The Whole Music Experience

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...

 Let's go on a musical treasure hunt.  For this post we're heading to Spain to sample some flavorful music traditions. Grab your headphones and get on a board. Tucked in northwest Spain, the province Galicia hosts a variety of music traditions, including folkloric traditions that Galician musicians innovate then present to international audiences.  While I'm mostly familiar with the folkloric songs thanks generous Spanish labels that send this music to me, I also have Galician jazz ensemble recordings in my collection. The region hosts several music festivals each year featuring an array of genres of music, from opera and early music to pop rock, jazz and folkloric.  http://www.galiciatunes.com for details.  However, I'll focus on the folkloric and jazz recordings and artists for this post. The Celtic region of Spain along with Asturias, Galicia is situated between Portugal to the south, Asturias to the north, and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one s...