Om

Om is a posthumously-released album by John Coltrane, recorded on October 1 1965, the day after the recording of Live in Seattle, and featuring the same players with the addition of Joe Brazil. It consists of a single 29-minute work broken into two parts when released on LP, and was included on The Major Works of John Coltrane, a compilation CD released in 1992.
Om was issued by Impulse! in 1968. The title refers to the sacred sound and spiritual symbol in Indian religions. Coltrane described Om as "the first vibration - that sound, that spirit, which set everything else into being. It is The Word from which all men and everything else comes, including all possible sounds that man can make vocally. It is the first syllable, the primal word, the word of power." The recording begins and ends with the musicians chanting in unison a verse from chapter nine of the Bhagavad Gita:
Rites that the Vedas ordain, and the rituals taught by the scriptures, all these I am, and the offering made to the ghosts of the fathers, herbs of healing and food. The mantram. The clarified butter. I, the oblation and I, the flame into which it is offered. I am the sire of the world, and this world's mother and grandsire. I am he who awards to each the fruit of his action. I make all things clean. I am Om!
In the liner notes, Nat Hentoff wrote: "It may be that to break the circumscribed limits of conventional hearing, the ear must be propelled to hear sounds and pitches it has rejected in the past, just as compassion is not come by in conventional comfort. And once heard and absorbed, these sounds lead to further extensions of listening and feeling capacities... In so far as one can ever advise anyone else in how to listen, I would suggest that they start by not worrying about how it is all structured, where it's leading. Let the music come in without any pre-set definitions of what jazz has to be, of what music has to be."