Search - Turiya Nada :: Arakara: Ecstasy of the Awake

Sent from south India to southern California at the direction of his Saddhu teachers, the visionary artist Turiya Nada (aka Nandhi) has created his own original fusion of the rapturous, ancient chants of India's Siddhar sages with 21st century electronic soundscapes. Arakara: Ecstasy of the Awake blends ritual trance and harmonic beats with authentic mantra chanting, and is offered by Turiya Nada in thanks to the enlightened masters who came before him in a Siddhar tradition that spans several thousand years. The potent music is also a means of sharing their transformational messages of compassion and community with the western world. Produced and arranged by the award-winning musician Howard Lipp and multi-instrumentalist EdWing Sankey, the album's eleven hypnotic mantras present powerful, ritual trance music for a new generation of listeners.

Turiya Nada's intense, devotional chants -- enhanced at times with such diverse instrumentation as cello, zither, Native American flute, guitar, bass, keyboards, Tibetan bowl and butterfly harp -- are resonant with his breath and redolent with his dedicated passion. They create a sonic environment that is at once trance-inducing and electrifying. In the album's extensive liner notes, the yogic master clearly explains each mantra, phonetically spelling it out so the listener can participate, noting the nature of the blessings that it imparts, and detailing its background in the mystic Siddhar tradition that dates back to antiquity.

The breath, or prana, is key to the Siddhars' state of enlightenment, and its application in the chanting of sacred mantras opens the passageway to awakening the heart. Practiced in India for over 5,000 years, mantras -- sung in the ancient Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent -- have been scientifically documented to invoke a sense of physiological well-being; they are also widely acknowledged in helping elevate the psychological and emotional self to a higher level of consciousness and a deeper sense of unity with the timeless -- regardless of one's religious beliefs or lack thereof. They are a balm for the practitioner, an antidote for the noise and clamor of daily life and a source of profound calmness and balance. White Swan Records is proud to present Turiya Nada's incomparable Arakara, a powerful aural document of ancient-meets-modern devotion.