Music, Meditation, and Weather

Weather and music seem to be intimately connected at times. That makes sense when you think about it: the first music people ever heard was the rush of the wind, the fall of rain, the crunch of snow. As winter and spring are negotiating the weather in my neck of the woods just now. it has me thinking about music, weather, and contemplation.

R. Carlos Nakai plays Native American flutes; Will Clipman plays all manner of percussion, including Frame drums, claves, Tibetan bowls, bodhrans, all sorts of other things. For Awakening The Fire they’ve paired up the fluid melodies of flutes with striking, beating and chiming notes of percussion in a dialogue which leads them through ten tracks of original music. By turns fast paced and reflective, pieces including Kindling the Essence, First Morning, and Portal evoke the landscapes of the southwestern United States, landscapes which often suggest mediation themselves with the fall of light and shadow.

The landscapes of the Highlands of Scotland have a different character altogether. They inspire and evoke reflections as well, though, through their wooded glens, dramatic coastlines and rugged crags, all with falls of northern light with characters all of their own as well. For Celtic Airs and Reflective Melodies Ian Green of Greentrax Recordings has chosen eighteen slow airs and reflective tunes from across the Greentrax catalogue, a creative companion and a doorway to meditation that speaks without words. Harp, fiddle, and pipes are the primary instruments as artists including Fiddlers’ Bid, Ceolbeg, and Tony McManus lead the way through tunes including Cairn Water, Ye Banks and Ye Braes, and Wendel’s Wedding.

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