On a sunny Friday afternoon on the grounds of the Santa Barbara Vedanta Temple, jazz legend Charles Lloyd quotes a long passage from the Bhagavad-Gita describing how to know an enlightened being. “I repeat this three times a day.” Lloyd has internalized the lessons and he exudes equanimity and a quiet radiance in every movement.
This is my ‘hood,’” said Lloyd as he walked to the temple from his hillside home. And he knows the temple well as it has figured in his spiritual journey on the search for freedom, the essence of Vedanta, the mass of knowledge discovered by personages known as rishis.
Lloyd’s life as a musician and life as a spiritual seeker complement each other. “I was always on the search; I was looking for the deep things,” says Lloyd. He dug for the source behind what he describes as relative, looking for the absolute through reading about the life of Buddha and investigating various paths including Vedic studies. This brought the book How to Know God, The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood into his hands.
Swami Prabhavananda founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California in 1929, of which the Santa Barbara temple is one location. The philosophy of Vedanta held an appeal for Lloyd, he says, because “It is so big and all-embracing. If you go into the temple here, you’ll see a picture of Buddha on one side and you’ll see Jesus on the other side. I’m sure that Islam is welcome and Ramakrishna practiced all of these paths.” Ramakrishna, who lived just over 100 years ago “had the goods,” Lloyd mused. He also refers back to his great-grandmother, Sally Sunflower Whitecloud, whose teachings, Lloyd said, were in alignment with Vedanta, which embraces inclusivity. Adds Lloyd, “I don’t like a path that says only my watch keeps perfect time.”
Lloyd finds a sense of freedom through his music and spiritual practice. How often does he practice? “Morning, noon and night.” Ever changing, “It’s bitter at first, but sweet later on. It’s getting more friendly.” The spiritual path is arduous, requiring navigation, and as Lloyd says, “There’s banana peels out there for us.” Lloyd’s life has been full of slippery turns that he has negotiated skillfully.
A musician since he first convinced his family to buy him a saxophone as a child growing up in Memphis, music studies at the University of Southern California led to musical collaborations and a move to New York. There he began his career as one of the pioneering voices of jazz – what Lloyd describes as the great indigenous American art form.
His quartet’s 1966 recording of Forest Flower at the Monterrey Jazz Festival became one of the best-selling jazz recordings of the time. Lloyd’s lyrical instrumental and world music influences created his commercial success. But he felt that something was missing in his spiritual life with his meteoric rise to fame. Ever on the search, he famously left touring to retreat in Big Sur as a modern-day sadhu, to what he describes as his cave, where his nearest neighbor was miles away. The silence brought him freedom.
“I came to find out in spiritual life that name and fame is like a hogplum. It’s an analogy in India where there’s this big juicy fruit, it’s like a big plum. It looks so glorious, and you can bite into it and break your teeth because it’s all pit and skin.” But he never left music behind.
“Everything should be helpful to the practice. You have to maintain it everywhere.”
“I’m a musician by nature…We love the music for the music.” Lloyd evokes Krishna’s teachings from the Gita when he says, “To our work we have a right; the fruits may or may not come. So then we can’t be attached to that, so we love the music for the music. You love God for God.”
Lloyd came out of seclusion to travel the world playing with celebrated French pianist Michel Petrucciani in the 1980s. A serious illness and near-death experience spurred a renewed dedication to his musical and spiritual paths. Now 68 years old, his career continues to embody innovation. He has engaged in repeated collaborations with the late percussionist Billy Higgins, a Sufi practitioner whom Lloyd lauds as a beloved musical and spiritual influence, a partnership of the soul. This led to frequent performances, recordings, a film and tribute concerts after Higgins passed away.
In a recent performance with his current quartet of jazz pianist Geri Allen, bassist Reuben Rogers and percussionist Eric Harland at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, the quartet seemed to be doing what Lloyd often refers to in conversation as “setting the sails high, because the winds of grace are always blowing.” While playing, or even speaking, Lloyd often closes his eyes, searching for something, for God, or feeling for the wind.
The historic Lobero lent its acoustic ambiance to Lloyd’s recording of the 2004 album Sangam, with Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain and percussionist and pianist Eric Harland. The word sangam refers to a confluence, the area where rivers meet, which the album personifies through world rhythms and the dance between instruments, music and musicians. Live and on the album the song of God echoes as Lloyd alternates between saxophones and flutes and even the Hungarian reed tarogato.
Music, Lloyd says, gives him freedom and great joy, “like flying without fossil fuels.” And that freedom can be found anywhere, which is the great lesson of the spiritual path, according to Lloyd. Whether practicing in his studio by the sea, sitting in a temple or in the middle of a traffic jam, “everything should be helpful to the practice; you have to maintain it everywhere.”
Leaving the temple, one of the nuns scurried down the path, greeting Lloyd with an easy familiarity. “We’re going to be noisy today during vespers…I’m waiting for the musicians.”
Lloyd paused for a beat. “You’re having music? Perhaps I should stay.”
