Trancy Pants: Baraka Moon and "Raga Bayragi"

Raga Bayragi - with Baraka Moon from Ken Adams on Vimeo.

A fusion of Indian raga and Sufi trance music provides the basis for our random tune today. Raga Bayragi is by Baraka Moon, a Pakistani, Indian, Australian, American band which fuses the above with didgeridoo, global drums and guitar to create music that transcends boundaries. Legend has it that they were founded on the night of a full moon eclipse in 2008. Raga Bayragi can be found on their 2011 CD Baraka Moon.

Picture This: Brother and "Photograph"

A little bit of a rock song for your random tune of the day. Photograph is by the Australian band Brother, which incorporates Celtic rock, mongrel rock, Australian rock, didgeridoo and vocals into a melange of interesting music. The band is made up of the Richardson brothers, who grew up in Bathurst (120 miles west of Sidney) and attended the Scots School where they learned to play pipes. They formed Brother in 1992 and began playing pubs in Sidney. After their first album was released, they were invited to open for Joe Walsh during his tour of Australia. Two of the brothers have since left the band, and it mainly tours the United States while returning to Bathurst for regular performances. Photograph can be found on their 2005 album Pax Romana MMV.

Listen to Them Drone: The Didge Project and "Resolution"

I am not much good at meditation. Part of it is that I haven't really tried it all that hard, so I really have not had the practical experience of applied meditation. I can certainly get meditative - those times when I daydream or occasionally just sit for an hour, lost in thought, feel like meditative experiences to me. But when I actually go to apply meditation, weird things happen. For instance, I've done a meditative exercise called a "body scan" where you spend time consciously examining your body through your awareness, covering it from head to toe. I start out at the top of my head, and by the time I've hit my torso I'm usually fast asleep, which certainly isn't meditating. When I am in a church or a temple and the situation calls for meditation, I am at once bored and thinking of all kinds of other things when I know that the situation calls for me to either be thinking of one thing or not thinking at all.

Something that helps me reach those meditative states is often music. If I get lost in some music, where my mind focuses on the beat, the rhythm, the melody, or the lyrics, then I can approximate something of meditation. It is this type of wholeness of music and states of mind that led A.J. Block and Tyler Sussman to found The Didge Project in 2008, which promotes the droning, bass vibration of the Australian aboriginal didgeridoo as a path to health and wellness. A couple of jazz musicians, they became convinced of the meditative properties of the didgeridoo and even the therapeutic benefits of playing it. The distinct sound of the didgeridoo has been used for ceremony and ritual to create an atmosphere of meditation and healthy living. Playing the didgeridoo also has many health benefits including allowing one to focus on breathing and breath. They argue that it helps alleviate sleep apnea, drawing on 2005 research published in the British Medical Journal. They also noted that the didgeridoo has become an increasing presence in world music.

The Didge Project has released two albums and has played numerous events and venues around New York City. They also opened for Deepak Chopra in 2012, and performed in TEDxBrooklyn. The Project has a comprehensive website where you can find out where they will perform, and how you can get involved in listening to and learning to play the didgeridoo for your own health. This song, Resolution, can be found on their 2011 CD release As One.