The Whole Music Experience

I'm not writing about a new topic.   I write this essay in preparation for two workshops I plan on teaching this winter.  I adapted my course Exploring Music with Ecological Themes into a 2-hour workshop where I feature 5 songs hailing from diverse traditions.  We will explore the Finnish runo-song (sadly a fading tradition), indigenous music (haven't selected the tradition yet), the "wild bird jazz" of David Rothenberg and the sound healing-jazz of the late Marjorie De Muynck.  The exploration reads like a shamanic adventure, but my workshop also focuses on lost healing arts. Sadly as a planet, we have mostly lost touch with the natural world and the purposes of music.  I feel that disconnected from nature and intentional music leads to dis-ease and destruction of the planet. If we perform ignorantly music with ill intentions then we lead ourselves further into dis-ease.  I cannot stress this enough.I see music used purposefully by advertisers who sell...

Deobrat Mishra and David Michael Himalayan Crossroad (peaceful melodies featuring sitar and Celtic Harp Purnima Productions and Kind Music There have been many reports cited that spoke about the healing elements of sitar and Celtic harp. Sitar player (from Benares), Deobrat Mishra and Washington State based multi-instrumentalist David Michael (Celtic harp and zither), put musical therapy theories to the test on their recording, Himalayan Crossroads . The exotic sound of the sitar resonates with the misty atmosphere of the Celtic harp and a listener could easily place themselves in a Celtic country or near the Ganges in India. The first track, "Fingers of Dawn" acts as an unfolding Alap where the harp and the sitar get to know one another and familiarize themselves with this unusual terrain. A micro-tonal instrument from an eastern tradition melds with instruments hailing from the west where the eight note scale (7 actual notes), rules. With so many fusion projects b...