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| About the Soundtrack |
| The soundtrack for Naked In Ashes accompanies the unique story of the search for enlightenment by various yogis of India as told by film director Paula Fouce. In keeping with the spirit of the quest, composers Tony Humecke and Stephen Day have created music that takes you on a journey that simultaneously excites and soothes, marches and soars, and inspires and awakens. Indian classical, Western classical, world percussion, and more combine to create a sound that calls to the spirit. |
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| This dynamic disc is packed with performances, compositions and recordings by musicians from Bombay, London and L.A. and features such well known musicians as bassist John Leftwich (Riki Lee Jones, Lyle Lovett), guitarist Ant Glynn (Rick Wakeman, Asia, Mike Oldfield), Anand Murdeshwar (Indian Flute) and members of the London Symphony. |
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| Tony Humecke contributes percussion, bowls, and various sampled instruments while Stephen Day contributes sarod and guitars. Katharina Day's violin can be heard on numerous tracks. |
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| Transformation |
| by Steven Day |
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| Why do we do the things we do? Why do we go out of our way to look for something we can’t prove exists? What is it about the human condition that makes us seek and what is it we are seeking? When I reflect upon these questions and upon my life I think that what has been crucial has been transformation. Not just regular everyday transformation however, but the kind that grips you, shakes you, and turns your life upside down until you are exhausted inside and out yet restless for the pursuit of more of the same. What kind of person would seek this kind of tumult in their lives? What kind of soul would choose the road less traveled at the risk of discomfort and peril? |
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| I was looking for this kind of transformation from a young age. When I was four, I recall rays of consciousness beaming through with the garden sunlight leading me to wonder about the age old question ‘who am I?’ Much later, in college, with ever increasing angst and a sense of desperation, I traveled and read philosophy of every kind. Just when I reached the end of my rope, I attended a Sahaja Yoga meeting and experienced a breakthrough, a quantitative leap in what I was able to perceive and understand. I was told that this was the enlightenment or self-realization that I had read about. Everything seemed clearer and brighter as if the clouds had parted and the sun was shining through again just as it was when I was 4, only now the light illumined a wider path with a greater array of possibilities. Thus began my journey within. In the years that followed, I lived in ashrams, meditated daily, took lessons in tabla and sitar and visited India many times. Each day and each year was a step in opening awareness of the nature of my inner being through vibrational awareness. Though I was able to appreciate the subtle form of expression that Indian culture facilitated my initial forays into spiritual consciousness were like a toe dipping dabble into a puddle or small pool. They served to get my feet wet but ultimately didn’t take me deep enough to enjoy the real adventure that was yet to come. |
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| In the summer of 1997, the spiritual leader and founder of Sahaja Yoga, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, suggested that I study music in India and invited me there. I dove in and attended the P.K. Salve Academy of Music to learn sarod for a year. She then suggested that I study with world-renowned sarodist Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. He accepted, I obtained an ICCR scholarship and began my second year living in India. I found Khan Sahib to be deeply spiritual in his approach to all aspects of his music. He, like other great Indian classical musicians, believes that one reaches higher and higher levels of understanding God through subtler and subtler levels of musical expression. The search for the Divine is akin to the yogic quest for Truth. The ascetic penances of the musician are years and years of practice (called riyaz) and the goal is perfect sound. As a teacher and guru ‘Ustadji’ (an Urdu term of respect meaning Master) was strict but patient. He asked me to practice basic scales to perfection before moving onto ragas and more sophisticated forms of expression. He also encouraged me to keep growing as a person, pointing out that good music is an extension of a good life. In India, I thus learned, not only music, but very subtle protocols of an ancient culture. In so doing, I found a way to, not only challenge, but also change, some of the ways I had been conditioned to approach life while growing up in the West. This was the key to my transformation and it would allow me to launch back into the western world with a completely different outlook on everything I was to experience. |
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| By the time I reached my fourth year in India, I was feeling the joy of my inner depth and true character in every moment of my life. A dream of lifetimes had been fulfilled within. Now it needed to be brought to the outside and shared. Fortunately, I had music as a vehicle of expressing the profundity of what I had discovered. I traveled and toured, giving concerts around the world for people of diverse backgrounds. I believe they came to my concerts and listened to my music because they were interested in feeling, or being part, of that discovery, a spiritual journey through music, through which they could find and reflect upon the riches of their soul and inner being. I was eventually to bring this discovery into the recording studio. The global music firm Boosey and Hawkes, based in London, contracted me to work with their composers and engineers on two albums of music for film and television. With the work from these albums complete, I brought my music and story to America where I have lived since 2002. |
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| Since I moved to America, I have been fortunate to work with filmmakers like Paula Fouce and composers like Tony Humecke, who are sensitive to the more subtle spiritual frequencies in life and work to bring them out in their art. In an age where thousands of people in this country and the world are searching for deeper meaning and a subtler path, the soundtrack for Naked in Ashes is very timely. Not only does it combine Indian Classical music with western music in innovative and new ways, it takes part in the age-old tradition and universal principle of seeking. This seeking has been the unifying principle that threads through the various adventures in my life and it is what led me to the transformation that I underwent to be able to perceive reality in an entirely new and different way. Though the path of seeker can be arduous and sometimes lonely, discovering the transformatory power within us has become easier than ever before. With the outside world driving us to question ourselves, it is imperative, more than ever, to look to the power within us for strength in finding solutions to the problems that we face. We may, in the process, not only be able to gain insight into answers to a few of those age old questions but transform into a different kind of human being able to better cope with the challenges of a new age. |
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