SHAKTI ORCHESTRA

Humanity surpasses all religions. Music that comes from the heart transcends musical styles and trends.

The fakir receives his share of applause for conjuring an apple out of nothing, yet unnoticed remains the One who created the Universe along with entire apple orchards. The greatest things are usually hidden from a scattered gaze. It often happens that we are busy with many matters, while what is truly important in our lives remains overlooked. To recognize what is essential is a rare art. It is the highest art of life – the art of living!

The music of Shakti Orchestra feels like a sorrow rising from the depths of the soul – and the joy of being able to feel life through it. Love, renunciation, joy, sadness, losses and gains are waves in the ocean of being. We sail in this ocean, and we call such sailing life. Life as a song – a song as life. We shape musical forms and images, letting sound and word pass through us. In this way, we gain yet another chance not to pass by what matters – not to pass by life.

Shakti Orchestra does not claim any uniqueness. Shakti Orchestra simply exists, just like many thousands of other existences.

Any manifestation of sound in the Universe is Shakti. Any manifestation of life in the Universe is music. Music is the universal language of the Universe. Music is truthful, as the causal state, it is close to the center of primordial source. Of all the "crazy" pursuits, I chose music. Maybe there is something more weighty, more solid, but I chose music. Everything fell into place, because there is no need to choose anything else.

* * *

I was in a state of half-sleep. Within my inner space, I could hear the sound of a drumstick, like a metronome, beating out a rhythm. In this drowsy state, I also heard my mind repeating the word "boom-boom" in time with the sound of the drum. But the real sound of the drum and the muttering of my mind were not synchronous; there was an effect of misalignment, like an inexperienced drummer playing along to a metronome. When I turned off my internal dialogue, this effect disappeared. My mind no longer repeated "boom-boom". Then I perceived the sound of the drumstick, which was here and nowhere else: not in the future, not in the past, but here and now. There was no falsehood in this sound. Music in which there is no internal dialogue is whole – full and at the same time empty – like the Cosmos.

Music is not just melody, harmony, or rhythm. There is something else in music, elusive and special, even non-acoustic one could say. Something without which music itself is not music. And this something can only exist when there is emptiness. Without emptiness, there is no music. Music also contains the emptiness in which it sounds. Even for sound to resonate, there must be emptiness: the emptiness in instruments, and for singers, the emptiness in their bodies. But not only physical emptiness is needed, but also mental emptiness. For the music to sound, the musician must be empty and inaccessible to the "ego". Music is the art of being empty. Then songs, just like Samadhi – they happen sometimes.