The need to communicate beyond words and express feelings led humanity to invent music – long before the first civilisations emerged. Today, the use of sound in a spiritual context is the oldest tradition on planet Earth.
New York–based composer and musicologist Randall McClellan, who had been practising North Indian vocal music and studying esoteric mystical traditions since 1966, conducted an in-depth exploration of this largely unknown field and its ancient mystery schools between 1979 and 1983. His research culminated in the book The Healing Forces of Music: History, Theory and Practice – and it led him to develop compositions that induce altered states of consciousness.
Inspired by Indian ragas, McClellan created a series of constantly evolving, multi-layered melodies, which he realised using two Moog synthesizers, a drone box, a tamboura, his voice, and a tape delay. The title The Healing Music of Rana (rana = breath of the sun) is an allusion to ancient philosophical concepts that recognise vibrations as a fundamental creative force.
Throughout the United States, McClellan gave numerous improvisational concerts lasting up to three hours, during which the audience could relax on the floor in dimly lit rooms to bring their bodies and minds into harmony.
Randall McClellan’s Solarwindplay is the opener for Wild Thyme Music (1): A Sonic Meditation. Read more about the other two artists featured in this episode: American composer Pauline Oliveros, who coined the term Sonic Meditation, and Ramón Sender, an explorer of the boundary between meditation and trance.
Say Something