Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Alice Coltrane and No Wave’s overlooked women step out of the margins

The best music writing isn’t nostalgia, It’s cultural archaeology — These books reclaim what music history left out

Published April 14, 2026 12:00PM (EDT)

2026 is shaping up to be a year for incredible music books. Some of the best non-fiction books are projects where the writer is stepping up to fill a gap, to document the undocumented (or insufficiently chronicled), to tell a story that hasn’t been told adequately, to share a subject the writer is insanely passionate about. All of the above are true in two new fantastic books: Andy Beta’s “Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane” and Adele Bertei’s “No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene.” In both cases, these are sprawling, immersive volumes, authored with obvious knowledge and deep understanding, but written in an engaging, open style that’s clearly meant to engage readers and bring them closer to each book’s respective subjects.

“Cosmic Music” author Andy Beta was a teenage punk rock kid bragging about his diverse musical tastes — he was into John Coltrane  — when someone tipped him off to Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda,” telling him, “‘You’ve got to hear it. It’s, like, the most beautiful music in the world.” At the time, Beta thought to himself, “Wow, John Coltrane’s sister also made jazz music? This is a really talented family.” It was the golden age of music discovery, where music fans relied on personal discovery or recommendation — in Beta’s case, he admits that if Kurt Cobain mentioned a record, he would go and buy that record, but that story isn’t shameful, because plenty of previous generations did the same exact thing.

But in the mid-’90’s, there wasn’t that much information out there about Alice Coltrane (née McLeod). Her records were difficult to find, and as Beta illustrates in the book, over and over again, her work, her formidable talents, and her contributions were largely ignored or dismissed. Beta shared with Salon that he kept thinking that surely at some point there would be a comprehensive book about Coltrane’s life and work, and eventually he realized that the people who knew and worked with her were passing on, and if he didn’t step up, there would be nothing left to write about.

Alice Coltrane was born in Detroit, and was a product of the same environment that gave the world Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and Berry Gordy, Jr., who was a neighbor. This is where the story rightfully begins, centering the woman whose name is in the title of the book, who made a name for herself on piano long before she became affiliated with the man who would become her second husband. Along the way, the reader is drawn into the history of........

© Salon