by Robert Phoenix
I recently caught up with Ashana, a Kosmic music artist and we chatted for nearly an hour over the phone. From her inspirational space in Santa Fe, we touched on a number of topics ranging from having a spiritual practice as part of her music and vice versa, the ongoing quest to open up to deeper levels of all love and trust and refining her vocal skills based on the classically trained methods she had apprenticed to when she first started singing.
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Kosmic’s mission to offer music to help improve your mental, spiritual and physical well-being naturally includes an interest and respect for Mother Earth and nature. April 22 will be the 40th observance of Earth Day, now held annually in over 175 countries! The first Earth Day, in 1970, is considered to be the beginning of the modern environmental movement. We encourage you to participate in events in your area (in the US, go to: epa.gov/earthday).

To inspire you to do your part for a greener and cleaner world, and in honor of Earth Day, Kosmic Music is offering a variety of nature-oriented titles at an Earth Day discount for inspiration, meditation or just plain relaxation.
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by Robert Phoenix
Mickey Hart has always had one foot in the realm of deeply shamanic music. His percussive soundtrack work for Apocalypse Now with The Rhythm Devils was groundbreaking. He went onto work with a number of musicians on the world music scene, from Kitaro to Olatunji, to Zakir Husaain, to Airto. His Diga Rhythm Band release in 1976 was a groundbreaking fusion of East/West rhythms. You can also add leading the worlds largest drum circle at Earthdance, 2004 to Hart’s long and impressive (hey I was there!) resume.
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UK-based label Sona Rupa is known for its collection of Indian classical and contemporary music and its music for relaxation, meditation and yoga. Their albums are new renderings of age-old bhajans, modern spiritual compositions, kirtans, sacred mantras, and other works inspired by prayers, writings, and contemporary and classical chants. All are performed by well-known, well-respected and popular contemporary Indian musicians. The label was founded by an ex-pat from the Indian state of Gujarat to serve the needs of those Gujaratis living in distant lands, far away from their spiritual homeland. Over the years the label has evolved into producing music that pleases the soul. Twenty six of their albums are now available at kosmicmusic.com. Here are a couple of them:

by Robert Phoenix
It’s not often that my pal, Stephen Kent raves about another didge player, but he has nothing but high praise for a ground breaking didge player from Checkoslovakia, named, “Ondrejem Smeykalem.” Smeykalem takes the diidge, new and avant-garde directions, while tapping into immense power of trance. Here is a Japanese video from “The Shinjuku Jam” on Youtube, showcasing his prodigious skills on the didge. See Shinjuku Jam on YouTube.com.

by Robert Phoenix
Another talent just flashed across my screen. In the tradition of Drew Dellinger, the poet who uses language to open new realms of consciousness, Dreaming Bear Baraka Kanaan and SpiritMoves, takes the energy of Hafiz and Rumi to the dance floor. Becoming a bonafide sensation, Dreaming Bear and his band are moving hearts, minds and bodies across the country in autonomous utopias like new age soaked Marin County and Maui. Here is a brief snippet of him at The Maui Arts Cultural Center.

by Robert Phoenix
I recently spent some time with Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz, the sacred/world music power couple. Sussan has just released five new discs on her own label through Big Fish Media, and are available at most digital music stores. A friend of mine just saw a clip of Sussan performing with The Polish National Symphony and she was mesmerized.

Sussan might be one of the dramatic, female vocalists on the planet and Richard is a master musician when it comes to playing the duduk, ney, flute and other woodwinds. There are rumors swirling that Sussan is putting together a new band with a LA based percussionist that is near and dear to our hearts.

Click the image for a brief sample of the brilliance of Sussan’s voice, from the video, “Snow White.”

by Robert Phoenix
I have known Kenji Williams for a decade now and I have seen go from a hungry student film maker and burgeoning music maker to one of the worlds most cutting edge artists, combining stunning visuals, with gorgeous soundscapes and otherworldly concepts. Williams studied film in Canada and came of age during the rise of the electronic music scene and dance culture. Trained as a violinist, Williams has worked assiduously to put it all together, merging his virtuoso on violin, with programmed beats and samples, with his love for imagery and telling a story.
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by Robert Phoenix
Back in the early nineties I got turned onto industrial music when I got a sales gig at Silent Records. I used to call up mom and pop record shops and try to sell them dark and eerie sounds of deviant rituals or some guy literally wanking off with a sampler. But it was all created, mostly artificial, noise. I recently ran across the Sounds of Saturn, recorded by The Cassini Satellite on youtube. It makes the music of The Hafler Trio, PGR and Throbbing Gristle seem tame in comparison. Check it out.

youtube.com

by Robert Phoenix
One of the best musicians you’ve probably never heard of is Layne Redmond. To those in the know, she is nothing short of a marvel. A world class percussionist, she was named one of the most influential drummers of the nineties, by Drum Magazine. There she was, the lone woman amongst 53 heavyweights like Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Zakir Hussain and Mickey Hart, being recognized for her mastery of the frame drum, tambourine and other, more exotic forms of hand percussion.

In addition to being a kick-ass drummer, she’s also a master teacher, sharing her love and knowledge of rhythm with the world at large. And…adding another layer, she’s also a music healer, a seasoned practitioner of music (more…)

by Robert Phoenix
We often forget that our words have rhythm, tone, meaning and music, inherent in them; how we build them, string them, sing them, say them and pray them.

The voice of the poet is a lost art, often drowned out by the noise of the You Tube media marketplace and yet, on You Tube is where we discover the voice of poet/sage, Drew Dellinger as he gazes straight into the lens of our souls, reciting his lovely and profound, “Hymn To The Sacred Body Of The Universe.”

by Robert Phoenix
It’s been a while since I shipped some words over to Kosmic for this Music Blog, but that’s what happens when you decide to look at the election through starry eyes. My blog focused on the astrological connections between the candidates and the economy. There has never been more to write about from an astrological perspective, so I’ve just been using whatever spare time I can to to stay current. Now that the election has subsided, I can get back to a little music.

When I first started this, Chris (our Editor in Spirit) wanted me to do something on the hang drum. We had both experienced it together for the very first time in a cave concert up in the hills above Sausalito in Northern California.
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Since my last post was about me and I got that out of the way, I want to start talking about some other people. The first is “Akasa.” a woman I met the other night, the night of the new moon and the day of The Dragon Sun, an auspicious alignment. She’s a former businesswoman who had a spiritual transformation when she visited The Oracle at Delphi, something akin to a beam of sound entering her spirit and informing her of her next phase, which was to become a sound healer. This was back in 1997 and since then, she has gone on to build formal connections with the likes of Barbara Marx Hubbard, Rowena Patee-Kryder and the Belgian integral philosopher, Michael Bauwens.

She held a workshop/ritual in Mill Valley and I arrived on the latish side. When I stepped into the space of the mostly filled, medium sized room they were deep in the heart of some Chinese mudra associated with Tian Gong, a mystical version of Chi Gong and I’m sure a slightly less threatening version of the politically heretical Falun Gong. Akasa was dressed in ceremonial headdress and robes, toning, intoning and chanting while one of her students led the group through a guided meditation.
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It’s been a while since I’ve sent something Kosmic’s way, but there is a very good reason. I’ve been down in the lab making my own music. I alluded to this in an earlier post, but now I have living, breathing, pulsin and beating documents that live on my Myspace page.

I loaded my latest track last Friday and I have close to 200 plays already. What makes this track somewhat unique was that I was really driven to get it done and up on Myspace by last Friday night. I knew it was the full moon, but was unaware that the youtube guru, Siva Baba had declared last Friday’s full moon, “The Full Moon Of The Guru.” Based on his calculations, last week’s full moon was the beginning of the new age–the full moon of divine and loving grace.
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My good friend Stephen Kent, one of the worlds best non-aboroginal didgeridoo players just turned fifty. It seems like just yesterday when we met in 1993, some fifteen-years-ago when we teamed up for a booth selling CDs at a folk fair up in Davis. I was deep into my leather phase then, sporting a Euro-leather, motorcycle jacket, black stovepipes and black boots. Meanwhile, Stephen had the Gandalf look in full effect, with tresses flowing well past his shoulders. Needless to say, we made for an interesting contrast that day.
Fifteen years later, he is still blasting away on the didge and he might not have the same cultural cache of Ganga Giri (a former student of his) and Xavier Rudd, both of whom feast upon the jam band and trance groove circuit, he is making waves with the reunion show of Trance Mission and a brand new release.
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The late, great Carlos Gardel is revered as the foremost star and true giant of Argentina’s beloved tango genre, with an astonishing 1,000+ recordings and 800 recorded songs to his credit. Sixty-eight years after his untimely death in a plane crash at only 37 years of age, and at the height of his monumental national popularity, a devoted following of fans continues to keep his legend alive as a tragically lost musical hero in both Argentinean and Uruguayan cultural history.

Gardel Martini is a collection of ten of Gardel’s most beloved signature songs. It is also a collective of young Argentinean musicians — all now based in Los Angeles — who worked together to freshly re-interpret some of this classic repertoire for a generation of new audiences, adding a distinctive bossa nova, “lounge music” flare to their renditions of the songs.
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What makes Thievery Corporation so great and even remotely important? It is a question that I will have answered sometime before midnight tonight as I plan to climb into the Berkeley Hills and settle down for a hot solstice night of grooving beneath the stars at the Greek Theater where Thievery, Bebel Gilberto and Los Amigos Invisibles will bust out a musical polyglot of world fusion.

Thievery, are an interesting bunch. I actually signed them to their first digital music deal when I was at emusic. Their label, Eighteenth Street Lounge was just taking off with the first full lengths by TC as well as releases by Thunderball and Ursula 1000.
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Biomusique is the extraordinary collaboration of singer/songwriter Lisbeth Scott and multi-instrumentalist Greg Ellis, who created their new album, THE 10,000 STEPS, over three months of intense, totally acoustic recording. Scott’s striking, ethereal vocals are framed by Ellis’ subtle signature percussion — Balinese gongs, African udu, Tibetan bowls, Indian tabla & nagara, Middle Eastern frame drums – as well as bass, piano, guitar, dulcimer and a striking use of trumpet.

Trained at the New England Conservatory of Music, Lisbeth Scott is an extraordinary singer and composer whose work is ubiquitous in numerous major motion pictures; her work has appeared in Spielberg’s Munich (for which composer John Williams wrote a piece expressly for her voice), The Chronicles of Narnia, Shrek, and The Passion of the Christ. She has worked with INXS, John Prine, Mark Isham, John Martyn, and Tom Rush, and produced four critically-acclaimed solo albums, including Dove, which was named Record of the Year by New Age Voice and reached #2 on the New Age music charts.
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Top Ten Downtempo CDs

OK list lovers, it’s time once again for a musical top ten that will surely add to your informational enlightenment quotient, also known as your “IEQ,” data that you can use to fuel your spiritual journey and achieve new heights of awareness and self-actualization.

Without further ado, let us look at my spiritually infused, top ten downtempo records of all time.

10. No Noise–Chakra Lounge Vol. 1 (Blue Flame Records)
I could never figure out why this record wasn’t more popular. It has everything you’d want in a cool, globally hip, slightly danceable release. Perhaps a major distributor in the U.S. and a scantily clad woman on an exotic beach somewhere the cover might have helped the cause.
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There are about half-a-dozen records from my early teens that I would consider defining recordings and listening experiences, which would shape my tastes for years to come. One of those records was No Mystery by Return To Forever. I was exposed to the album when I was walking through my high school campus and walked past a group kids listening to the local soul and R&B station, KSOL. They were playing this outrageously funky track, which immediately grabbed me and held me in that spot until the baritone back announce told us that it was “Jungle Waterfall” by Return To Forever. The track and the band name was etched into my brain and on my next outing to the record store, I sought it out. When I got home I played “Jungle Waterfall” over and over again. But eventually I migrated to the outer fringes of the grooves where I experienced the fractal dissonance of jazz for the first time as Chick Corea deconstructed piano melodies while Stanley Clarke, Lenny White and Al Di Meola furiously buzzed around Corea’s manic keyboard runs. That record lit my fuse for fusion and set me out on a quest to find more of the rock/jazz hybrid sound.
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Straddling the cultural intersection of Paul Simon’s groundbreaking Graceland project and the expansive vision of One Giant Leap, The Laya Project might rapidly rise in relevance to be included in the same discussion as both.The idea behind The Laya Project was to embark on a journey into deep culture, recording the indigenous music of the people of the Sub-Asian continents, such as Indonesia, Malaysia. India, Thailand, Myanmar, The Maldives, and Sri Lanka. Once the recordings had taken place, executive producer, Sastry Karra and his crew retreated to their studios in India where they sensitively fused beats and grooves together with the exotic rhythms and melodies they had captured. The result is a stunning collaboration that manages to maintain the richness and dignity of the local musical expression while expanding it outward, taking it into new musical and cultural territories.
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Lists seem to be really popular. I’ve been over to Yahoos music blogs and many of the most popular columns are list driven. So in the spirit of a listing world, I am going to contribute yet another list that will make your world, somehow more complete. Every list on my list will take into account all of the pre-requisites of body/mind/spiritology and I’ll list all pertinent ingredients as a result. That said, here is list number one.

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I was just in Los Angeles spending time with Greg Ellis and Lisbeth Scott of biomusique, discussing the inner life of their new release on Kosmic, The Ten Thousand Steps when they revealed to me that they will also be re-forming the groundbreaking trance outfit, Medicine Drum, along with founding member, Chris Decker. The new Medicine Drum will make its debut closing out The Harmony Festival, in Santa Rosa on the weekend of the 6th, 7th and 8th of June.
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What would happen if we could change the scale of music ever-so-slightly so that it would be more harmonically in tune with the rhythms and cycles of nature? This is a question that Hollywood composer and sound effects master, Alan Howarth asked himself and the results were surprising to say the least.

Howarth has cut his musical chops whipping up assorted bleeps, blasts and bangs for a number of major motion pictures. From Star Trek to Indiana Jones to dozens of Si-fi scores, you’ve probably heard his craft in action. But finding the source of all natural frequencies and rhythms became his true grail quest.
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The modern mantra is “green.” Or so it seems to be on the lips of many as we stare down looming eco-crisis and potential shortage of resources. It’s no wonder that the concept of green, or natural states permeates music as well.

I just got a copy of The 10, 000 Steps by Biomusique, the latest musical offering from Kosmic. On first listen, it’s fairly apparent that the concept of organic sounds is deeply embedded in the musical DNA of this project. It’s wide open, with space to breath and roam around in some of the ways that the best ambient music provides. It has strains of Enya, Dead Can Dance and David Sylvain, plucking the best elements out of all them.
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