Essay marks Coltrane centenary, links jazz to Carnatic music

The brief

Context

John Coltrane, the American tenor saxophonist who shaped modern jazz, would have turned 100 on September 23, 2026 — the date of this essay by writer Shruti Rajagopalan on Scroll.in, published amid centenary tribute concerts. The piece is a personal musing rather than a critical thesis, tracing how Coltrane's modal improvisation — improvising over a steady harmonic space rather than moving chords — resembles the way Carnatic and Hindustani raags are explored against a drone. It documents his known Indian engagements, from listening to Ravi Shankar and playing a tune called "India" to naming his second son Ravi, and then speculates that had he lived, he would have tackled the Carnatic melakarta system of 72 parent scales.

Key facts

• Coltrane's hundredth birthday falls on September 23, 2026, on the fall equinox, marked by centenary tribute concerts.
• Kind of Blue (with Coltrane on tenor and Cannonball Adderley on alto) and Giant Steps were recorded a few weeks apart in 1959.
• By early 1961 Coltrane was listening closely to Ravi Shankar and collecting his records; that November at the Village Vanguard he played a tune called India.
• India was probably drawn from a Vedic chant on Religious Music of India, a 1952 Folkways record apparently played for him by bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik.
• Critics of the time dismissed Coltrane and Eric Dolphy's music as "anti-jazz".
• Coltrane's second son, born in 1965, was named Ravi by John and Alice Coltrane; Shankar said Coltrane planned to set aside six months in 1967 to study at his Los Angeles school.
• Coltrane picked up the saxophone at 17, made most of his recordings between 1957 and 1967, often played 18 hours a day, and died in July 1967 at 40.
• The Carnatic melakarta system has exactly 72 parent scales; Venkatamakhin set out the 72 melas in the Chaturdandi Prakasika around 1660.

Timeline

1. Around 1660Venkatamakhin sets out the 72 possible melas in the Chaturdandi Prakasika, writing that not even Shiva could produce a 73rd.
2. 1952Folkways releases Religious Music of India, the likely source of the Vedic chant behind Coltrane's tune India.
3. 1957Coltrane, playing with Thelonious Monk, is already permuting small groups of notes; most of his recordings date from 1957 to 1967.
4. 1959Kind of Blue and Giant Steps recorded a few weeks apart; Tommy Flanagan plays a halting solo on the Giant Steps session.
5. Early 1961Coltrane is listening closely to Ravi Shankar and collecting his records; tells a Dutch interviewer the Indian elements in My Favorite Things were "more or less subconscious".
6. November 1961Coltrane plays India at the Village Vanguard, with Abdul-Malik on drone, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet and Garvin Bushell on English horn.
7. 1963Stockholm and Berlin concerts later issued as Afro Blue Impressions; an interview with Jean Clouzet and Michel Delorme is published in which he wishes music could make it rain or cure a sick friend.
8. 1965Coltrane's second son is born and named Ravi.
9. 1966At a Japan press conference Coltrane says that in ten years he would like to be a saint.
10. July 1967Coltrane dies at the age of 40.

Who has a stake

• John Coltrane (1926-1967) — The centenary subject; his modal and later incantatory playing is read as evidence of a sustained engagement with Indian musical ideas.
• Ravi Shankar — Corresponded with and gave Coltrane informal lessons; said he could teach only the basics, counted Coltrane a friend but sometimes found his music turbulent.
• Shruti Rajagopalan, essayist — Writes as a listener raised on Indian classical music — her mother is Carnatic veena soloist Vidushi Saraswati Rajagopalan — arguing for a jazz-Carnatic bridge.
• Carl Clements, ethnomusicologist — Argues modal jazz loosened Coltrane's dependence on chord changes, sending him to Indian scales; identifies the "sad morning scale" as Hindustani Bhairavi.
• Coltrane's sidemen and associates — McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, Eric Dolphy, Garvin Bushell, Ahmed Abdul-Malik and student Carl Grubbs shaped or preserved this phase of his work.
• Biographers Lewis Porter and Cuthbert Simpkins — Reproduced the scale pages that form the documentary evidence of Coltrane's study of Indian scales.
• Carnatic and Hindustani music traditions — Their grammar of raag, melakarta and rasa is offered as the framework through which Coltrane's late direction can be understood.

Why it matters

The essay is a reminder that Indian classical grammar travelled into global popular and art music through documented exchanges, not vague "influence" — Shankar's records, informal lessons, handwritten scale sheets and a son named Ravi. It also explains, for a lay reader, two different ideas of musical freedom: improvising through moving harmony, as in Giant Steps, versus discovering fresh sound inside a fixed melodic space, as in a raag. That distinction underlies why cross-cultural collaborations succeed or remain superficial.