5 days passed since pandit Hariji’s 70th birthday. Living in Pondicherry in South India, it was not possible for me to attend the grand function in Mumbai (24hrs travel by train from my place) for Hariji’s bday. I hoped for some fans of Harji who have been to the function to upload the perforamance on youtube. At last here is a video from the function — Sonu Niigaam, “India’s best playback singer or as the Golden Voice of Indipop”, performing live at Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia’s 70th birthday celebration. I wish Harji’s fans upload more video music from the function, especially classical ragas.
In my ever longing search to understand the Upanishads, I found this album UPANISHAD AMRUT by Panit Shivkumar Sharma to be an excellent one for mediation and thereby understanding Upanishad personally. The sanskrit slokas receited by Shankar Mahadevan and Dewaki Pandit take the listener to ethereal space and bring peace and harmony to the listener. I’m listening to it @ work where my DJ D.M., plays this album so often and I cannot describe the joyfulness I feel after listening to the album, especially to the Yan Manasa Na Manute Yena track.
Pitiably, there isn’t any review on this album on Amazon. If you look upon amazon reviews before your purchase, you will be missing this wonderful album in your music library. I recommend this album for all my readers who are caught by the mysticism of India; you will feel extremely fulfilled for each penny that you spend for this album.
Have a great day!
Disc: 1 1. Asato Ma Sada Gamaya 2. Isavasyam Idam Sarvam 3. Yan Manasa Na Manute Yena 4. Uttishthata Jagrata Prapya 5. Sa Yathema Nadayah 6. Nayam-Atma Bala-Hinena 7. Upanishad Amrut 8. Upanishad Amrut 9. Upanishad Amrut 10. Upanishad Amrut
Neither I’m married nor am I a father of a child who has known all the patting and pissing of children. Yet I can present you with Mantras for your children.
“Mantras for my children…and yours: Sanskrit chants to calm active children,” is a mantra meditation cd produced by stay-at-home mother, Nina Patel, to help calm and relax active children by means of chanting mantras. Her interest in producing the mantra cd came about by chance. She is Reiki Healer and practices Yoga, Tai Chi and Dahn Mu Do.
“I noticed my children became more relaxed as they heard me chant mantras and affirmations in the morning, a ritual that I practice for personal growth,” says Nina who goes by the artist name Mantra Mom. “So, I started chanting mantras with my children on our way to school to center them for the day and before bedtime to ease them to sleep. I also chanted mantras to soothe them during times of anxiousness. What I eventually found was that chanting became a great emotional release for my children when they had difficulty articulating their feelings,” she adds.
In the press release it is said that “Unlike any other mantra cd on the market, the mantras are performed like a rap to a backdrop of hip-hop music, making chanting fun and easy for children of today’s generation. The tracks are also purposefully arranged to slowly ease the child to a calm meditative state by gradually moving from hip-hop to moody new age music.”
This 10 track album was released on May 8th and it’s 10% of the sales would go to Vibha, a non-profit organization that helps builds schools and provide healthcare for underprivileged children in India. You can avail this CS at Mantramom.com, Cdbaby.com, Amazon.com (August) and Target.com (in August).
Dear Readers, my friend Mohanraj Thangarasu is joining with me on this blog and am very happy to invite and introduce him to my readers. Mohanraj and I are friends since childhood sharing a common music interest for more than 10 years. He is graduate in English literature doing his post-graduation in the same.
A quick intro of his music interest and his taste of language is already seen in his first post on hang. And as far as the other interesting bits about him, physically, he occupies much space on a seat than I (like the bulldog on the right) , very handsome (some of my other friends name him Surya, the famous cine star of Tamil industry) and intellectually, he is an admirer of all arts — poetry of words, colors or crafts. This is all, indeed, no “stage speech”, he deserves them all, especially the space thing!!.
Mohanraj and I started our music journey when we both joined school band group, he playing a trumpet and I playing a clarinet. Prem Joshua, Karunesh, Pandit Hariprasad,Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma, Bhaskar Chandavarkar are a few of the many musicians we talked about and listened to on many a sleepless nights. I’m very happy to have him here with me sharing his music experience. I’ m sure you will like him more, both as a wonderful personality with very good comic sense and as a music critic.
I thank Jeanne, the CE, of Music channel for her quick decision in adding a coblogger for me. I wish Mohanraj all success. And finally here is how he looks when seen through a camera….
Music has the magic of turning sadness into happiness, reality into dreamy, death to life (I have heard death-to-life Indian tales!). Often it happens… I found myself missed somewhere amidst New Age music, World, Celtic, Ambient, and Carnatic. I guess the title “I lost myself when I see them in Hang” may mean something dramatic if you are unaware of a relatively new musical Instrument “Hang”.
To my Enya and Yanni friendly ears, this very strange instrument become too close to heart as I do with Jim Brickman’s piano and Kitaro’s bells. Hang was created in Jan 2000 at Switzerland by Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer of the PANArt Company. Hang is generally placed in the lap and played using fingers to produce different sounds with each and every stroke.
I would call it a hybrid variety of steel drum, gamelan, and gong. But the note can resemble like a Harp, Bells, harmonically tuned Steelpans, Ghatam, Tabala and Veena. I can’t imagine how ‘two hemispherical steel shells’ can make such a beautiful, soft, and soothing music. I was completely lost in the way the instrument is played and by the music out of it (Youtube has plenty of videos). Though there are 5000 Hang players worldwide, we have only 2 hang makers so orders are taken in limited basis. With the growing popularity, Hang would probably set out a new musical experience and harmony around us.
Love to listen Hang? yeah…here is a video for you.
Jonathan Still, classical guitarist and composer, makes me no wonder in producing so relaxing and peaceful album “Under the Bodhi Tree” for he came from a musical family. If he missed mom teaching him piano sure he would hear his sister play them on. That’s how Jonathan gets himself into music. Jonathan has composed and produced music for television and radio advertisements, music libraries, and independent movies and documentaries.
It was a fun experience which pushed him to record a second album which would eventually be known to the world as ‘Under the Bodhi Tree.’ The album picked up where the previous had left off, and Jonathan began to incorporate subtle vocals, thematic passages, intricate percussion, and signature complex meters to the music. The album was picked up by the UK’s New World Music label in 2005 and released world wide in 2006. Since then, ‘Under the Bodhi Tree’ has won the 2007 Independent Music Award for Best New Age Album and the 2007 New Age Album of the Year from the Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR).
I would recommend “Under the Bodhi Tree” by Jonathan Still to all who loves meditation, soft calming music, and easy to listen music. This album would be great feel if “You Close your eyes and imagine you are sitting under the wonderful Bodhi tree with its heart shaped leaves and legendary divinity. The soft warm breeze of fluid instrumentation and exquisite delicacy soothes the worn and weary psyche. Jonathan Still invokes this scenario through the symbiosis of traditional instrumentation to reflect nature at its most expansive. The rise and fall of the arrangements will take you through nature to the metaphysical, from the tribal rouse to the sublime exotic, from the most traditional to the funkiest groove.”
The tracks would gradually take you to the world of calmness and simplicity so that you loose your daily stress and tension. Each and every tracks grips you to the next with stillness and momentum.
Tracking Listing goes here:
1. See the Light
2. The Realization
3. Then the Rains Came
4. Oddtimes
5. Reflections
6. Oceans
7. The Chain’s Beginning
8. The Chain’s End
9. I’m Free
It’s Father’s Day, time to greet and thank your dad for all he has done for you. Let Father’s Day be your way to spread the message of love. You can convey your feelings for your father with special gift. Midos, I do remember a Jewish proverb: “When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry.”
Presenting your dad with a light music CD will be a great idea. After a busy day he might feel difficult to sleep. A soft and soothing New Age Music can help clear his mind and get cool him for a deep sleep. It also can help him to be free from tension of this bizarre world. I would like to suggest 3 albums for my midos.
Background Note: Father’s Day originated in Spokane, Washington, when a woman by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd thought of the idea for Father’s Day while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909. William Jackson Smart, Sonora’s father, was a Civil War veteran and raised all his six children by himself after his wife died when giving birth to the sixth child.
Sonora wanted her father to know how special he was to her. A courageous, selfless, and loving man, Sonora’s father made many parental sacrifices to raise his children. Sonora’s father was born in June, so Sonora chose to hold the first Father’s Day celebration on June 19, 1910.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon officially designated the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day.
Kitaro,Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist, has gifted us highly melodic synthesizer music often associated with the new-age. He says of teaching himself, “I never had education in music, I just learned to trust my ears and my feelings.” He gives credit for his creations to a power beyond himself. “This music is not from my mind,” he said. “It is from heaven, going through my body and out my fingers through composing. Sometimes I wonder. I never practice. I don’t read or write music, but my fingers move. I wonder, ‘Who’s song is this?’ I write my songs, but they are not my songs.”
Kitaro new age music is awe inspiring by gently bringing the peace of mind with nature’s music. He himself said “Nature inspires me. I am only a messenger…To me, some songs are like clouds, some are like water”. One such beautiful track that says more of nature is below.
It is commonly seen that American pianist George Winston touring and performing concerts regularly round the year. In the month of June he has planned tours particularly to Korea and expected to embrace people with his melodic rural folk piano style.
Here we go with the tour schedule.
June 18 –– Wednesday 7:00 PM –– Seosan, Korea–– Seosan Cultural Center
June 19 –– Thursday 7:30 PM –– Nowon, Korea –– Nowon Cultural Art Center
June 20 –– Friday 8:00 PM –– SungNam, Korea –– Sung Nam Art Center
June 21 –– Saturday 7:30 PM –– Gangreu, Korea –– Haeram Cultural Center
June 22 –– Sunday 7:00 PM –– Osan, Korea –– Osan Cultural Center
June 24 –– Tuesday 7:30 PM –– Changwon, Korea Sungsan Art Hall
June 26 –– Thursday 7:30 PM –– Uijeongbu, Korea –– Uijeongbu Art Center
June 27 –– Friday 8:00 PM –– Buchun, Korea –– Buchun Citizen Center
June 28 –– Saturday 7:30 PM –– Choonchun, Korea –– Bagryong Culture Centre
June 29 –– Sunday 8:00 PM –– Daegu, Korea –– Daegu Opera House
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