The Whole Music Experience

Ana Alcaide (Photo in Google Images) Where Swedish, Spanish and Jewish Cultures Meet  In 2012, I discovered Sephardic (Jewish) songs of Toledo via Ana Alcaide, a Spanish traditional musician.  After watching Alcaide's stunning YouTube videos in which she plays the Swedish keyed fiddle (nyckelharpa) and sings Ladino (Spanish Jewish culture) songs, I thought of interviewing the musician for this blog. I encourage anyone reading this to check out Ana Alcaide's videos on YouTube because you will learn a lot from this fascinating woman who bridges the scientific world with the musical one.  I caught up with Ana via e-mail and I'm honored to include her on this blog of musical healers. WME: How do your biology studies wed with your musical explorations? I ask this question because some musicians have taken music into the natural realm or have found musical aspiration from nature. Ana Alcaide: Right! In fact, nature is one of my great sources of insp...

For this post I'm pulling an excerpt from my book Whole Music (Soul Food for the Mind Body Spirit) and including runo-song examples I found on YouTube.  If you look at "Finnish Runo-Song" on YouTube, you will pull up a collection of wonderful videos.  In fact, you could easily spend an entire afternoon listening to those wonderful Karelian songs. Finnish painting of scene from The Kalevala, Wikipedia Magical Chants While these chants felt strange to my ears at first, I felt attracted to their primal qualities.   In my adult years, music has acted as the vehicle that has brought me closer to the world’s cultures.   Besides, it didn’t hurt that Nordic music had enjoyed its days in the spotlight, thanks to small American labels such as North Side Records in Minneapolis, who also booked US tours for Nordic acts.   True, trends come and go, but in this case, I delved further into the shamanic roots of the runo-song.   Imagine that in ancient time...