The Sound of Ashana

A beautiful review by New Age Retailer. Much joy and love, Ashana
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New Age vocal music is one of those subgenres that can be tricky to navigate in separating worthwhile recordings from those that are either substandard in music quality or that suffer from lyrical over-earnestness.

Ashana’s Beloved easily handles the first condition with its blend of Western (keyboards, bass, cello and guitars) and ethnic/New Age (tabla, percussion, and crystal singing bowls) instruments. The lyrics are also in good hands.

Ashana and co-composer Thomas Barquee (who also co-produced, sings, and plays keyboards and bass) exercise restraint and don’t go “over the top.” Depending on the song, lyrics may be sung in English, Aramaic, or Sikh, although English predominates.

Ashana has a wonderful, crystalline voice and makes even the more sparsely arranged songs appealing, including the folk-music sounding “Only You in My Heart.”

PlayList: Beloved
As reviewed in: New Age Retailer

September/October 2009

I love this blog from Margaret Dean’s website: AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

I need to tattoo this to the inside of my forehead …I find it a helpful spiritual practice to remind myself at moments that “this is as good as it gets.”

The mind is a movement of energy out:  out to thought, to experience, to desires, fears. “This is as good as it gets” is a stopper.

It can for a brief spell stop the movement of attention out and land you just here.

Just here.

No next moment.

Nothing better than this.

Nothing needing to be better, nicer than this.

No place to arrive at.

It bypasses all the unresolved issues, material of your life, futurized yearnings.

“As good as it gets” includes what’s here, any sensations, any brokeness of body; just includes it without any thoughts about it.

Let it all end here. Let all the striving for betterness come to rest in this “nothing going on.”  Nothing happening.  NOTHING happening.

Read more articles like this at: The Vibrant Heart

Love to all,

Ashana

The haunting, penetrating drones of crystal singing bowls are an integral part of my music and devotional practices. With their resonant, pure-tone frequencies, and the innate properties of crystal, to amplify, transmit and store energy, these exquisite instruments are powerful tools which can be used to enhance meditation and prayer and to support healing. When combined with mantra and prayerful intention, crystal singing bowls can help entrain mind, body and spirit to a more harmonious experience of peace, well-being and balance.

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Next month, I begin recording a new CD, a collection of songs, chants and improvisations honoring the Divine Feminine.

During this time of preparation, I feel the energies gathering and the frequencies accelerating.

Although I’ve never had a child, it is like a birthing to me. There is a slow gestation period, where I sense a kind of communion beginning to happen with the sounds, the music, the lyric, the inspiration. They appear to me as impulses of light, colliding and communing in and around each other. Then, when the time is ripe, and the knowingess starts to emerge, large and full, I begin the process of setting the space.

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