The Whole Music Experience

Healing with Holiday Music; Practicing Cultural and Spiritual Diversity Depending on your cultural and spiritual perceptions, holiday music can provide healing through nostalgia, relaxation, and joy. However, this includes a few caveats. An overdose of holiday music (heard in shopping malls, banks, and post offices), could lead to overkill and brainworms (a song hook repeating itself incessively).  Nostalgic elements work best with people who have happy memories of the holidays, but those individuals who lost love ones or suffered a tragedy during the holiday season won't find holiday music particularly healing.  They might avoid it entirely. Don't make the mistake of thinking that everyone practices the same religious rituals as you do. Holidays from a variety of religious traditions, including Judaism (Hanukkah), Christianity (Christmas), South African (Kwanza), Islamic, and pagan (Solstice) are practiced by people among us.  Each of these traditions ha...

Gregory Porter Water Motema Music As the flood waters recede in western Washington, debut jazz artist Gregory Porter’s Water plays in the background. Similar to the stormy weather alternating with the sun peeking through thick clouds, Porter’s recording, rides a wave of emotions too. From tender love ballads like the opener, Illusions and  Pretty to the bombastic socio-political 1960 What? that recalls Martin Gaye’s What’s Going On , Porter covers all the bases here. Porter composed and co-arranged the bulk of the recording and his lyrics cut straight through the heart. The arrangements with passionate horns, and saxophone anchored down with piano, bass, and drums, wed to Porter’s visual text. Porter’s vocals hit the spot too, again portraying a palette of emotions, outrage on 1960 What? and sensual on Pretty , when Porter sings, “Her hand strokes the drum. She plays so fast I can’t find the one…” On Magic Cup the musicians introduce Latin jazz funk and Wisd...

1. Jovino Santos Neto, See the Sound, Adventure Music 2. Mario Romano Quartet, Valentina, Alma Records 3. Catherine Russell, Inside this Heart of Mine, World Village 4. Benjamim Taubkin, Piano Masters, Vol. 1, Adventure Music 5. Roberto Occhipinti, A Bend in the River, Alma Records 6. Marcos Amorim Trio, Portraits, Adventure Music 7. Jon Manasse and Jon Nakamatsu, Bernstein, Gershwin, Novacek, and d’ Rivera, American Music for Clarinet, Harmonia Mundi 8. Ricardo Silveira, ‘Til Tomorrow, Adventure Music 9. Estun-Bah (Native American), From Where the Sun Rises, Canyon Records 10. Gregory Porter, Water, Motema Best Folkloric Retrospective: Mike Marshall, An Adventure, 1999-2009, Adventure Music