CD Reviews
The Subway Bhaktis
Inspirational Music CD Samples
Sita Ram by Subway Bhaktis
An uplifting, inspiring new CD of devotional songs and chants
Sita Ram is the name of The Subway Bhaktis first CD of devotional,... ...
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Bio: Hersey is a National Endowment for the Arts Composition Fellow. His diverse career has encompassed; commissions from the Harvard University, New Mexico Council for the Arts, The Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Sound and Light Spectacular, The HVP Symphony Or chestra, and performances throughout the US... more
Bio: Hersey is a National Endowment for the Arts Composition Fellow. His diverse career has encompassed; commissions from the Harvard University, New Mexico Council for the Arts, The Brooklyn Bridge Centennial Sound and Light Spectacular, The HVP Symphony Or chestra, and performances throughout the US and Europe in such different setting as the Berlin Jazz Festival and MTV. He has also composed extensively for television.
He has been a student of yoga and overtone singing for 20 years. In 1997 He began the practice of Ashtanga Yoga. The result was a change in his life, his music and his career. He is presently recording his third album with Prana. He has studied with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore India and with The Gyuto Monks. hide
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Click play to listen to "Hare Krishna"
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YM: Thank you for joining us! Your music is very different from anything I have heard. Please tell us about your unique style.
BH: Thanks for asking me, Kasey. We are a nine voice overtone singing choir, which means we each can sing two pitches at once. Our sound is a mixture of the musics of Tibet, Mongolia, India and western vocal music. We use multiphonic chant, and throat singing techniques, which are ancient traditions, and apply them to our singing voices. People sometimes think we are using synthesizers or other electronic devices, but it’s all just unaccompanied voices.
YM: How did you get here?
BH: I have been a musician most of my life. I played in rock bands, studied composing and orchestration, recorded a bunch of albums, had a big band, wrote music for TV. Then an intense yoga practice cracked open the shell around my heart and turned my life upside down. This was a good thing. not easy, but good. This path of overtone singing as meditation was not something I chose. It chose me, and I’m glad it did.
YM: What power does music have?
BH: Music has the power to transform us. To lift us up, to slow us down, to open our hearts.� Music is a universal language. If a singer is singing from their heart, no matter what the language, we will know, by listening, what they are feeling. In Prana it is our intention to create something so beautiful that it will change people’s lives. Falling short of that, (laughter) which we inevitably will, we hope to provide people with a moment of peaceful contemplation. We hope to create a context in which transformation can occur.
YM: When I listen to your music I can feel it through my whole body. Please explain this mind body experience.
BH: When we sing overtones we are singing harmonics, which unlike western intervals are perfectly aligned pitches. The perfection of the relationship of these pitches causes a response which I experience myself and have witnessed in others. The perfect symmetry of these vibrations relaxes the body, stills the mind, and opens the heart.
YM: Please explain the creative process of making an album.
BH: “Waking the Cobra”, the first overtone singing CD I did, was formed around the structure of the seven Chakras. I first studied everything I could find about the Chakras. Then for about a month I improvised pieces using the sound, color, shape, element, and placement of each Chakra as a starting place. The theme and arrangement of each piece came into final focus in recording them.
YM: Who/what is Prana?
BH: As, I’m sure you know Prana is a Sanskrit word meaning: breath, vital energy, life force. It seemed like the perfect name for a group who uses their breath to make sound in order to move energy for transformation.
Prana is also: Peter Buettner, Amy Fradon, Kirsti Gholson, Julie Last, Julian Lines, Bruce Milner, Leslie Ritter, Joe Veillette.� They are all wonderful singers who show up at my house at rehearsal ever week for the simple joy of singing with other people.
YM:What role does yoga play in your life?
BH: Yoga and music have always been intertwined for me. I started doing yoga in 1988 when I recorded music for a meditation tape by a yoga teacher name Marsha Albert. In return she gave me some private asana classes. I was hooked. I did yoga from various lineages until 1997 when I was introduced to Ashtanga Yoga. The first time I did it I thought, “This is what I’ve been looking for”.� It felt like I had come home.
After about a year of Ashtanga classes and workshops I started a daily home practice. During that period I did music for Beryl Birch in her workshops and on one of her meditation tapes. As I deepened my asana practice, my heart began to open, I recorded “Waking the Cobra” and my life changed.
The following year I met and studied with Pattabhi Jois. I knew immediately that I had found my true teacher, the source of the Ashtanga Yoga lineage. He teaches a practice that has changed my life in so many positive and wonderful ways, a practice that informs every note of music I do, a practice that I begin anew every morning when I step on the mat.� I have such a deep feeling of graditude to Guruji for the impact Ashtanga has had on me. I have studied with him every year since then either in Mysore or here in the US.
YM: Your album, The Eternal Embrace is beautiful. Please explain the subtitle “Overtone singing meditations on the 8 limbs of yoga”.
BH: Again, as I’m sure you know, more than 2000 years ago Patanjali, in his work, the Yogasutras, offered the precepts for the practice of yoga through it's Eight Limbs. The object of the eight limbed path is to lead us to stillness of the mind.
This CD is another instance of using a structure, the Eight Limbs, as a starting place. Writing the pieces was a way for me to find a deeper understanding of the meaning of each of the limbs. In recording them it was my hope, through pure sound, to help bring others, limb by limb, to a deeper state of relaxation and peace.
YM: Please tell us about Gathering in the Light, your recent collaboration with Krishna Das.
BH: Krishna Das heard us sing at a party for the release of “The Eternal Embrace” and said to me “Let’s make a record or something” . The "or something" turned out to be him inviting us, over the last three years, to perform with him at his larger Kirtans in the New York area. I did arrangements for Prana of seven of his chants which we recorded. The CD is all voices except some percussion on four of the chants.
Krishna Das has been very generous with us. I think he feels it is part of his work to share the good fortune he has had. Prana has been a lucky recipient and we are very grateful.
YM: Thank you for joining us! What can we expect from you in the near future?
BH: We are recording a new CD, performing and (laughter) trying to keep breathing in and out.
YM: Where can people find out more about you?
BH: There are sound samples, bio, performance and workshop calendar at both:
www.PranaSound.com
and
www.myspace.com/bairdherseyandprana
And videos at:
http://www.youtube.com/pranasound
YM: Thank you for joining us! Your music is very different from anything I have heard. Please tell us about your unique style.
BH: Thanks for asking me, Kasey. We are a nine voice overtone singing choir, which means we each can sing two pitches at once. Our sound is a mixture of the musics of Tibet, Mongolia, India and western vocal music. We use multiphonic chant, and throat singing techniques, which are ancient traditions, and apply them to our singing voices. People sometimes think we are using synthesizers or other electronic devices, but it’s all just unaccompanied voices.
YM: How did you get here?
BH: I have been a musician most of my life. I played in rock bands, studied composing and orchestration, recorded a bunch of albums, had a big band, wrote music for TV. Then an intense yoga practice cracked open the shell around my heart and turned my life upside down. This was a good thing. not easy, but good. This path of overtone singing as meditation was not something I chose. It chose me, and I’m glad it did.
YM: What power does music have?
BH: Music has the power to transform us. To lift us up, to slow us down, to open our hearts.� Music is a universal language. If a singer is singing from their heart, no matter what the language, we will know, by listening, what they are feeling. In Prana it is our intention to create something so beautiful that it will change people’s lives. Falling short of that, (laughter) which we inevitably will, we hope to provide people with a moment of peaceful contemplation. We hope to create a context in which transformation can occur.
YM: When I listen to your music I can feel it through my whole body. Please explain this mind body experience.
BH: When we sing overtones we are singing harmonics, which unlike western intervals are perfectly aligned pitches. The perfection of the relationship of these pitches causes a response which I experience myself and have witnessed in others. The perfect symmetry of these vibrations relaxes the body, stills the mind, and opens the heart.
YM: Please explain the creative process of making an album.
BH: “Waking the Cobra”, the first overtone singing CD I did, was formed around the structure of the seven Chakras. I first studied everything I could find about the Chakras. Then for about a month I improvised pieces using the sound, color, shape, element, and placement of each Chakra as a starting place. The theme and arrangement of each piece came into final focus in recording them.
YM: Who/what is Prana?
BH: As, I’m sure you know Prana is a Sanskrit word meaning: breath, vital energy, life force. It seemed like the perfect name for a group who uses their breath to make sound in order to move energy for transformation.
Prana is also: Peter Buettner, Amy Fradon, Kirsti Gholson, Julie Last, Julian Lines, Bruce Milner, Leslie Ritter, Joe Veillette.� They are all wonderful singers who show up at my house at rehearsal ever week for the simple joy of singing with other people.
YM:What role does yoga play in your life?
BH: Yoga and music have always been intertwined for me. I started doing yoga in 1988 when I recorded music for a meditation tape by a yoga teacher name Marsha Albert. In return she gave me some private asana classes. I was hooked. I did yoga from various lineages until 1997 when I was introduced to Ashtanga Yoga. The first time I did it I thought, “This is what I’ve been looking for”.� It felt like I had come home.
After about a year of Ashtanga classes and workshops I started a daily home practice. During that period I did music for Beryl Birch in her workshops and on one of her meditation tapes. As I deepened my asana practice, my heart began to open, I recorded “Waking the Cobra” and my life changed.
The following year I met and studied with Pattabhi Jois. I knew immediately that I had found my true teacher, the source of the Ashtanga Yoga lineage. He teaches a practice that has changed my life in so many positive and wonderful ways, a practice that informs every note of music I do, a practice that I begin anew every morning when I step on the mat.� I have such a deep feeling of graditude to Guruji for the impact Ashtanga has had on me. I have studied with him every year since then either in Mysore or here in the US.
YM: Your album, The Eternal Embrace is beautiful. Please explain the subtitle “Overtone singing meditations on the 8 limbs of yoga”.
BH: Again, as I’m sure you know, more than 2000 years ago Patanjali, in his work, the Yogasutras, offered the precepts for the practice of yoga through it's Eight Limbs. The object of the eight limbed path is to lead us to stillness of the mind.
This CD is another instance of using a structure, the Eight Limbs, as a starting place. Writing the pieces was a way for me to find a deeper understanding of the meaning of each of the limbs. In recording them it was my hope, through pure sound, to help bring others, limb by limb, to a deeper state of relaxation and peace.
YM: Please tell us about Gathering in the Light, your recent collaboration with Krishna Das.
BH: Krishna Das heard us sing at a party for the release of “The Eternal Embrace” and said to me “Let’s make a record or something” . The "or something" turned out to be him inviting us, over the last three years, to perform with him at his larger Kirtans in the New York area. I did arrangements for Prana of seven of his chants which we recorded. The CD is all voices except some percussion on four of the chants.
Krishna Das has been very generous with us. I think he feels it is part of his work to share the good fortune he has had. Prana has been a lucky recipient and we are very grateful.
YM: Thank you for joining us! What can we expect from you in the near future?
BH: We are recording a new CD, performing and (laughter) trying to keep breathing in and out.
YM: Where can people find out more about you?
BH: There are sound samples, bio, performance and workshop calendar at both:
www.PranaSound.com
and
www.myspace.com/bairdherseyandprana
And videos at:
http://www.youtube.com/pranasound
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