Alice Coltrane: Eternity’s Pillar+ Kevin Le Gendre and Kodwo Eshun in conversation

Selected episodes from Alice Coltrane’s extraordinary devotional television series Eternity’s Pillar, newly released on Blu-ray by Exotic Material.

In 1985, KTTV Channel 11, an independent commercial television station in Los Angeles, began broadcasting Eternity’s Pillar every Sunday after midnight. Across the series, Alice Coltrane, appearing as Swamini Turiyasangitananda, presented devotional wisdom, meditation and music in an ecumenical context.

The programmes bring together solo performances on piano, harp, organ and OB-8 synthesizer, music composed from scripture, readings from Coltrane’s Endless Wisdom, chanting with members of the Vedantic Center, dance, meditation and vivid 1980s video effects. Created, directed, written and scored by Coltrane herself, the series offers a remarkable window onto her musical and spiritual life during a period in which she had largely withdrawn from the commercial music world.

Broadcast between 1985 and 1988, Eternity’s Pillar remained little seen outside Los Angeles. Seventeen surviving episodes have now been digitised from original U-matic broadcast master tapes held by the Coltrane archive and presented together for the first time in a limited-edition Blu-ray release from Exotic Material.

Kodwo Eshun: Kodwo Eshun Dr. Kodwo Eshun lectures at the Centre for Research Architecture at the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is author of More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, Dan Graham: Rock My Religion and co-editor of Arrows of Desire: Peter Wollen Selected Writings 1963-2002, Post Punk Then and Now, Harun Farocki Against What? Against Whom and The Ghosts of Songs: The Film Art of the Black Audio Film Collective 1982–1998. He is co-founder of the award winning The Otolith Group whose work is currently on exhibition at Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica at The Barbican, To Improvise a Mountain: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Curates at De La Warr Pavilion and Ibraaz at 93 Mortimer Street.

Kevin Le Gendre: Kevin Le Gendre Kevin Le Gendre is a journalist and broadcaster with an interest in black music, literature and culture. Since the late 90s he has written about soul, jazz, African and Caribbean musicians and authors for a wide variety of publications that includes Echoes, Jazzwise, The Independent, The Guardian and Vibrations [Switzerland]. He has also contributed to and presented programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4 such as Jazz Line Up and Front Row. In 2013 his first book Soul Unsung: Reflections On The Band In Black Popular Music was published to critical acclaim by Equinox.