RockOm

The dictionary definitions are not enough for those of us who are alive to the sense of the sacred which we find in so many unexpected places ... and are often disappointed not to find in so many expected places.

Perhaps a better question is: what is the sense of the sacred? What does this word mean to us in a universal sense, in the context of our contemporary world of pluralism and multiculturalism, a world in unprecedented evolutionary crisis?

It is my belief, based on travel, research, and the experience of performing sacred music for people of radically different worldviews and religions, that religious tolerance, like interfaith dialogue, is growing by leaps and bounds, far outstripping the old intolerances and insularities we are all too familiar with. The mass media might make it seem otherwise --- but as we know, they thrive on bad news, and are parsimonious in reporting the good news which is happening right under their noses.

The best short response to this question I've heard is from Pierre Rabhi, founder of agro-ecology, and author of the book As in the Heart, So in the Earth : "The sense of the sacred is a sense of humility, where gratitude, knowledge, wonder, respect, and mystery all come together to inspire and enlighten our actions."

This would have seemed pretty obvious to people of ancient times. Only in the last few centuries of modernism and postmodernism has it become fashionable to ignore and disdain the sacred, much as it has become fashionable to ignore and disdain beauty, and to revere irony.

But for those who will not allow this sense to wither in them, listening to sacred music can be a heart-opening experience, even when it comes from a tradition or a culture which is strange or bizarre to them, even if they disagree with certain doctrines of that tradition, even if they reject all religion, and even if the music itself has no formal connection to any sacred tradition.

The awakening of this sense, at least in listening to music, does not depend on having specific beliefs, or even on knowing the meaning of the texts that are being sung or chanted (though it can of course be infinitely deepened by knowing and studying their meaning).

Music can be an ambassador for peace where other embassies have failed. I first learned about this power of music over twenty-five years ago, when I participated in a two-day conference at an American university, which sought to bring Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (mostly Arab, but a few Persian) students together in dialogue concerning the Palestinian problem. This was in the days of the Carter administration, when such hopeful attempts were more common. I was part of a small student musical group (oud, santur, percussion, guitar, and a male and female vocalist) thrown together at the last minute, and our job was to offer a short concert of a mixture of Arab and Jewish songs at the close of each session. The first day was very difficult, because we had to play after a stormy session with several shouting matches, much anger in the air, and little if any real dialogue. On the second day, we asked the directors to let us open the program instead of closing it. We had to beg, then insist, and they reluctantly agreed. What a difference it made! Not only was there no shouting during that conference, people really listened to each other --- and there were even some friendships made! I can't attribute it to the quality of our music (my oud-playing was pretty amateurish in those days), but I did learn something important about the power of the intent of music. Whatever our shortcomings as an ad-hoc musical group with too little rehearsal together, our individual and collective intent was so strong on that second day, that it communicated a message of peace which words alone could not have done. Last, but far from least, our motivation, on that day at least, was for our music to serve --- to serve something higher than the usual desire to shine, to thrill, or entertain, that had previously motivated us.

This was also my first inkling that the influential modernist doctrine of l'art pour l'art --- art for art's sake --- is a fatuous dead end. From the earliest times of performance art, all the way back to its beginnings in shamanism, authentic performers have always known that they are at their best when their art serves something higher than art. Individually and collectively, we are beginning to rediscover this ancient truth, but in new and mysterious ways...

By Joseph Rowe
http://www.naturalchant.com

also, see my significant other's site:
http://www.myspace.com/catherinebraslavsky

and my memoir of my teacher, Hamza El Din:
http://www.naturalchant.com/hamza.htm

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Carly Simon needs no introduction. Since 1971 her music and hits such as "That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be", “Anticipation”, “You’re So Vain” and many others have been part of the soundtrack of millions of lives around the world. Her 1973 album No Secrets rocketed to #1 on the US album charts and held firm for six consecutive weeks, eventually going Platinum and receiving a Grammy Award nomination. One song from that album, "You're So Vain", was also nominated for Song Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance and as of 2008 was listed at #72 on the Billboard definitive list of the Top 100 songs from the chart's first 50 years.

In 1988 Carly won an Academy Award, Grammy and a Golden Globe for her song “Let the River Run” from the Working Girl motion picture soundtrack. Only one of two artists to ever accomplish such a feat (the other being Bruce Springsteen for "Streets of Philadelphia"), Carly hasn’t rested on her laurels, instead she has continued to write not only more great songs, but film scores and children’s books as well.

Now Carly has a new album out entitled Never Been Gone which was produced by her son Ben Taylor on his Iris Records label. Never Been Gone is a collection of Carly’s hits, re-recorded this year with minimal backing instrumentation, allowing a refined, sultry, autumn sound to emerge. This fresh take on classic favorites also includes two news songs where we hear Carly continuing to evolve and grow as an artist. RockOm recently had the extraordinary opportunity to sit at length with Carly to discuss her new album and also explore music and healing, chant, meditation, the beauty of the human voice, prayer in its various forms and much more.

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Tom: Your new album is entitled Never Been Gone and is out now on Iris Records. I think I speak for millions saying through your music I never felt you had been gone. The great songs on this album are timeless, yet simplistically and beautifully refined. Which songs surprised you the most in how they spoke to you after you re-recorded them?

Carly: I’m glad that you said that because I don’t want anybody to think this is a compilation. There have been quite a few compilations of my albums but this is really a reinterpretation as if I were singing in a foreign language. I limited myself to certain instruments such as not allowing myself to use drums except for on one song. My hits were always marked by my love of the huge tom-tom fill [laughs] and since we didn’t have any of those fills I feel much more exposed on this album. On songs like “Loving You is the Right Thing to Do”, I’m not awash in production. I also feel very exposed in “Coming Around Again". Certainly in the original the emotion came across but not in the way it does on Never Been Gone. When I listen to this album it affects me more, hurts me more, elates me more; it gets back to the core of what the emotion is of the song. When I was listening and mixing "Coming Around Again" it seemed very much like a chant in a way. It sort of moves you vibrationally sometimes like when you sit and chant. I’m not sure which organ it affects - whether it the spleen, the heart, or the liver - but there’s something about it that puts you in a “hum” mood.

Tom: I agree. It’s a liberating listening experience. I imagine it must have been the same for you doing these songs in an entirely different way.

Carly: Well, yes it was and certainly my son Ben [Taylor] had a huge hand in that. He wanted to know how I originally wrote them and then he wanted me to move from there, to take my toys and do them bare and stark. You know, it’s not that I’m not very much helped by Ben and David Saw and [other musicians on the album] but there’s something so different about this album. We’re all older; we’re all approaching it in a different way. There are some new musicians who were never in on the songs before. David Foster certainly put a very new spin on “Let The River Run.” I find that song can be sung in any way. It’s a hymn, so it cannot be sung as a sultry love song, but in terms of whether it’s chorally done or [performed] by one voice or by a duo or trio; it’s very versatile. We sang this in a beautiful and simple choral way, although there are aspects of my solo voice that come through. But it’s largely a guitar-based song; it doesn’t have the thrust of the original version that I did for Working Girl.

Tom: Since we’re talking about “Let The River Run”, your Academy Award-winning song from Working Girl which became somewhat of an anthem after 9-11, what do you think it’s going to take for us to find the “New Jerusalem” and create more harmony between each other on this planet?

Carly: Oh, what a good question. I think that if we all chanted at the same time, everyday, from country to country to country, without any time zones interfering that we would all be vibrating on the same plane, which has always been a great healer. Music has always been used to heal because it makes people feel a lot better. Not all music does; there are certain songs, intervals and chords which don’t make you feel very good. Pythagoras freed the minds of his disciples from the worries of the day by playing music, which would calm their minds and would also produce deep sleep and prophetic dreams. In the morning he would banish the lingering effects of sleep by playing stimulating melodies and rhythms. Major chords will do one thing to your mind and body and minor chords will do something else. Suspension chords will do something else. Then there’s the Devil’s interval which does something. So music and its properties are just fantastic the way they can alter your state of mind.

Tom: I think that’s why we come back to our favorite music over and over again when we want to recreate that original experience.

Carly: Yeah, when you think of it the ancient Hebrews or the prophets foretold the future through chanting and the sister of Moses was said to have immense visionary powers which were conveyed through chanting. Shamans cured diseases and mental anguish by coaxing the evil spirits into leaving their victims through the powers of chanting. There have been all kinds of enlightenment through music, but healing the sick is also a major [attribute]. There are so many curative powers in music. I think that music is the strongest of all the arts in terms of being able to cross all the boundaries and being able to do so many things, especially vibrationally to the body. Looking at a piece of art is very effective and impressive, but I don’t think that it does the same thing if you’re not also the participant. There’s something about the way music brings people together in a communal way; it's such a terrific thing. And it seems to me that the most powerful thing about church or temple for me was always the music.

Tom: Do you use music in meditation to relax? It’s widely known that you have some issues with stage fright and it’s ironic that you create this beautiful music and yet you have stage fright before going on. Does music help you to calm yourself?

Carly: [Laughs] I would love to be on stage and perform music - just the vocal aspect of it - with a whole lot of other people. I would love to sing in a choir or as some of the Irish folk musicians do; they’ll sing while being held from the back by another singer, and that person will be held by another person, and that person by another so that it’s like a chain of singers who are holding each other and they feel each other vibrationally. I would love that. When I’m singing by myself I feel incomplete a little bit. I wish that I could actually feel the warmth and the vibration of another human being right next to my body while I was singing.

Tom: Well you certainly have the vibration of millions of fans that you’ve performed for over the years supporting you. I hope you feel that at times.

Carly: Oh I do, I do! I love it when the audience sings with me. What I don’t like is the very stillness of a room and then just my voice. That’s what sort of scares me. I jump at the sound of it, it’s so solo. I think there are some people who really feed on that and feed on the complete solo-ness of their voice as a lone instrument in the dark. I like the togetherness of the community singing.

Tom: Let me ask you about the creative process. I know that besides being a musician you’re also a very successful film arranger and children's author. Can you explain where all the magical melodies and lyrics, the ideas and words for your books and music come from?

Carly: Oh I have a thousand stories and as I was explaining to somebody the other day, I think I was born with a faucet in my mind. It’s always dripping a melody but there are other things that will be in the way of it. For instance, I’ll be talking to you and I won't necessarily be thinking of the melody, but as soon as I’m still again the melody will come. So anytime I want to tap into it I can and then I‘ll go from there. I go from whatever melody I’m given to a lyric that will seem to go with it or to a better melody or to a chord that I play on an instrument. There's always a starting place. It happened to be with my children’s book that the starting place was in telling my own children stories that I would be making up, because it would be easier to put them to sleep when the lights were out and I was not reading a book. So I would turn off the lights and I would make up a story. Everything that I write has to be very real to me or I have to be able to identify with it.

Tom: Who do you turn to musically for inspiration?

Carly: It’s usually classical music. To be specific I would say the music of Debussy, Poulenc and Gershwin, who's obviously not just classical but he’s the modern composer who I’m most attracted to in terms of melody. There are so many people in pop music and in jazz that it would be to hard to limit myself. If I go to my CD collection it’s almost impossible to chose one myself. It’s easier to turn on the radio and see what happens by accident. There’s always something that I’m fascinated and/or moved by.

Tom: Included in the new album is your song “Coming Around Again.” You write about coming back home to Martha’s Vineyard:"I know nothing stays the same / But if you're willing / to play the game / It's coming around again / So don't mind if I fall apart / there's more room in a broken heart." The music has changed this time around but the words still hold a simple truth that is unchanging about a space - in this case your home - which holds peace and serenity. Other than your home what sustains you when all else fails?

Carly: I think it’s prayer, in its various forms. It’s prayer, where I stay quiet and see whether I can hear the voice of God and how the voice of God comes to me. If it’s in the form of music, then there’s some kind of spiritual prayer which is more sacred than it is secular and that can be any number of things. There’s a requiem by Fauré I happen to love. My thing is I have to remember to [pray]. When I’m not being sustained or when I lose myself or when I’m angry or when I’m in the wrong space I have to remember I can click it off. I have to remember that I can pray if I choose to do so.

There are many things that are meditative for me. Painting is meditative; I love to paint. I love to garden and to look at my beautiful trees that I’m so lucky to have. My son’s music is just exquisite. I listen to that; I listen to the beauty of his voice. Just the beauty of the human voice is really something; it’s a meditation all of its own. The voice of my daughter… there are so many beautiful voices that I just love. My favorite tenor is Yussi Beurling and some of the beautiful music that he sang, just that voice in itself can pull me in a whole different direction, as can various pop songs. I listen to a lot of Motown, especially to Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. And dancing... I would be a whirling dervish if I lived in that time. In fact, I might start a little group of my own right here in my apartment. [Laughs] That would be fun!

www.carlysimon.com

Photos by Amanda Borland

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Three melodic strings, a drumbeat and a passionate desire to connect with another can create a force that is larger than life. This immense, graceful force can be found in Christine Stevens and UpBeat Drum Circles as they travel the world, often venturing into hostile and war-torn territories to bridge cultural and spiritual barriers through music.

Music holds many keys for conflict healing and is an incredibly valuable weapon for promoting peace and reconciliation. Through music Christine Stevens has selflessly dedicated her life and resources in a mission to change the world one heartbeat and drumbeat at a time. Christine is an internationally acclaimed musician, author, music therapist and speaker as well as the founder of UpBeat Drum Circles. RockOm has made a dear friend in Christine featuring her work many times on our website.

We caught up with Christine recently to talk about bridging cultural barriers through music and instrumentation knowing she would have much to share with us on the subject. In connecting with Christine again we are introduced to the Strumstick: a three-stringed instrument whose small nature belies its capabilities. Through the Strumstick and drumming Christine has propagated goodwill, grace and peacemaking not only in Iraq but around the world as well.

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Tom: In your work with Ashti Drum in Iraq, when you first are introduced to perform for a group is there an air of apprehension on either your part as a musician or those you’re meeting for the first time with regards to your being a Western musician? If so how do you make that first, all-important connection?

Christine: Well that’s a good question. "The beginning is half the whole" as they say and the first moments of a connection are crucial. A lot of preparation goes into going to Iraq. I dress according to the cultural norms; I dyed my hair, wore a hijab and prepared to meet people in their way. The first connection - what I noticed - it was all about making music and not talking at all.

More often than not, I introduce myself with drumming  and then wait and see if someone will answer you. [Laughs] What I love about the Strumstick and bringing a melodic instrument with me to Iraq to complement the drum circle program is that the Strumstick is in open tuning, like a drone. When you start to make that drone, people start to come. It’s a magnetic force for group gatherings. When you play a Strumstick it’s a call for singing and chanting. So I would play a simple open drone and often someone would just stand up and chant using Middle Eastern scales.

The idea for music for peacemaking has to do with some very important principles including inclusiveness and we get everyone to participate by handing out our rhythmic instruments. Everyone can join the beat. I love what Mickey Hart (drummer for The Dead) says, “When we drum together we create sacred space.” When we add the Strumstick and that drone - chanting and rhythm - we create a symphony of cultural sharing from the heart.

Tom: So using a Strumstick made the difficult work in bridging cultural barriers easier?

Christine: I would say that it makes it much easier because this time I had this fantastic instrument that was created by Bob McNally (he’s based in New Jersey and his information is at strumstick.com). What I love about it is that it’s three strings and no wrong notes! Anyone can play this! The biggest barrier is words, I think. As long as we’re aware of each other's culture and we’re sensitive, what is the real barrier? It’s words! With music, we can talk. We have to simplify to create that bridge for cultural connection.

The other thing I will say is that in my travels around the world with the Strumstick, everybody knows Bob Marley and you can play Bob Marley tunes on this real easily. According to the Dalai Lama, what we need to do to create peace on the planet is to have more music sharing and music festivals.

Tom: Oh, I agree. More music and more music festivals. That’s the plan and a perfect prescription. Many times we get caught up with words, like you say, when we simply should just let the music speak for us.

Christine: I think we’re becoming energy linguists. In sound and in music we can communicate best… our heart, our feelings. When we communicate on that plane there’s no conflict, there’s no war. We create “sacred space.” What happens in sacred space? We create connections and harmony. Just the word harmony is a metaphor for what we’re creating on the planet right now, one beat at a time.

Tom: Why is it that some people think they could never learn a musical instrument when drumming and the Strumstick, with only a fraction of instruction, turn anyone into a music-maker?

Christine: The key is having a very easy, immediate learning curve. We give up on ourselves too easily. If I had to sit down and try to learn piano scales right away I’d probably quit too, but because you can get a sound immediately on a drum, and a good sound immediately on a Strumstick without any training, all of a sudden children who have never played an instrument before can be in a jam session. I think it’s time to remove that dualistic thinking that some people have talent and some don’t and recognize that music is who we are - that we are biologically wired for music. We all have a singing voice, we all have a drum beat called our heartbeat, and it’s time to let go of all those myths and lies, find the instrument that calls to our heart and be part of the music.

Tom:  In your experience how important are the arts, especially music in connecting us with one another and why aren’t diplomatic efforts on the part of nations engaged in peace making more focused on cultural exchanges involving musicians and artists?

Christine: That’s actually not true. There are many diplomatic efforts right now happening through music. If you look at U.S. history one of the first efforts of diplomacy was sending an African-American gospel choir to Russia during the beginning of the Cold War. Louis Armstrong was paid by the State Department to travel and play music.  I just think we need more of this and the vision that I hold is that before the United Nations talk - we have to have dialogue - first we would have music together. First there would be a performance and then there would be dialogue. I don’t believe it’s only about the music; I think it’s about the whole protocol of combining music-making, musical sharing and appreciation of each other’s culture, and true listening.

Tom: What’s upcoming in the near future for UpBeat Drum Circles?

Christine: We have opportunities to train people in the HealthRHYTHMS program that Remo Drum Company sponsors and we’ll be teaching more in the sacred drumming and peace building traditions in places like the Shambhala Mountain Center. We’re working on some new books and CDs about UpBeat Drum Circle's and Ashti Drum's whole journey in the Middle East hoping to continue to build our drum ashram, our drum ministry, our peace drum corps and continue to collaborate with RockOm. We love learning so much from visiting your site and tuning into what RockOm is doing. Thank you so much for that, Tom.

LINKS:

Visit Strumstick.com to learn more and to see and hear Christine demonstrate its versatility

Be sure to view all our features and interviews with Christine Stevens:

The Rhythm of Life

Social Change and the Power of Music

Global Resonance

"There are dark shadows on the earth,
but its lights are stronger in the contrast."
[Charles Dickens]

Dickens' words remind us of what we enjoy bringing you each week at RockOm: musically-deep artists who reveal all the rich variety of the light/dark spectrum.

The luminosity of light quite literally marks this week's Featured Track of the Week by the artist known as Lights. Lights is an up-and-coming electro-pop artist whose song "Saviour" can be previewed on the homepage all week long.

From the darker end of the spectrum check out my review of Sting's newest offering, If on a Winter's Night... This collection of original and "borrowed" folk tunes is an intensely reflective and spiritually-rich companion for the coming wintry season.

Enjoy,
Trevor Harden, President of RockOm.net

By Howard Cohen, RightSide Solutions

RockOm alum Mickey Hart discusses sounds from space with “The Universe: Pulsars & Quasars” scheduled to air on The History Channel, Tuesday, October 27th at 9:00 PM. Please check your local listings for details and set your TiVo/DVR now!

During The Dead’s Spring Tour, Mickey Hart debuted the "Universe Of Sound". Each night of the tour Hart connected audiences with the universe's most celestial vibrations from the Big Bang to the rings of Saturn to the black hole. Hart said, “The idea was to take our audience on a nightly tour of some part of our universe during our 'space concerto' section. The next day we put it up on our website so the kids could follow it.” This got the interest of the folks at the History Channel who produce the acclaimed “The Universe” series. They came out to Hart’s studio and spent an afternoon doing interviews for the segment being produced on pulsars and quasars.

Hart is known for his high quality recordings of music from around the globe and his collaborations with the world’s great percussionists. His Grammy Award winning Planet Drum (1991 Best World Music) and Global Drum Project (2008 Best Contemporary World Music) featured the finest acoustic percussion, enhanced with the latest audio processing and editing technologies. As he begins to record his next project, the frontier of space inspires Mickey's compositions and he is thrilled to be collaborating with a number of the world's leading astronomers and astrophysicists along with his Global Drum Project band mates, Zakir Hussain, Giovanni Hidalgo and Sikiru Adepoju in creating other worldly music emanating from a universe of sound.

Connecting the arts and sciences is another piece of Hart’s latest works. Mickey hopes to inspire the next generations and feels it is essential that young people understand the science of their times. He strongly supports the Obama administration’s STEM initiatives to prepare the next generation in science, technology, engineering, and math. Mickey has been a pioneer in supporting engineering for the arts including the development of field recording systems, loudspeaker arrays, and has made various appearances at AES (Audio Engineering Society) conventions.

Please find a brief of the show on The History Channel Website

www.mickeyhart.net

SEE ALSO: RockOm's interview with Mickey - "If There's a Creator, It's a Rhythm"

Photo: Jay Blakesberg ©2009

There are some days that call for music which blasts us off into higher dimensions through sharp edginess, intensity and brute presence, while other days call for music that gently centers our being through fluidity, grace and airy spaciousness. Today we're offering a sacred spectrum of sounds filled with fluidity and grace through devotional kirtan music by Portland's Shantala Music and "psychedelic Sufi trance rock" by New York City's Haale in the RockOm Featured Track of the Week.

These two artists couldn't sound more different but are united nonetheless in seva, or service to others through their music. On Thursday RockOm offers a very unique RockOm Podcast featuring an intense yet humorous round table discussion with the members of Shantala.

A round-table discussion with Shantala
By Tom Crenshaw and Trevor Harden

Benjy and Heather Wertheimer are simply two of the most amazing and dedicated artists RockOm has had the opportunity to meet. Both lead kirtan (sacred chanting) worldwide as the duo Shantala (sometimes as a trio with Brent Kuecker) with soul-stirring vocals, sacred lyrics and exotic instrumentation. Shantala has performed and recorded internationally with such sacred music luminaries as RockOm alums Krishna Das and Jai Uttal, as well as with Deva Premal & Miten and others. In summer 2008, they were named as one of the top "Wallahs to Watch" by Yoga + Joyful Living.

Heather Wertheimer is a singer, songwriter and guitarist who combines her special love of both music and yoga to lead devotional chanting for yoga workshops and spiritual gatherings internationally. Heather's debut CD with Shantala, Church of Sky, was named by New Age Retailer as one of the top ten albums of 2004. It has been aired on radio stations nationwide. In April 2003, she and Benjy released The Love Window, a beautiful and well-loved collection of sacred chants. In 2007, they released Sri, their second popular kirtan CD, and their first live CD LIVE in love was released in 2008.

Benjy Wertheimer is an award-winning songwriter, vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist (playing tabla, congas, percussion, esraj, guitar, and keyboards). Benjy has toured and recorded with such artists as  Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Deva Premal & Miten, Walter Becker (Steely Dan), and virtuoso guitarist Michael Mandrell. He has opened for such artists as Carlos Santana, Paul Winter and Narada Michael Walden. A founding member of the internationally acclaimed Ancient Future world fusion music ensemble, Benjy also toured the U.S., Canada and Japan with renowned bamboo flute master G.S. Sachdev. He has studied Indian classical music for over 25 years with some of the greatest masters of that tradition (including Alla Rakha, Zakir Hussain, Ali Akbar Khan and Z. M. Dagar). Benjy's CDs receive extensive airplay around the world and his CD Circle of Fire went to #1 on the New Age radio charts in November 2002.

RockOm recently sat down with Benjy, Heather, Brent and Kelley Boyd (owner of Savannah Yoga Center in Savannah, GA) for an informal round-table discussion on kirtan, yoga, Eastern music, the evolution of kirtan and sacred music, and much more.

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Tom: Shantala just recently came from Bhakti Fest [a yoga and music festival in Joshua Tree, CA]. Tell us about your experience.

Benjy: It felt like a milestone that marked the beginning of a different level of engagement of people in this country with bhakti yoga. A lot of people were only half jokingly referring to Bhakti Fest as the Woodstock of kirtan. There's this critical mass that's being reached that is moving towards shifting the consciousness of a lot of people in this country. It was an incredible honor to be there. Bhakti Fest is a place where history is being made as far as bhakti yoga. We’ve been to a lot of yoga festivals with a lot of people present and the focus is very much on asana. In this case it was very clear the focus was on kirtan.

Heather: I don’t know how many kirtan artists where there. Some of them were well known, some weren't and some of the most well known artists weren't there. The feeling at Bhakti Fest was fantastic, so good natured, calm and friendly as well as peaceful and loving.

Tom: Yeah, we looked online and saw some photographs of the events and it seemed so intimate.

Heather: It felt personal.

Benjy: It sure did.

Tom: When and how did you two form Shantala?

Benjy: Probably as many people know us as Benjy and Heather as they do Shantala, but now that Brent is with us it really feels like we have a special kind of synergy that we’ve been able to grow over time. Now we’re writing chants together.

Tom: And Brent gets to help with Barkley [Benjy and Heather's dog].

Heather: Barkley is our inspiration.

Brent: Barkley does everything really. Everything is a manifestation of Barkley. We're just pawns. [Laughter]

Heather: We're just servants of Barkley. [Laughter]

Benjy: I was thinking I should change my name to Barkley-Das. [Laughter] It is quite interesting though, Barkley is a very important part of what we do because every day we are reminded of bhakti through him because his love is so absolute. I think there is something we can all learn through the love of a dog. It is really unswerving and truly unconditional. Secondly, very much what is at the heart of bhakti yoga for me is being in the moment and I can't think of anyone who is a better teacher of that than a dog.  It's [about] 'right here, right now'; not what's happening tomorrow, not what happened a few days ago. It's 'right here, right now'.

Brent: You know how dogs love you no matter what you've done to them? It's kind of the same way that Heather talks about when we're in kirtan that no matter what we think about ourselves while we're practicing kirtan Ma is always loving you no matter what, and when you get a glimpse of that you start feeling better.

Heather: We begin to focus more and more on the force of grace and everything that's holding us. It's so easy to step from your normal funky world of being lost in your thoughts and riding the ups and downs of your thoughts, your latest emotional swing and it's just one easy step to have a total awareness of grace with you. That's an important part of this practice that we're able to make this step into contact with a realm of beauty and sacredness and joy.

But back to your question - how did we get started in Kirtan? People just asked us to do it. I was doing some things as a singer-songwriter; that was an important part of my life. Benjy had been full time in music and had an extensive Indian classical background, so when we got together and I was teaching yoga we began to be very involved in the Anusara yoga community. Benjy played for savasana on the esraj for John Friend and John fell in love. The short story is John Friend exposed Krishna Das to Benjy's esraj music and Krishna Das invited Benjy to perform on his Breath of the Heart album. Krishna Das discovered Benjy also plays tabla so when Krishna Das needed a fill-in tabla player he called on Benjy to come to the Inner Harmony Yoga Retreat Center with John Friend. We did that for a couple of years. I just tagged along. I was a yoga teacher; I just wanted to do yoga with John and it was a bonus to be able to sing with Krishna Das. We would fill in when Krishna Das wasn't available and ended up doing music for savasana. Then people started asking us to chant and we had no idea… or intention to go down that path. Once we started, we fell in love with it.

Benjy: I feel in a very real way we were guided. It was almost like we didn't have a choice. We kept encountering circumstances starting with meeting John Friend back in 2000, going into this thing with Krishna Das and falling in love with the practice of kirtan completely, and finding place after place where that was the best way we could serve. As for my own religious background, I'm a Quaker, but I feel there's no dissonance between my Quaker roots and what I’m celebrating, especially from a Hindu-tantric perspective, which is the realm John Friend works in. There's this beautiful melding of [my Quaker roots with Hindu-tantric] and in the kirtan it’s a part of this celebratory element of yoga that's at the heart of a lot of the tantric practice.

It's quite incredible too that at this point, 32 years ago I started my practice of yoga but not asana yoga. Everyone thinks of asana right away when they think of yoga but my teachers, Ali Akbar Khan and Zakir Hussain would refer to it as nada yoga: the yoga of sacred vibration and sound. It's considered a very high yoga going back to some very ancient texts. In the process of learning from Heather when she was a yoga teacher and from John, I stated to see how this could all come together with nada yoga side by side with bhakti yoga in the kirtan practice. That's a very big part of what we always hoped to be able to share with people.

Tom: Benjy, you grew up playing classical music starting with piano?

Benjy: That's right. Yeah, my very first instrument starting at age five was piano. My parents tell me I was singing before I could talk. I played violin as well, my interest shifted, and I later started studying flamenco guitar.

Tom: How did your study gravitate towards Eastern Music?

Benjy: Well before I started studying piano my mother told me I used to always bug her to keep playing Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion. She literally wore it out. I was very much into African drumming and by junior high school I was studying Afro-Cuban drumming. In my high school years I came into contact with Indian classical percussion and it just blew me away. I had never seen anything like it and I realize, particularly when I saw the one who was going to become my guru on tablas - Zakir Hussain - when I saw him play what he could do with these two little drums was way beyond what I could ever imagine. So I knew that's where I wanted to go. As soon as I could after high school I went out to California where Zakir Hussain was living so I could study with him.

Trevor: If Drums of Passion hadn't been made we wouldn't have anything to talk about! [Laughter] Because most every single person we talk with talks about how instrumental that album was.

Benjy: Oh, there's no doubt!

Heather: [Without Olatunji's influence] so much music would have never made it over to this part of the world probably!

Tom: What's the hardest thing for Western musicians to grasp about Eastern music?

Benjy: One of the things is cultural. In Western culture, music is seen as a diversion or a source of entertainment, whereas in Indian classical music it is a spiritual path. I think some people have difficulty finding ways to reconcile themselves with that and the expectation of the sadhana of that path is mind-blowing. As an example my guru in the raga side of things, Ali Akbar Khan, would play or practice music 14-18 hours a day over the period of decades. It's very hard for us to even imagine that level of sadhana in our culture. Part of it too is because there's a very different orientation; there's a way we have to make our way in the world, or I guess you could call it a renunciation of sorts because you have to renounce the world to a degree to engage in that level of practice. What's interesting is that it's not renouncing the Divine, in fact you are trying to engage yourself fully with that essence of sound, which Ali Akbar Khan did so beautifully, which Zakir Hussain and his father Alla Rakha (who was Ravi Shankar's tabla player) did as well. They embodied the essence of the soul of music because they focused so strongly on that.

Tom: Heather, what are the unspoken elements between musicians while you're performing kirtan? What transpires that is unspoken? How do you communicate with each other while you're performing?

Heather: Well, we've spent so much time together that we're basically joined at the hip. [Laughter] But I think that we have a common purpose as performing musicians in kirtan, which is we are supporting the energy of the group to move in particular directions, to help people have a deepening experience throughout the course of the kirtan. So we have an energetic wave that we're riding together and we're all supporting that wave. There are times that we want [the music] to move slow, deep and more inward and there are times we want [the music] to come into a much higher energetic state and we  know approximately when that is going to happen, but it's a little bit different every time. Musically, Brent takes his cues off of what I'm singing but occasionally we have an eye contact that we make that we know we're going to switch parts. I use that eye-cue;  Benjy and I just look at each other and we know we’re going to do another repeat. Occasionally I'll mouth one word to him but it doesn't happen very often. We're also very connected to each other. We've done this so much that we know what's going to happen and we all have a sense of where it needs to go and where it should go.

Tom: So Benjy, if Heather is entranced in a part and you know she is in a blissful state but you feel it may need to go in another direction, how do you judge what needs to happen and make a change?

Brent: You don't ever take the women out of her bliss! [Laughter]

Heather: No, he doesn’t have control of that. I do! [Laughter] But we do have subtle ways that we all push the tempo or slow down slightly.

Benjy: I have a deep sense of trust to Heather's connection this practice, so generally speaking I’m going to go with the flow that I feel happening there. That said, the degree of acceleration at any point is up to me; I'm driving it as the drummer in many cases and so figuring out where that next level  should be is kinda up to me…

Heather: Yes it is…

Benjy: …And these two follow me in that. Sometimes I'm leading the chants too. There's a couple of high-energy chants that I lead and I have to figure out where that energy is for me. It's a dance. The other thing is that if Heather is going into a blissful state it is almost always accompanied by a similar state on the part of those participating in the kirtan. They are really coming into this synchronized way of being with each other. They are really tuned in and Heather is tuning into a kind of energy… I know if she's going there the group is following in her wake and I don't want to mess that up. It's such a different mindset because of the participatory elements and because it is a co-creation in a very real way with the group present.

A lot of the kind of things you would see in a performance doesn't really apply [to kirtan]. There are times I want to bring in elements of Indian classical music - for example a tabla solo - or something that's played on the esraj that is mirroring a raga that I know well. Or if we have other great Indian musicians playing with us, which we're blessed to have sometimes, to give them a moment to completely shine out in the middle of the kirtan because to me it's all part of that same expression of divine sound and devotion.

Heather: Also, we all three have a talk every day about what we're going to do for our set list. We'll talk about that for a while and then sometimes we'll often end up changing it mid-stream. The other night we were thinking of keeping the kirtan more down-tempo, but when we got into the up-tempo part Benjy said, "Let's do another up chant," because that was going to serve the group better. So we all talk about it.  Anything you want to add Brent?

Brent: I think there's really one word and you touched on it a couple of times; it's all about service. I feel like, what can I do to serve directly first and foremost with what is happening with Benjy and Heather and us, as a whole, and the energy in the room? I usually play with my eyes closed so I'm mostly feeling the room as opposed to seeing the room. I feel like I can get a lot more information that way. See, it's like this… Kirtan is like a bliss-bus [laughter], no… no… dig this. Benjy is the drummer, as like the engine and the gas pedal; I’m the bass player so I'm the wheels, keeping it going; and Heather is the driver. Everybody in the room are the passengers and they're just singing on the bus. [Laughter]

Heather: That's a great way to put it! We’ll have to use that for our next tour, The Bliss Bus Tour. [Laughter]

Trevor: One of our "go-to" questions we ask a lot of people just to get their different perspectives is, "What is it about music that connects us with the Divine in a way that other things don’t?"

Benjy: There's a term that comes to us from an ancient text that embodies it completely: Nada Brahma, which is basically translated as Sound is God. The nada yoga is your effort to go so deeply into that ocean of sound, through music, that you connect with all the auspicious principles of the Divine in the music and it is considered in many occasions to be completely beyond words. The second part of it is that because music does not necessarily require words, the raw music itself, that vibration is something you can feel regardless of the language you speak in your day-to-day life. It truly is a universal language. You can evoke feelings in people at a very, very deep level almost instantaneously with music. For me, the highest compliment I could give anyone who does a soundtrack for a movie is that you don't notice it because it is so perfectly integrated with what is going on that it doesn’t stand out on its own. It's a part of an integral whole. In that way too, music can be a soundtrack for our love and devotion to the Divine.

Heather: I would add that when we’re making music it vibrates our whole body, it resonates inside of us. It resonates in the heart area and as you know, it also releases chemicals [and causes] interactions in the brain.

Benjy: There’s a wonderful book out called This Is Your Brain On Music that is actually from a neuro-scientific vantage point about what happens in the brain when people are engaged in either playing or listening to music. To grossly oversimplify it one of the points is there is no other activity outside of being engaged in music that engages more parts of the brain simultaneously.

Trevor: Speaking to what you just said about music engaging different parts of the brain and enhancing other activities, there is some debate about asana practice and whether or not you should accompany it with music. What are your general thoughts on this?

Heather: I’d like to get Kelley's [Boyd, owner of Savannah Yoga Center] opinion on that. Kelley?

Kelley Boyd: It goes right back to what Heather and Benjy were talking about which is the practice feels totally different when there is music playing. Sometimes some moments do call for no music. There's plenty going on internally. I think that music is a beautiful addition to an asana practice. You can engage people in a different kind of way with music in their practice depending on the songs that you play, the message you want to convey to your students. I've heard of stories where students listen to a particular kind of song for 10-20 years and then they heard it in a yoga class and they picked up on specific words and it really opens something up for them.

Heather: Brent teaches yoga as well. Anything you want to add about yoga and music Brent?

Brent: I don't use music, except for savasana yoga. For me I would love to have musicians in the room playing with me and reading the energy of the room, supporting what is happening. So often I find unless I've spent hours and hours on a play list it's not in sync with the mood or actions in the class that I am intending and feeding. It’s a personal thing. I don't want to be teaching something that is more introspective and have some rockin' music just because the play list didn't happen to sync up.

Benjy: One of the great blessings in our lives is that for a decade or so now Heather and I have been providing live accompanying music for John Friend's yoga classes with as many as 800 people in a class. He is like a conductor and we are this orchestra that needs to be able to stop on a dime. For example if he needs to stop and give a technical instruction we are happy to stop playing because it would be totally distracting. If the flow changes we need to be able to turn and completely shift that.

Tom: Where are you going as a group and as individuals? What does the future hold?

Heather: We have a really fun and meaningful focus coming up for our 2010 tour in many cities across North America. We’re going to be doing events that we're going to be calling "Unity in the Community" which means we're going to be bringing together different groups at yoga centers, different non-profit groups and church groups to work together to do fund raising for local and regional charity causes. We love doing fund raising events and helping others through our events. For example, we sold handmade African necklaces for about a year and raised $17,000 for Ugandan women and children. So it's really powerful what you can do in the course of your offerings.

Brent: I'd just like to close by offering one thing. What kirtan is and what we're doing is truly an experience of the heart because you don't get done listening to any kind of music and say, "Wow, that just made my brain feel good." You don’t hear that. People say they actually felt something [in kirtan]. We are transported into our heart and what we find there is good, blissful, amazing. What we can say by this on a universal perspective is that at the essence of our self and at our heart there is just goodness.

Heather: I agree and to add to your really good question Trevor about how music gets us closer to the Divine. I think part of it is when you come together with a common intention, as groups and as individuals, we can consciously create that experience together and it's beautiful. We're just opening a doorway into something that can sweep us along. It's really beautiful.

Trevor: And that communal aspect is representative of a Divine thing going on because it's bringing people together.

Benjy: For sure.

Heather: Absolutely. That's why it was so powerful at Bhakti Fest with 2500 people coming together with a common intention. I really believe it ripples out into the world.

Benjy: Can you imagine what it's going to be like in 10 years? I am really excited to see what is happening. Culturally as asana [hatha] yoga has taken hold here in this country and you see many styles represented many of them are very new even though some of the yoga practices go back 5000 years. There are new practices being invented every day.  We’re finding in kirtan a complete expansion of the definition of the term. That is happening in large part because of the melting pot culture that we're part of here in the States whereas someone [elsewhere] may not know how to deal with mantra or how to celebrate in kirtan but they totally resonate with reggae. It's like the opening of a doorway that many people might not have known and that's part of what we hope to facilitate in what we do. There are so many different kinds of kirtan now available for people. It's really exploding and I think it's a beautiful opportunity for more and more and more people to find that connection to the Divine.

LINKS:

www.shantalamusic.com

Shantala Amazon link to latest CD available on Amazon

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Albert Einstein once said, "If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music." I think it’s fairly safe to say that Einstein understood music about as much as music can be understood.  Just as difficult as it seems to grasp Einstein's theories of quantum mechanics, energy transfer and special relativity so it can seem equally implausible to fully understand the mysteries, dynamics and connection that exists between us and the forces of vibration which we call music.

But one doesn't need to be an Einstein to enjoy or use music as a source of pleasure or for healing and connecting with one another and to a larger source. "We're all wired for music", according to Oliver Sacks author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. Countless others have pointed to our inherent ability to connect with the mysteries and forces of music without being able to fully understand the connection.

Often we take our relationship with sound and music for granted without fully considering how vital they are to our well being - how magical a form of communicating music is. The simple fact that music expresses the full range of emotions humans are capable of expressing or understanding is profound. Unlike words, which need to be translated from one language to another, music need only be performed or heard for us to understand what is being expressed.

To me and many, many others music holds the answers to the questions which words cannot answer. Music is a holy force, a prayer set to melody and an expression of the Divinity in all beings and in all forms. But don't take my word for it. Read what has been expressed more eloquently than I could possibly ever communicate:

"Do you know what the music is saying?
'Come follow me and you will find the way.'" Rumi

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life." Ludwig van Beethoven

“Music is the art of the prophets and the gift of God.” Martin Luther

"We have fallen into the place where everything is music." Rumi

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife." Kibran

What do you say music is and how do you use the mystery of sound and vibration in your life? What are your favorite quotes on music? We would love to see your thoughts here and invite you to interact with the RockOm community on this Friday. Let's not be a mystery to each other. Let's reveal ourselves and sing to one another our sacred songs.

By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Most formulas for success in the music industry don't include exiting the lime-light at the pinnacle of one's career, but Matt Malley (bassist and co-founder of the Counting Crows) did just this in 2004. Matt retired after 14 years with Counting Crows just as the band was celebrating an Academy Award nomination for their song "Accidentally In Love," which appeared in the motion picture Shrek 2 Soundtrack.

Matt now follows another path, one focused on the home-front and family. He's now a full time father and husband as well as a record producer, session bassist, ashram keeper and student of the Mohan Veena or Indian slide guitar. Matt is a student and friend of Grammy winner Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and when chance brings them together, is either learning from his music "guru" or recording Bhatt's guitar in his home studio at the family ashram.

Matt has also just released his first solo record titled The Goddess Within. As a longtime student of Sahaja Yoga meditation Matt has infused The Goddess Within with sacred sounds, rhythms and harmonies, but don't expect this collection to be a velvety venture into serene, mystical realms. Matt rocks out when he's blissed-off and proves higher states needn't be all sanctified-sounding. One can be on the edge, pushing the boundaries both cosmically and musically at the same time.

In this exclusive interview with RockOm Matt speaks about the reasons he left Counting Crows, Kundalini energy and Sahaja yoga, learning the Indian slide guitar, his debut album and his musical intentions for the future.

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Tom: You're an Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe-nominated songwriter and a co-founder as well as a 14-year member of Counting Crows. The question is, why does one leave a band as successful as the Counting Crows?

Matt: Good question. Actually it was fatherhood. But when my second boy was born in January of 2004 I just couldn't handle being a missing-in-action dad. My first one was born in 2000 and I missed the first three or four years of his life because we lived in hotel rooms out touring. That was really hard. So when the second child was born I lasted about another year and then I just had to get out and push the eject button. I haven't looked back. The money was good but money doesn't mean anything. We're still friends and the guys in the band are all like brothers, but I didn't need to be away from home anymore. It was grating on my soul and that's why I left.

Tom: How does something that you love so much turn into something you have to get away from?

Matt: When I first joined the band I wasn't married and wasn't a father yet so my life was better suited for touring and traveling like we did. I'm still a fan of ol' Adam; he's a great songwriter and that's why I stuck with him so long, but family came along and it outweighed my enthusiasm for being the bass player in Counting Crows. I didn't want to be the dad that comes home once every four or five months and visits for a couple of weeks and the kids don't know me that well. Even though the band was still fun, my life on the outside changed.

Tom: How did you get started into music?

Matt: When I was about seven years old a guy came to our grammar school and tested everyone in the class to see who had musical talent. He singled me out and told my parents that I needed to start taking piano lessons. I took classical piano when I was seven or eight and also went through trumpet and violin in the school bands through grammar school. That was my first exposure to music. Honestly, I didn't really like classical piano because it was kind of like typing. I had to memorize these pieces and I didn't feel it in my heart, I just had to memorize things with my brain. I wish I had stuck with it because classical music is an incredible art form.

Tom: When kids discover music for the first time and have the opportunity to play an instrument, especially alongside other kids, they discover something about themselves that's brand new. What did you discover about yourself through music that you may not have otherwise?

Matt: It was my first taste of collective awareness or collective consciousness. You're with a group and you all are achieving something harmonious at the same time. That was new to me as a kid... as I imagine it would be to any kid. [Laughs]

Tom: Tell us about your debut album The Goddess Within. How did that come about?

Matt: The lady on the album cover founded a type of meditation that I've been doing for over 20 years. Her name is Sri Matajii. She was born in the center of India in 1923 and is still alive today but is elderly and quiet and has stopped giving public programs. She's was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in the late 90s, though she didn't get it. [She teaches] a technique and a knowledge of the spiritual machinery that we're all born with. It's a universal truth and not from one religion; in fact it ties a lot of the prophets' teachings together. It involves an awakening of what's called the Kundalini or what in the Orient is called the Chi and it resides at the sacrum bone at the base of the spine. Sacrum is Latin for sacred, so whoever named the bone knew that it contained something. The Kundalini is regarded as the feminine aspect of divinity and so the Goddess within is kind of like my term for the Kundalini, the Goddess. The masculine aspect of God or spirit is in our heart as a spark called the Atman in India. The Kundalini is like a gas that rises up and unites with the spark, carrying it up to the fontanelle bone area at the top of the head. Fontanelle is French for fountain, so whoever named that area named it auspiciously as well. This teaching just connects a lot of the world's religions. Even in Christianity, the saints at Pentecost had tongues of fire coming out of the top of their heads but Christians have just seen that as a mystery.

In learning about the Kundalini, I've approached it like a scientist... no blind faith. Smart people don't just believe something that they're told; they have to find out for themselves. When the Kundalini is awakened you feel it as a cool breeze on the palms of your hands and out the top of your head. You could say that the central nervous system becomes integrated with the spiritual nervous system or the parasympathetic, the seven chakras. The knowledge that [Sri Matajii] teaches is really in depth. She's spoken to the Jungian Society and she's a Nobel Peace Prize nominee... you could say I'm a disciple of hers.

Tom: Did you ever get a chance to meet her in person?

Matt: Yes, a few times, but it was very formal. You don't just talk casually with her. I let her do the talking. Back in the late 90s I got to sit with her a couple of times. She knew I was in a rock band so the way she saw that was that I was helping bring vibrations into the music industry. She had asked me about Kurt Cobain who had killed himself a couple of years before. I remember responding, "I think it was drugs that made him do that." And she said, "I think he was frustrated." She asked about a lot of things related to music with me; it was very interesting.

Tom: I suppose she felt you could reach a lot of people.

Matt: Yes and by reaching them it doesn't mean preaching about her yoga. It's just that the presence of being out there puts vibrations into where you are. Wherever you put your attention, the Kundalini will follow.

Tom: So for this CD, did you go into meditation or prepare in some other way?

Matt: I didn't do any exercises or anything like that. We live in an ashram; in fact, I own an ashram with three buildings and our friends who do our meditation live here. We kind of live in vibration so I don't meditate or anything right before playing music. We meditate every morning at day break. The record was just done during the day somewhat spontaneously and when I felt good I would go work on it.

Tom: What are the intentions for this album?

Matt: Rather than clobber people over the head with my one practice, I'm hoping to continue to introduce spirituality to the Western world. I'm interested in Indian culture, the Hindu deities, the great religions of the world including Christianity, Mohammad was a great teacher... I'm just hoping to continue what a lot of artists are doing by introducing a spiritual outlook - without being religious - to the Western world.

Tom: You've expressed interest in Qawwali as well. How did you get interested in that?

Matt: I discovered Qawwali in the 90s and fell in love with it. It's a very aggressive Indian vocal style of singing. When I would do pilgrimages to India and I'd be at my Sahaja Yoga get-togethers, they'd often have Qawwali artists or bhajans or lots of Indian classical music and the Qawwali artists always stuck out to me. They would be almost frightening and wearing their matching hats; I almost consider it the heavy metal of Indian classical music. [Laughs] When I learned about the translation of the words, I was blown way. Qawwali music originated in what was Persia about 700 years ago as Sufi devotional music and has a connection to Islam but it's beyond just that now. I'm just a big fan of that art form.

Tom: You're also studying Indian slide guitar. We interviewed Debashish Bhattacharya last year when he was in Savannah, GA with Derek Trucks, Bob Brozman and Jerry Douglas. It's a difficult art to learn. How long have you been studying this?

Matt: It's really not easy at all. [Laughs] After ten years of learning it, I'm still on the tip of the iceberg. I know that when children start playing in India they'll be doing what's called the alankar for two or three years which is just exercises up and down the major scale before they actually start learning anything. They spend all that time just getting their pitch right. Slide guitar is like that; it's hard to get the pitch just right unless you practice the alankar for a long time.

Tom: Are you going to continue to move forward with spiritual music or get back in with the Crows? What does the future hold for you?

Matt: I'm not all that interested in a rock band anymore. It's a very blunt art form. Not to diss it or anything; a lot of the great rock records are also spiritual records. "Stairway to Heaven" is a Goddess song. I don't know if it's age or what but I'm getting more subtle. I'm reinventing myself and I'd like to give Indian music concerts on my slide guitar some day; I don't know when. I'd like to spend the rest of my life doing that.

www.mattmalley.com

An interview with Country Music's Collin Raye
By Tom Crenshaw, Tom@RockOm.net

Collin Raye grew up surrounded by powerful songs of conviction and in the shadows of legendary rock 'n' rollers and country artists. His mother was a musician in the 1950s and opened up on many occasion for the likes of Sun Records recording artists Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. Later on in his mother's career Collin and his brother would become part of her act learning the ropes of the entertainment business at an early age.

Jump now to 2009. Collin Raye is a legend in Country music having garnered five Platinum albums, 25 Top Ten hits, and 15 No. 1 chart-toppers. Five times nominated as country music's Male Vocalist of the Year, Collin Raye has consistently used his stardom to advance social causes. Among the organizations he has supported are Boys Town, First Steps, Al-Anon, Special Olympics, Country Cares About AIDS, Catholic Relief Services, Parade of Pennies, Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, The Emily Harrison Foundation, Childhelp USA, Silent Witness National Initiative, Easter Seals and Make a Difference Day. At the 2001 Country Radio Seminar, Clint Black presented Collin Raye with the organization's Humanitarian of the Year award in recognition of his issue-oriented music and his tireless charity work.

Collin's latest release, titled Never Going Back [Time Life Records], is a mix of secular and spiritual songs that he himself is extremely proud of. Included on the album are the highlights "Mid-life Chrysler", "Without You" (a duet with Susan Ashton), "The Cross", "Only Jesus" and "She's With Me", a song Collin wrote for his granddaughter Haley who suffers from a rare and crippling neurological condition.

In this interview Collin talks about his early years in the honky-tonks, his newest songs centered on his faith and spirituality, staying positive through family struggles, and why he never tires of lending support to charitable causes.

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Tom: Do you ever miss the honky-tonks?

Collin: Oh, no, no, no. Never. I've never looked back. I look at those like a sentence; I did my time and I earned my stripes. It was a good place to cut your teeth and learn how to perform, because in those kinds of places in those days especially you weren't put on a pedestal for being in a band. If anything, you were looked down upon. You really had to learn to be thick-skinned and be able to play with enthusiasm even when no one applauded or paid attention. If they did pay attention at all it was to complain that you were too loud or not loud enough or not playing enough dance music or that kind of thing. It was very tough and I was a young man; I could never do that again today. I wouldn't have the patience for it, nor the desire.

But between that and the casinos that I did later on in Nevada, I learned how to do this for a living. So by the time I got a record deal I knew how to put on a show and perform for people. All I needed was my own music and so once I got that I was in business.

Tom: Bands coming up today don't necessarily need to do what had to be done in the past such as play in the honky-tonks. But at the same time they don't get the experience of being in front of brutally honest audiences and paying their dues. There's a benefit and a drawback there.

Collin: It's a double-edged sword because if - let's say my daughter or my son was following in my footsteps - I would not want them to do what I had to do. I'd want them to be able to win a talent show, get a couple of breaks, and 'boom' get a record deal. As someone who's done that, at the same time you feel cheated in a way. [These artists] will still talk about paying their dues and playing in one club for a year before getting a record deal. And you find out what club it is and it turns out to be one that we'd have cut off our pinkie to play in, with big sound and lights. They don't have to do what we did and it shows; you see them live and see their inexperience. But we live in a time that worships youth. Our society seems to adore anyone who does anything if they're cute and they're young, whether they really have anything to offer or whether they have one trick to offer.

For instance in the mainstream, music has become such a product. And I know technically it's always been a product but it's now looking like something you just buy off the shelves. I just wonder sometimes what rock and roll, country and mainstream pop music would have been like had it always been that way. The answer is it'd be pretty pathetic. In other words, those people who did all those creative things in the 50s, 60s and 70s would have never gotten the opportunity to do those things, set the standards so high and give us all that music we love today had record labels kept them in a choke-hold like they do now or not signed people because they're not cute or young enough.

Tom: Let me ask you about your latest album, Never Going Back which was released on your own label...

Collin: Actually, I have done some records on my own label but this one is released on Time Life. I'm really enjoying that relationship because they are not a country music label or a rock label or an anything label; they just put out music. They told me to make the album I wanted to make and they'd sell it with no interference. I had never gotten an offer like that before. And so I had no one looking over my shoulder and I made a record that is very eclectic and very much 'me.' I feel like it's more of a Christian album more than anything else. I didn't mean for that to happen but that's just where my heart is and the kind of the songs I write. To be honest with you, I feel like I've been making records like that for a long time but was always stereotyped as a country music singer no matter what I sang. For the longest time we were very blessed and lucky to be able to put out songs that carried a heavy message and make them country music hits - from "Little Rock" to "Love Me" to "In This Life" - I feel like they are spiritual songs. We treated them that way and performed them that way. But it just so happens at that time the country music audience was wide and varied enough that there was a place for those kinds of songs.

For instance, we talk about domestic violence amongst women and we look at that through the eyes of a father and how sometimes when we don't mean to be doing it in a harmful way, we degrade a woman like she's a piece of meat or something to look at. Well that's somebody's little girl, now. There were songs like that which were Top 5 Country records and I couldn't believe we got away with that. Eventually the powers-that-be decided around the turn of the millennium to get back to the good 'ol party tunes that sell beer and make Budweiser happy. That's kind of where the male artists are right now; you're either doing that or you're not doing anything. The girls, like Carrie Underwood, can get away with some cool songs sometimes but rarely do you hear a song from a male artist today on the radio that's not about pick-ups and drinking beer from a mason jar. That's not my cup of tea and never was.

So to make this long answer even longer I think what I enjoy the most is that the label doesn't consider me a country singer; they consider me a singer. My fans either don't listen to radio or listen to different types of radio such as Christian radio or AC [Adult Contemporary] radio. They feel like I'm a different type of breed and for the first time I've got a label who understands that and promotes me as such.

Tom: It seems the labels have been changing their minds regarding spiritual music. Do you think it's purely profit driven or do you feel like there's a change happening in some of the bigger labels?

Collin: I would love to believe it's a change in attitude but I've been in this business for so long and known people who run labels. When MercyMe's album and song "I Can Only Imagine" crossed over - which is a Praise and Worship album straight out of Sunday Worship - and became a #1 AC song, I think God very much blessed that effort. It was an anointed thing. It was very unique and isn't going to happen over and over. But at the same time I think record labels look at that and go, "Hey, there's people who will actually buy this Jesus Music." There could be an exception in there who are maybe trying to do something positive with their roster, but for the most part they probably see it as a chance to cash in. That's just what record labels do. They've been doing it since someone came up with the concept in the first place. And they'll continue to do it except for the labels that are specifically organized to release spiritual music.

Tom: In 2001 the Country Radio Broadcasters gave you their Artists' Humanitarian Award and you were nominated for 2008's Academy of Country Music's Humanitarian Award. You've worked with just about every organization out there who seeks to help others. What can you share with someone who may be reading or hearing this that is going through hard times and trials and might be in a position where things seem hopeless?

Collin: I guess experience. And by that I mean that I'm no different than anyone who has gone through stuff. The struggles in my career I don't even consider as significant. The struggles that count are the ones in your family and that involve your kids. In my case I've had a few, not the least of which is one we're going through right now with my little granddaughter, Haley, who's extremely ill with a neurological disorder that is crippling and (they tell us) ultimately fatal. There's helplessness that comes with that. So what I say comes straight from the horses mouth [when I work with these causes]. For years I used to support charities and children's charities, but my kids were fine. I've always had a compassionate heart and heavy conscience. But now through the course of the past few years when I offer my help or try to draw light to a certain cause or charity, people can look back and say that the Spirit's got to be with me to a certain degree, otherwise I would just sit in the corner and feel sorry for myself. I could say that we have our own problems and I'm not going to worry about people overseas or hungry and sick kids in our own country, because we have our own baby to worry about. But I can't do that.

I feel like God wants me to continue more so than ever to reach out and say, "This is what we're going through and though it's a different situation than what you're going through, we have very similar pains and feelings that we deal with day after day." We have to stick together and go shoulder-to-shoulder with other people who are suffering. And not just reach down like we did in the 80's with "We Are the World," which was a huge, wonderful project. But it was the elite in the music business who were reaching down to help the people of Africa, which is nice and raised a lot of money, but I think the Lord wants us to not reach down. He wants us to reach up or reach across and wrap our arms around each other and understand that we're all in this together.

The Lord never promised us an easy time and if we were supposed to have the ability to cruise through this life without suffering then he could have paid the price for us by dying, but not necessarily dying the way he did. He could've lived a very affluent and comfortable life up until his death. But, no. He was born in a barn and I'm sure that for a large part of his life he was a nomad and homeless. He didn't have anything of this earth. The Bible only tells us so much about his early years but you have to imagine. After all, they were very, very poor and people of the land. To live the way he did and die the way he did, there has to be a lesson in that. In other words, if life could be wonderful and perfect, there would be no need for heaven.

I feel like I have learned to embrace that more and more as time has gone by, not just because of the amount of years I've lived but because of the dire circumstances that seem to continue to grow as I get older. I'm 49 years old now and I thought by this time I'd be a fat cat, kicking back and not worrying about anything. Nothing could be further than the truth. We have more struggle, pain and fear in our lives today than I've ever had in my entire life. But here I am, I keep on smiling and I'm still positive. I still love people and love to work. I still love when people want to share their stories with me. I'm the same guy. That I credit totally to the Lord. When you have a lot of success early on, even though I was worldly appreciative of the fact that I was getting to live my dream, at the same time you start to wonder why it is I get to do this and make good money? And why is it when I go to work people stand up and applaud and other people have to bust road without any recognition whatsoever for very little money? I always hated doing autograph lines, not because I didn't want to meet the people, but because I didn't like the idea of sitting there behind a table and seeing a line an eighth of a mile long waiting to meet me like I'm the president or the pope. I'm nothing special; I'm just a musician and singer. I always felt like Santa Claus in Macy's in Miracle on 34th Street. It just didn't make any sense to me.

Now that I've gotten older and had these other experience, now I think, "Ah, God was just training me." In other words what I am doing now, he was just training me back then like I was in boot camp. People are drawn to me now for another reason. I believe they're drawn to me because of Him and they sense something in me that's of Him whether they know it or not. That's why celebrities can get so messed up and get into strange, weird behavior or drugs is because if you don't see Him and the Holy Spirit in it then you're going to start believing that it's 'you.' You start believing it's all about you and you're so great. It's been not only a saving grace for me to keep my feet on the ground but it's given me my purpose.

LINKS:

www.collinraye.com

www.operationkids.org