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Sunday morning and a small storefront buzzes with several dozen people packed onto seven wooden pews. Bright murals are on the walls; trees, sunbeams and soaring angels; a brown-skinned, dreadlocked Christ, draped in blue and purple garments, reclining on a large throne. The next panel depicts a halo'ed, white-robed image of John Coltrane holding a golden saxophone that breathes fire from its bell. A scroll unfurled from his other hand reads: LET US SING ALL SONGS TO GOD TO WHOM ALL PRAISE IS DUE...PRAISE GOD.
At the back of the room, a wiry young drummer wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and a baby ëfro taps a gentle rhythm on an old kit. Next to him, a lady in overalls sits on a stool, balancing an electric bass in her lap. He makes eye contact with her and nods. She shifts her weight slightly and begins plucking a steady line of notes. A multiethnic group of women and children in the front pew stand up and start to sway with the beat.
Behind the bassist, a dart velour curtain parts, and a tall, bespectacled black man steps into the room He's dressed regally in a long fuschia robe with a sash and a white-tabbed priest's collar. A matching cloth crown rests atop his head, and a large silver cross swings from his neck. He raises a pearly conch shell to his mouth, leans back, and blows a solemn call.
This is Bishop Franzo Wayne King, saxophonist, theologian, "minister of sound," and founder of San Francisco's St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church. Here, in this room, every Sunday and Wednesday, King leads a congregation of hardcore Coltrane Disciples, spiritual seekers and curious onlookers into what he calls "spiritual warfare." Each service is a marathon of testimony, song and prayer aimed at tipping the balance in the eternal struggle of good against evil. And each service is guided by, centered around and directed through the words and music of sax legend Coltrane. |
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"The handclap in praise of the Lord," the bishop says, "is like thunder in the ears of Satan!" Raised by a family of Pentecostal preachers, KIng speaks with fiery conviction. His vocal pattern, though, still carries a cool inflection from his days as a hepcat musician and hairdresser.
Mother Marina, King's wife and Sister Mary Deborah, a tranquil-looking, dreadlocked woman in a black nun's habit, begin softly singing the words "John Coltrane" again and again. One by one, the other choir members echo the refrain. Snapping fingers, clapping hands, they raise the volume with each repetition. The bishop and Father De Haven- a goateed white man, also robed-pick up saxophones and kneel before a candlelit altar. While they pray, heads bowed, a burly pianist joins in rhythm, and then a bongo drummer. Sister Mary Deborah lifts her right hand and leads the choir in a recitation of Psalm 23. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," they sing to the melody of Coltrane's 1964 "Acknowledgment," "I will fear no evil. / For Thou art with me. / Thy rod and Thy staff / They comfort me..."
King first gathered his flock in the 1960s, operating a secular "listening clinic" out of his living room. It was known as the Yardbird Club, after bebop innovator Charlie "Yardbird" Parker, and was designed to educate the community about what Bishop King refers to as "African classical so-called jazz music."
Shortly before John Coltrane died from liver cancer in 1967, King and Mother Marina saw him play at San Francisco's Jazz Workshop-an experience they refer to as their "baptism in sound." From then on, the listening clinic took on a religious atmoshphere and was referred to as the Yardbird Temple.
After the ceremony, I sit in the back of the church with King.
The bishop has shed his robe and now wears a priest's black suit. His cramped study is cluttered with books and papers. Framed photographs of Bob Marley, Malcolm X, and of course, Coltrane hang on the walls. "When we went to see Coltrane," King says, "and began to understand who he was and what he was representing in terms of God, we realized that we didn't need a club, we actually needed a temple--a sacred place of prayer."
Collecting alms at street ministries, selling homemade juice and offering garbage pickups, the temple raised money for a "physical edifice." In 1969 they found a location on Divisadero Street in the Haight district. Two years later, they opened to the public as the One Mind Temple Evolutionary Transitional Body of Christ. "To us," King says, "John was like the Christ-the annointed, the spirit of God. Coltrane had songs titled ëEvolution' and ëTransition'; we tood those together and said we had to evolve and transcend into Christ-like beings. And we felt that John's music had the power to assist us in that."
The sax-bearing clergymen rise from the red carpet, turn to the band, and start blowing in time. An improvisational "free" jam goes sprialing off toward the heavens. The horns squeal sheets of wind over a hailstorm of drumbeats. the pianist pounds the keys with elbows and clenched fists. The bishop points at his musicians and singers, urging them on, calling for solos or fills. "You gotta work," he says between his own licks. "The prayin's in the playin'!"
Mother Marina stands encircled by the rest of the choir. Eyes closed, arms raised, she wails in a strange tongue. Parishioners who've come equipped join the noise with guitars and tombones, flutes, and foot stomping. Children shake tambourines. Adults dance ëround in circles, shouting in exultation.
Out of the chaos, four solid bass notes restore order. There's a moment of hushed anticipation, then the other instruments get hold of the groove, and then the choir and congregation are drawn in. Everybody kows this one. The Chant, it says in the service's prayers pamphlet: "A Love Supreme." A wave of coices, searching the scales, cresting and falling. Three words. Change pitch. Repeat. Four beats. Change pitch. Repeat: "A love supreme/ A love supreme."
Some spirit defintely has hold of the church. The Holy Ghost or ëTrane's ghost. Or both. But is this really religion--or merely a concert played before a diehard fan club? And why Coltrane? When he was alive, some critics straight-up call him insane. They accused him of ruining an art form with his noisy, self-indulgent free jazz. He was divorced. He had a famous drinking problem and a heroin addictio that got him kicked out of Miles Davis' group (so you know it was bad) You're gonna build a church around this man?
"People'll argue and say, ëWhy Coltrane?" says King. "He used heroin,' And I say, Yes, used, in the past tense. The beauty of it is that he overcame that. We like to say that John Coltrane went to hell while he was using heroin. But he didn't just go there, say hello to the devil, and get a pass to come home. God liberated him from his addiction. He went to hell and came back with the keys to heaven. And those keys can be accessed in his sound, so that others can be freed as well."
But plenty of people have kicked drugs--what makes Coltrane's music inspire religious veneration? "It's in the intent," King explains. "Miles once said, ëIf I play a certain note, the people'll feel what I'm thinking aboutwhen I'm playing it. If I'm thinking ëbout love, they'll feel the love.' It's the same with Coltrane, and he was dedicating his music to God.
"There may be other musicians," King continues, cleaning his glasses, "who can get in that anointed space where the Holy Spirit takes over. But see, Coltrane begins with that intent. He said, ëLet us sing all songs to God.' So it's direct. He don't take you ëround the block three or four times like some of them cabbies in New York. You'll get there, man; but they gonna take you this way and that way, it's gonna cost you more, and you might be late. And we can't afford to be late at the pearly gates--you understand what I'm sayin', we got to be on time. So you take the direct flight to the heart of God with John Coltrane."
Throughout the ë70s, the church followed Coltrane's lead of searching for truth through Eastern religion. For a while, they studied the ancient Indian texts, the Vedas, with the hornsman's widow, Alice. "We were seeing John Coltrane as an avatar in the Hindu tradition--a manifestation of God. We even saw him as'Gonna Gonna Nilla, ye di Nonda Nau,' or ëBeautiful Blue Black Mind, Enchanting Player of the Flute'--you know, like (his 1957 album) Blue Train, Blue Krishna."
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