Music has been the defining artistic interest of my life. I can trace my years by the albums to which I listened most, often obsessively. For the most part, I’m interested in lyrics. The Beatles are undoubtedly the sole source of the origins of the that interest, and led me to Dylan, Townes van Zandt and more recently Joanna Newsom, visionaries all. But with the exception of a profound piece of wisdom here and there, or the entirety of Newsom’s “Emily,” I find little spiritual value in “literate” music. For that, I turn to jazz, especially avant-garde works from the 1960s.

Two appropriately titled works represent the variety of my experience of this sort of jazz: Albert Ayler’s 1964 collective improvisation masterpiece “Spiritual Unity” and John Coltrane’s iconic 1965 record “A Love Supreme.” Ayler works in simplified forms which facilitates a high degree of group participation, a goal which Ayler clearly identifies as spiritual.

The album achieves that goal not only by connecting individual players, but by connecting them to something larger than the sum of their parts. Music created in such a space as Ayler sets up is ultimately driven by the surrender of the will in creation. What is created simply is, independent from concerted form. This experience translates in listening to the recording, indicating at least a degree of success for the album.

Distinguishing “Spiritual Unity” from other jazz experiments of its time and afterwards helps to analyze its unique spiritual effect. The early efforts of Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman dramatically pushed the boundaries of composition in jazz.   Though Coleman and Taylor first began to ask the question of how far the form could be taken, they were, in the 1950s anyway, still composers. The music they made, in spite of, or because of, the controversy they produced at the time, was undeniably jazz.

Ayler’s followers (Coltrane among them, as evidenced by his late-period work) seemed bent on destroying the form entirely. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton and guitarist Derek Bailey are perhaps the most prominent adherents of that doctrine, creating what they and many others call “non-idiomatic” improvisational music. Aside from that dubious assertion, the work of Bailey and Braxton, though it affects me profoundly, is just too nihilistic, for lack of a better word, for me to see it spiritually.

With “Spiritual Unity,” though, there exists a liberated but still beautiful and cohesive expression of an idea on the divine nature of collectivism and creation. This speaks to me in a sense, saying what no Dylan zinger can. As both a complement and a contrast to the conceptual experience which Ayler effects, “A Love Supreme” is an expression of pure beauty, both obsessively thoughtful and instantaneous. That beauty comes across most fully in the intensity of the compositions, the improvisation which both builds and builds around them\ and the musicians behind it.

Pianist McCoy Tyner’s sense for harmony creates a foundation for and a tension against Coltrane’s sheets of sound. The rhythm section of Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones have a drive and sensitivity which move the record. Check out the Jazz Casual tapes on YouTube to see this band live in all its glory, playing tunes from 1963’s Impressions. “A Love Supreme” adds a few other musicians, notably saxophonist Archie Shepp, who earlier gained notoriety in Cecil Taylor’s band.

This is turning into an article about music, and I could write into eternity about these guys. But I want to make clear that the reason I’m so passionate about all this background is that the effect this music has on me is truly exceptional. I can think of few other elements of culture which cause me to feel spiritually, in effect neutralizing that great and common barrier of thought. And in the end that’s what I’m looking for; the thinking is only a precursor, an act of foreplay if you’re not too precious, to experiencing God and the spiritual self. So if you can open mind, listen to this stuff. And try to forget everything I said about it: let it stand as devotional expression of the highest order.