Surya Botofasina is the music director of the Sai Anantam Ashram Singers and devotes the music on Everyone’s Children to his mentor Alice Coltrane, one of the legends of spiritual jazz.
For somebody who is actually coming up with a debut album to devote it, even to his mentor can be a heavy burden, no matter how good that mentor was in guiding you to reach your musical goals.
Yet, it seems that Alice Coltrane did a brilliant job with Botofasina, as the music here reaches the heights on quite a few levels – as a worthy addition to the spiritual jazz canon, as the best ambient music of any kind can come up with, as a set of meditative pieces and as devotional music anybody can get into.
“I can still hear the sounds of Swamini’s organ, along with the water flowing through the property,” Botofasina says of growing up at Coltrane’s Sai Anantam Ashram. “The Ashram to me is the main reason why I have any redeemable qualities […] Every time I reach a place of music that may connect with other human beings on the planet . . . it is only because I have watched Her connect with beings both visible and invisible to common eyesight, effortlessly.”
These words might explain the driving force behind Botofasina’s ability to produce music that covers the space even when the notes themselves cannot be heard anymore but continue to resonate until a new set of them comes along.
Essentially, spiritual jazz at its best and most personally engaging.
