RockOm

RockOm Round-up is a quick glance at what's going on around the world in the areas of music and spirituality...

• Say Namaste! Party by Night, Downward Dog by Day - "The lithe-bodied audience had gathered here for Wanderlust, a new festival that blends indie rock and yoga. From Friday to Sunday, visitors could study self-massage and meditation early each morning and hear groups like Broken Social Scene, Girl Talk and Spoon at night." (NYTimes.com)
• Vic Juris: Tension and Release - Vic Juris is one of the premier jazz guitarists in the business today. In this interview he shares (among other things) about his spirituality and life philosophy (allaboutjazz.com)
• Shaken but not stirred by stadium-rock spirituality - "The promise of awesome worship. That’s what got me rocking up to a Planetshakers meeting. And I wasn’t disappointed. They said ‘awesome' 20 times. Planetshakers is a megachurch, which is like a spiritual mega-meal deal." (theage.com.au)
• The golden periods of the Sikh religious music - "We the members of the Sikh community are passing through a very difficult phase of our existence. Our moral and spiritual values are going down the drain." (worldsikhnews.com)
• Street kid turns to rap, then finds faith - "I began writing Christian music and let the other music go that was sending the wrong message. 'I want my Christian rap to inspire the youth of today...'" (floridatoday.com)

This is a continuation of yesterday's post, "Fabeku & Sacred Sound Healing." See PART I here.

RockOm: Do you have a ritual or some way that you prepare yourself for the sessions?

Fabeku: The main way I prepare is that I’m constantly hanging out with sound. The more time you spend with sound the more familiar it gets and the more comfortable you are with it. My morning ritual is that I get up and I work with sound for half and hour to an hour or so, playing with the singing bowls or chanting. So, it’s this constant immersion in sound for me. Before each individual session I spend some time getting quiet and connecting and asking my allies for support and assistance in the session. Once the individual is there I spend a couple of minutes sitting with what that focus is for them.  All of the sounds that come through during a session are just a reflection of their focus. During that time they’re surrounded in this space where everything they hear is a reflection of what it is they want.

RockOm: Where are you going with your work? What are your intentions for your future or your practice and other areas of your career?

Fabeku: I just finished a CD called Remembering Through Resonance.  It’s a singing bowl CD. I’m working on another CD with drums and some other instruments and definitely plan on working on other CDs in the future.  I’d love to do some traveling.  I’m going to start traveling, doing some workshops and sessions, and performing singing bowl concerts. I’ve got 35-40 singing bowls that I’ll pack up and take with me. I'll set up and spend a couple of hours playing the bowls and giving people that first hand taste of what the sacred sound is all about!

Be sure to catch the full audio portion of our interview with Fabeku on the RockOm.net Podcast.

More from Fabeku:

"Sacred sound supports healing, because it is informed by the intention the individual sets. And when I do each session, at the beginning, I pray that every sound that comes through the session be in total alignment with the highest expression of their intention. So we're basically creating a container of sound that can hold this intention for this, so they can then hold it for themselves."

"Sound works at the energy level, it works whether someone is there in person or doing the session at a distance. This work has been profoundly effective for people, and the truth is I've not seen any difference in efficacy between working with someone in the same or working with someone that's thousands of miles away. It's a different experience being present, of course - more immersive - but the work itself isn't limited by distance.

I've done a lot of healing work over the years, and sacred sound has been the most powerful, most effective and, at the same time, most accessible and most gentle medium I've found for supporting change in people's life. And the changes I've seen have been amazing.

In a broader sense, this work ties in with my love of music and has deepened and expanded my love of sound in all forms. My library of music includes everyone from Krishna Das, to Morrissey, to Debussy. Music moves me in a way few other things do, so my work with sacred sound feels like a natural extension of that love of music, and its power to touch and heal and change us."

Find Fabeku online at www.sankofasound.com

"My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity."

[Eric Clapton]

On this week's podcast episode, out today:

Sacred sound healer Fabeku talks about "shifting stuff" through sound, singer- songwriter Trevor Giuliani shares about this week's RockOm Featured Track of the Week "Nubian Forest", and a quick review of the new self-titled album by Trevor Hall.

CLICK HERE to visit our Podcast page to download this and other episodes of the RockOm Podcast.

"Your basic orientation at a soul level is to rock out with as much goodness as possible. Sacred sound speaks to that, and clears away the stuff that’s made your inherent tendency to gravitate toward goodness hard to see, hard to feel and hard to recognize in your life."
[Fabeku Fatunmise]

Most of us find ourselves caught up in the day to day (if not hour to hour) undulation between ecstatic joy, intense levels of frustration, elation with life’s beauty and then back to inevitable suffering. How can our emotional state turn so quickly from one that is positive into one so negatively charged? Or conversely, how do we become rigidly fixed in circumstances that seem to never change and that drain us of our freedom to choose happiness?

Many are discovering a simple, yet profound way to be shifted into a higher awareness of being and out of negativity using sound and music. Through this process, the inertia is reversed so that one can strike a new balance in life or break through barriers, learning to realize one's true potential. Let's take a closer look at one practitioner of these sacred arts - a professional sound healer from southern Ohio.

Fabeku Fatunmise (www.sankofasong.com) is a gifted and talented sacred sound healer who has worked with sound and music on a transformational level for close to two decades. His practice involves helping individuals learn to shift their energy and become "unstuck." Speaking with him about his work one is struck immediately with his intensity, his personal vibrancy, and enthusiasm for life and for his work. Fabeku explains his passion for sound healing this way...

"Sacred sound healing ties in with my love of music and has deepened and expanded my love of sound in all forms. Music moves me in a way few other things do, so my work with sacred sound feels like a natural extension of that love of music, and its power to touch, heal, and change us."

Fabeku's spiritual background is largely rooted in shamanism, which has maintained a clear relationship to the power of sound for thousands of years.

"Ten years ago, my study of shamanism deepened when I met an extraordinary elder from Africa - Chief Adebolu Fatunmise. Baba Bolu graciously accepted me as his student. He allowed me to learn from him, to be initiated by him, to be accepted into his family."

Today, as part one of a two-part series, we share with you portions from RockOm's recent interview with Fabeku (the full audio of which will be made available in this afternoon's RockOm.net Podcast). Fabeku explains his calling into sacred sound healing and how we can all benefit from sound and music through an understanding of how energy can be shifted into high gear through work with a practitioner. It is then that we can begin to utilize our own abilities to use sound and music, at any time, for "shifting stuff."

RockOm: When did you realize you were being called into sacred sound healing?

Fabeku: I wish I could say I had this big vision, that the "sound healing angels" came to me, but when I first started studying shamanism (some 18-19 years ago) it was through drumming. I bought a hoop drum and realized I could shift the way I was feeling and I was taken by that. I started talking with friends and they thought I was completely nuts but said, "Well, drum for me." And so I did and stuff shifted for them. It evolved out of the work I was doing for myself and seeing how sound shifts stuff for people. I love music and I love to see concrete results when people come to me for sacred healing work.

RockOm: The tagline for your website is “Less struggle, more awesome.” What is it about sound and music in particular that helps us get "unstuck"?

Fabeku: Sound and music bypass the mind. When it comes to sound healing, in particular, it works at the energy level. Everything starts as energy. Sacred sound and music help us go to the roots of what’s going on and change what’s happening there. Sound and music give us access to that blueprint. People can make really big changes, really fast. Stuff can really shift in a flash!

RockOm: Tell us about your sacred sound sessions and what takes place in the course of a session.

Fabeku: There’s two ways to do a session; one is in person, and one is at a distance. It goes back to that energy level - where we’re working. It really doesn’t make much difference if one is in a room or a thousand miles away. The results of stuff shifting are really the same. For distance sessions we spend some time focusing on the intention, and this is really a key part of the equation. It’s what differentiates between making noise and making sound that makes a healing effect.

Be sure to catch the full audio portion of our interview with Fabeku on the RockOm.net Podcast. Also see Part II of this interview.

Fabeku Fatunmise's website

"When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest."
[Henry David Thoreau]

In what ways does music give you courage, make you fearless or make you invulnerable?

RockOm Round-up is a quick glance at what's going on around the world in the areas of music and spirituality...

• Katy Perry: Sass, spirituality and secrets - Katy Perry says, "I'll never be really blasphemous. I kind of just straddle the line between being the sex kitten and Lolita. My faith is still important to me and I guess you could say that, spiritually, I'm still a wanderer." (TheStar.com)
• A Muslim meld of punk and piety - "That's about when the cops put an end to one of the strangest cultural mash-ups in North American Muslim history." Here is a story about Taqwacore: a furious meld of punk and piety. (theglobeandmail.com)
• Spirituality and Music 101 - "Music is simply a different form of prayer - or talking to/with/about the human experience of life and its transcendent dimensions, God." (examiner.com)
• Fearlessly I Will Sing the Attributes of the One without Attributes... - "I'd like to share a jewel of a bhajan (devotional music) written by sufi saint Kabir, the great 15th century saint from Varanasi, India..."(blog.seattlepi.com)

Scott Valentine song of the week:

Week 18 - "Satyagraha"


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“In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one's own self.”
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

When I was in high-school, my obsession with The Beatles shifted towards a new form of musical expression that was making its first real impressions in white suburbia: rap/hip hop. This genre was much more than a thumping drumbeat with record scratches and lyrical bravado – it was a look into the heart of an experience shared amongst the new youth of America. The struggles of the generation before through segregation and civil rights left a resounding impression on the children who grew up in the world beneath the inspiring words of promise and hope delivered with impassioned power by the heroes of the times. While much had changed since the Jim Crow days of the earlier part of the century, much still remained the same.

Many minority communities continued to struggle; money was scarce while the influx of drugs created a surge of violence that debilitated families and community ties at increasingly alarming rates. The opportunities for the children of this generation to express frustration at the disillusionment of being left out of “The American Dream” were slim to none. The voices of the streets were being drowned out by a rising cacophony of partying baby boomers too busily reaping the benefits of the economic boom times of the 1980’s to heed their inner city concerns. These frustrations gave rise to a poetic swagger, rich with the experience of life on these challenging city streets and full of pointed observations as to the current and future state of the people who lived there. For some it was an expression of that frustration and resentment while for others, it became the lifeline with which they could pull themselves out from the wreckage to be heard above the din – a new voice for a new generation.

It was precisely this aspect of rap music that drew me in so closely. I grew up with very little in the way of real life drama in my secluded little neighbourhood of Langford. As a teenager, I never faced the challenges of discrimination nor witnessed firsthand the effects of drug-obsessed violence. Yet the raw-emotional delivery and poignant lyrical rhythms with their unpredictable twists introduced me to a whole other world of the human experience. I could feel the heartbreak and inspiration behind those voices and I began to trust what it was they were trying to teach me. And they were trying to teach me.

I realize a lot has changed within the rap/hip hop genre since I was younger but so many great teachers still remain along with a new generation of great artists who help carry forth the torch of change, hope and growth. Their voices must continue to be heard for their frustrations and concerns are genuine and the hope that their insights can offer now connects right to the heart of thousands of communities across the world. Without the words of these cultural leaders whose art and politics transcend borders and racial divides, the hope that we can see on the distant horizon would not be possible. Their real-life stories and cultural criticisms helped to encourage young men and women to question the authority of the old regime whilst, at the same time, sought to help them to understand, accept and respect the beauty of their own unique cultural selves. This cultural transformation, much like the one that preceded the times of King and Kennedy, paved the way for a man named Barack Obama to be given the opportunity to accept the nomination of president of The United States of America.

Without such incredibly articulate artists as Chuck D of Public Enemy or KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions, I couldn’t have been given the opportunity to hear the speeches and soak in the words of great men like Martin Luther King, Jr. Without the piercing lyrical maelstrom of albums like Public Enemy's “It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back” or Ice Cube's "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" I might not have been introduced to the challenges and struggles being faced by people of different races and without these influences, I might not have developed such an empathetic spirit. I might not have understood the passion that it takes to fight for love and peace and hope. I might not have been given the voice with which to stand up amongst a crowd and express my own frustration and disillusionment.

Satyagraha is the principle and practice of non-violence created by “Mahatma” Gandhi that has inspired tremendous change in the face of adversity over the past 100 years. The first time I heard the voice of Dr. King (whose campaigns were also heavily influenced by this philosophy) was in a rap song. Although I can’t for the life of me remember now which song it was, the indelible impression that it left upon me cannot be overstated. It was for this reason and because of the great inspiration that it sparked within my own spirit that I decided to include samples of speeches by two of my other favorite teachers of the times. One is the song “Satyagraha” which features quite a lengthy but beautifully expressed impression of the nature of being in a speech entitled “Spiritual Message To The World”, given to the BBC on October 17th, 1931. The second, features author Daniel Quinn and will be featured in next weeks Free Song newsletter.

I wanted my album Seasons to be an expression of all the inspiration that helped me to find my own voice in this world through all of the changes and growth that I had experienced up to that point. By including these great minds and exploring the musical styles and influences of my past, I hoped I might be given the opportunity to return the favour given to me so many years ago. I hoped, and hope still, that some boy or girl out there might find these teachers through one of my songs and be inspired to discover the strength and passion of their own unique voice.

From Here To There,

Scott Valentine

This song and post are part of Scott Valentine's song a week presentation entitled Seasons. Click here for more information.

"Music springs from and is replenished by a hidden source which lies outside the world or reality. Music ever spoke to me of a mysterious world beyond, which moved my heart deeply and eloquently intimated its transcendental nature." [Bruno Walter, Of Music and Music Making (1957)]

By Trevor Giuliani

Trevor's MySpace
iTunes

Trevor Giuliani's debut album, Subcontrario (In Stereo) was released July 21st and mixes folksy undertones (think Andrew Bird, Sufjan Stevens, Jens Lenkman) with interesting and sometimes surprising musical arrangements, differentiating himself from the typical singer-songwriter label. Moods go from fumbling and awkward to stark, ironic and deliberately sad over its fifty minutes with tones that hang together on Giuliani's melancholic, effortless baritone voice.

"Nubian Forest"

"'Nubian Forest' is an allegory of the relationship between society/culture and Spirit. We are fumbling through the trees, hardly aware that there are roots, and that we are fruit. We turn to God when it is convenient, and conversely deny Her when it is convenient. Yet despite these flippant desires, He is always there, ever shining." (Trevor Giuliani)

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BONUS: "Wasting Your Town"

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