being responsible for the stardom of Cool Jazz, a movement that the very new to the Jazz movement, Miles Davis, invented within his first year of success. The Cool Jazz, which featured Gil Evans, first appeared in the latter days of 1949.

The Motion picture “The Soloist” is about L.A. Times writer Steve Lopez discovering a musically gifted homeless man named Nathaniel Ayers. Desperately needing to catch a deadline Mr. Lopez considers writing a story about Nathaniel. While researching Mr. Lopez begins to discover interesting things about the talented musician. Nathanial Ayers was accepted to The Julliard’s School of music, the most prestige school for music in North America. After one year at Julliard Nathanial dropped out, it turns out that Nathanial had a case of Paranoid Schizophrenia that forced him into a spiral of madness, which soon caused him to become homeless and lose a chance at becoming on of the greatest musicians of

the early 1940s. Many bop pieces were played at the fastest tempos yet heard in

Langston Hughes in several poems denounced religion, inferring that religion did not exist any longer. In reading these poems, the reader canes that Hughes was expressing his feelings of betrayal and abandonment, against his race, by religion and the church. Hughes had a talent for writing poems that would start a discussion. From these discussions, Hugh es could only hope for realization from the public, of how religion and the church treated the Black race.

With the installation of the Miles Davis Quintet, Davis picked up where his late forties sessions left off. Eschewing the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of the prevalent bebop, Davis was given space to play long, legato and essentially melodic lines, where he would begin to explore modal music, his lifelong obsession. Modal jazz is a new venture for jazz both harmonically and structurally, it no longer used the chord progressions of standard tunes as the basis for improvisation replaced by a succession of scales on which the performer improvised instead (Kingman, 1990:390). Davis had definitely gone a long way in his trumpet playing since collaborating with Parker. No longer dependant on bebop phrasing, he chose a minimalist approach instead. Ornate phrasing gave way to a smattering of tones. He was also utilizing a Harmon mute, sometimes adding reverb, which had a whisper effect and personalised his sound. Elements of texture and silence between notes were becoming more dominant (Kirker, 2005:2). By 1958, he had freed himself by using modal scales and slower moving harmonies. “Milestones” portrayed this example as

In the 1960s, jazz fusion appeals more to the younger audience which happen to like rock or funk as well. In some ways the change of jazz into a new stream of music, jazz fusion alienated traditional jazz fans. The traditional jazz fans may not like the new approach to jazz. On the other hand, Miles Davis is having another success with “Bitches Brew” and be one of the leading pioneer of jazz fusion. I think that listeners needed some time to adjust to the new kind of music that they are hearing. For example, the transition from classical to jazz may be difficult for some people. It is the same concept here, some people may have some difficulties transitioning to a new type of jazz. On the other hand, rock musicians incorporate jazz, by the