There’s an previous saying that “writing about music is like dancing about structure.” It’s meant as a dig at music criticism, however beneath that, there’s a deeper reality: Music is intangible, subjective; it’s common but nonetheless deeply private. And whereas science and math are concerned in its creation, there’s something undeniably mystical about it.
Laraaji is a 80-year-old pioneer of so-called New Age music and somebody who’s been sitting on the fringes of the music world for many years — although, final yr, he joined Andre 3000 onstage in Brooklyn.
When he was younger, Laraaji experimented with performing, together with a job within the landmark experimental movie Putney Swope, and hung out within the Nineteen Sixties standup comedy scene. After that, he grew to become fascinated with religious communities, found the autoharp, and devoted his life to creating music. He’s been a very prolific artist ever since.
I just lately invited Laraaji on The Grey Space to speak about music, meditation, spirituality, and the therapeutic energy of laughter. As at all times, there’s a lot extra within the full podcast, so pay attention and observe The Grey Space on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you discover podcasts. New episodes drop each Monday.
This dialog has been edited for size and readability.
I’m so intrigued by all of the creative pursuits you’ve had in your life. You’ve executed standup comedy. You’ve executed performing. Clearly, ultimately, you gave your self over to music. Did the expertise of performing and doing comedy make you a greater musician? Or is it simply creatively a very completely different factor?
It’s the identical factor, Sean. It’s wherever I select to open and provides expression to. I’m training the artwork of surrendering and spontaneity.
I feel that’s why I’m a awful musician. I’m too in my very own rattling head.
I say observe your physique language when you’ve gotten your subsequent orgasm.
I don’t assume anyone — together with myself — desires to see that!
Severely, take a look at your breath. Have a look at your physique language. Look how targeted you’re into surrendering to this energetic expression. And I see a few of that expression carried over into the best way individuals sing pop music, rock music. They get into the extra orgasmic, passionate degree of launch.
Do you consider your self as primarily an improvisational musician for these causes?
I rely extra on improvisation than I do on set scores. I discover that improvisation is aligned with what I name my religious perception that each second is new. And to belief that what I would like on this second is right here.
Musicians at all times discuss that, feeling extra like a conduit than an writer. Is that what it’s like for you on stage?
Sure, and it’s magical and mystical and a transportive place since you’re someway past linear time movement. You’re within the midst of native time, however you’re additionally witnessing an unbroken, fixed current time. It’s talking by way of me and it’s talking as me. I’m sound, I’m house, I’m timelessness. That is like music I can dream up. A part of my artwork is figuring out when to get out of the best way, how one can arrange a musical movement or a musical occasion, after which to step to the aspect of it and let it converse by way of.
You additionally sing however it looks like a part of the music, like there’s little distinction between the devices you’re taking part in and what’s coming out of your voice. Do you consider your voice as one other instrument and never one thing separate?
Sure, I do like doing every thing on the similar time. Spontaneous, unified movement.
Create a movement with a number of devices on the similar time, utilizing the voice with out calling the psychological course of into linear pondering. And utilizing a voice as an emotional expressional instrument. That’s what I’ve been exploring, particularly with meditation or deep contemplation of contacting altered planes of acutely aware current time. And so to speak about it’s to take the thoughts out of it.
Then there’s sounds of ardour, passionate immersion. The voice can be utilized to specific witnessing inside an awe-inspiring notion. So the entire physique turns into the voice and the breath and the motion and turn out to be a conduit.
Invented or improvisational language will be the proof of an individual or practitioner in whole immersion, whole submission, getting concerned with a complete notion that’s past linear description. So the mind is given a trip, and in that trip or place, it may be freed as much as have another space-time expertise. And that may be the message the artist desires to convey, that there’s another means of being acutely aware right here and now.
I’ve heard you discuss music as a device for whole presence. Why do you assume music has that form of impact on us?
Music generated or channeled by the suitable musician or artist? The artist is in a state of contemplation or meditation or a suspended time consciousness. And within the languaging that happens with their instrument, their interplay with their instrument and with their voice can convey this repurposing of the human instrument, repurposing it from a conveyor of native human-based emotion to a conduit of exalted emotion, direct notion inside this timeless current second.
It’s at all times accessible. Sure sounds. Drones can try this. Music that’s very spontaneous, that may pull the thoughts out of linear thought, may enable the perceiver, the listener, to immediately straight discover the truth of everlasting time and the infinite house.
Sound can level to the invisible and sound can recommend the flowing of vitality, the flowing of blood, the flowing of breath. It will probably recommend the mixing of seemingly separate and discordant. Within the case of a harp, all 36 strings are vibrating on the similar time and producing this synergetic tonal occasion. So, as you say, that sound can throw a suggestion. It will probably level to the invisible, it may level to the transcendent. It will probably direct the emotional physique out of heaviness so {that a} lightness, a extra ethereal resonance will be straight witnessed.
As soon as we begin speaking and utilizing phrases, we’re already on the planet of concepts and abstractions. However music is extra main than that, proper? It touches one thing in us that existed earlier than we invented phrases.
Sure. Music may be capable of say greater than what speech can say. My common mode of operation is to arrange earlier than a efficiency or recording by way of simply dropping right into a refined sense of the meditative discipline. Do some yoga postures, some respiratory workout routines, some constructive affirmations, after which sculpt this discipline or level to this transcendental discipline and let it transmit itself right into a sound repetition by way of me. When this occurs, I are likely to name it a sound bathtub. A celestial sound bathtub. It’s an immersion expertise. And as soon as once more, right here we’re away from the phrases and we’re into the pure impacting pressure of sound.
Do you truly discover a significant distinction between music and meditation, or is all of it simply completely different manifestations of the identical apply?
My final reply is that they’re one and the identical, that means that within the second of deepest meditation, I think about meditation to be the best romance and that romance is the best meditation. This meditation is simultaneous with music. It couldn’t be separated.
When did laughter turn out to be such an vital factor for you?
It shifted the energies of the bullies in my neighborhood once I was younger to make use of humor. I wouldn’t be so afraid of their presence once I may use humor. And in church, we use humor as a result of it may get so boring. And since I used to be in the suitable place to make use of it, we’d use it to get different friends to snicker in the course of a severe sermon. However I discover the ability of laughter to change, to interrupt the sense of rigidity and separation. I started writing scripts in highschool and doing state of affairs comedies for expertise exhibits as a result of I loved seeing individuals lose it to laughter. The household I grew up in, the uncles, aunts, the cousins all have been laughter pleasant, so laughter was at all times on the menu. I can’t keep in mind even a funeral the place laughter was outlawed.
You actually do see it as a transformative pressure?
Properly, after doing standup comedy I made a decision to let standup comedy go for some time and simply concentrate on music. It was a guide by Rajneesh, Osho Rajneesh, that helped me to understand that I may entry the laughter expertise with out doing comedy, and that I may information different individuals into the laughter zone and benefit from the deliciousness of laughter with out utilizing humor and on the sacrifice of one thing.
And now, by way of laughter — play outlets, I name them — we use laughter to get individuals into the play zone and to get them into contact with their internal baby and to get them into deep rest. Yeah. And I actually get pleasure from laughter now as a result of it may come up out of individuals with out it having to be nervous. Yeah, the complete physique can become involved. All the breath will be open, and it’s getting sweeter and extra scrumptious each time I do one among these.
So laughter is one other strategy to transcend the pondering thoughts?
Sure. Rajneesh identified that if you’re laughing, actually concerned with laughter, that you simply or us or whoever is laughing will not be pondering, they’re not concerned within the thought strategy of linear thought. Which may be so for those who’re into pure, open laughter. If it’s a nervous laughter the place you’re aware of a threatening state of affairs, that will be a special state of affairs. However actual, full physique, cathartic laughter, you’re releasing quicker than you’ll be able to assume. So there’s no thought course of processing what it’s that’s being launched. It’s only a yummy, open, nurturing launch.
You’ve been knowledgeable musician for many years, performing everywhere in the world. You’re entangled with the enterprise and the business aspect of music. I assume I simply surprise the way you navigate that aspect, of being knowledgeable musician and being a religious particular person on the similar time?
Properly, I did a few years in the past get that except I combine my religious nature, I’d by no means be completely pleased, content material, or expertise decision as a result of I can’t get it from the bodily world. I’m not hating the bodily world, however issues within the bodily world are non permanent and consistently we’re reminded that issues come, they keep, after which they go away. And a few issues are simply too lovely for us to just accept that they’re ever going to go away.
And I grew to know that behind the world that’s altering, there may be this religious discipline that if I discover ways to embrace it consistently, even whereas I’m embracing my outer wealth, that when the outer wealth shifts, I’m not bent off form as a result of I’m nonetheless related to this internal religious platform that doesn’t get bent off form when the outer world shifts. So for me, staying fixed and staying with my religious apply permits me to be extra playful and fewer terrified of the bodily world, and fewer terrified of change and fewer terrified of shedding. And so I discover that the religious aspect helps me to be extra current, extra experimental, and extra risk-taking with my musical expression.
I’ve additionally heard you say that you simply assume our core religious drawback is our misidentification with our our bodies. What does that imply?
I’m not going to do that. I wouldn’t consider doing this to you, Sean.
Wait, what are you going to do to me?!
I’d amputate your leg. Your ft. You’re nonetheless there. Your torso. You’re nonetheless there. Your arms, your elbows. You’re nonetheless there. That’s only a head. And also you’re nonetheless there. Your ears and nostril goes. You’re nonetheless there. Your lips and tongue. God continues to be there. All of the sudden your head disappears. However you’re nonetheless there. And also you’re saying to your self, wait a minute. I assumed I used to be that physique. Look. I’m timeless. I’m invisible. I’m wingless. What do I do with this?
And I consider that identification with the bodily physique, which is beginning, that lives and dies, and we get connected to it, and we get sentimental with it. And we attempt to get pleasure from its 5 senses, and we neglect, or we don’t entry the enjoyment that we will have, the extra expansive pleasure we will have by way of the infinite self that’s at all times right here.
Maybe your buddies have had an epiphany by way of using sure ceremonies. The place you’re immediately in one other sense of current time and house, a special sense of expansiveness, a special sense of how time is unfolding, slower or by no means. And to have this expertise is to be profiting from a special type of physique. The deepest sense of happiness and pleasure I really feel comes from having an intimate, communing expertise with my everlasting current time-self. The religious presence which is at all times right here, at all times all over the place. It simply must be completely current, to dig it in, to catch it and to put on it and to behold it.
You’re 80 years previous. You’ve been making music for over 40 years. You’ve lived such an attention-grabbing life as an artist and a contemplative. As you sit right here now, at present, what’s your religious mission? What will get you away from bed daily?
I’ll undergo what I’ve to do the second I get away from bed. Often what will get me up is a way of a each day agenda, which is completely different daily. One thing that I’m going to try this day that I’m going to actually get pleasure from, whether or not it’s music, efficiency, or designing, new tuning or attending to know a brand new piece of apparatus, or sitting for an additional time frame in meditation, both in lotus place in my home or going for a stroll in Central Park or Riverside Park and sitting on a bench within the solar, moving into meditation.
What retains me enthusiastically concerned in life and passionately concerned with life is the feeling of an everlasting non-human intelligence that’s producing this factor referred to as creation and is permitting me to take part in it and to co-witness and to co-collaborate with it. After which within the midst of this, it’s remaining invisible and remaining infinite. And I’m feeling it by way of my reference to it. And so it’s not a lot what I’m getting away from bed for, however as I’m getting away from bed there’s this sense of acutely aware improvisational collaboration inside the divine alternating intelligence. However once I’m doing excursions and I’m put in a pleasant, lovely lodge, I’ll fortunately get away from bed for the breakfast.
