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Gregory Ormson

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.

Desert Bent Angles: thoughts on playing sitar

My sitar flows in 19 bands of light called baaj, chikari, and tarab. Its journey to my hand is a mystery, but its music-medicine landed on my doorstep from an old land, gripped me from the eons, and pulled my soul into a note-bending journey unlike any other.

On sitar and its emotional gravity – something beyond definition – a musician friend and professor said, “It’s all angles.”

I first heard the sitar’s otherworldly drone years ago and felt it in my chest. Now when my sitar strings bend to raise a siren-song from the fathoms, Saraswati dances to an ascent and descent on every note. This sacred dance is a never-ending river shepherding me to a place close and yet far away.

My teacher speaks in common tones and offers up clusters of daring: “Consistency, consistency, consistency,” she says.

Her words, the wisdom of learning and teaching, and the kernel in every guru’s curriculum. I’ve walked the rivers of India, but today can’t put myself and my sitar on their banks. But once at dusk, on a hot July night in Arizona, I made my way with this gourd, rosewood, string & steel riddle to the banks of the Salt River in east Phoenix. Sitar did not accompany me alone. Looking to the Salt, I could see a funeral pyre, a desert-inspired mirage bobbing with the current like a lazy raft ablaze in flames, scented smoke, grief trailing behind.

At river’s edge, my sitar smelled like burning incense and the hymnody it raised came from an earlier time. I followed the current but can not understand.… read more...

INVITATION: Music and Cacao Ceremony Event – FRIDAY DEC. 3

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kirtan-cacao-ceremony-sound-healing-tickets-150131119219

I’m inviting you to a Cacao Ceremony this coming Friday from 5:30-8:00 pm, December 3 at RADICILE SANA, 22 N. Bellview, Mesa, AZ.  Space is limited to 15 people with payment in advance through eventbrite (on the link above). Click it to register & for details on what cacao actually is, what to expect during the ceremony, and some items you may need.

A sound healing musician, friend, and yoga teacher Crystal Valentina, has led Cacao Ceremonies and sound healing for over five years. Such a ceremony meets in a community setting around the elements of chant, sound healing, and cacao.

If you’ve never participated in a one, why not try something new? Expand your comfort zone and learn what you may need and want even if you are not aware of it. Think of the possibility to experience heightened sensations, focused intentions, and active empathy.

By invitation, I’ll be a guest musician and participant with everyone on Friday night. It will be fun to make voice with you and play sitar and guitar.  NOTE: The kirtan style chant, a common part of cacao ceremony, is not a singing contest. The purpose of chanting in mindfulness is discovered when the gathered community sound as one voice (the vocal instrument) accompanied by other instruments.

… read more...

GATHERING AT THE VALLEY OF FLUID ANGLES

Words and music below for my spoken word piece accompanied by sitar.

My friend Dino Corvino in his, “Here You Are Wausau” podcast will be focusing on Writing in Public – what he also calls citizen journalism – in his next few episodes. He’ll be speaking with a few friends that write, talking about his own writing, and will publish these podcasts soon.
I spoke with him regarding aspects of writing: process, ego, why we write, how we started, and more. It was lots of fun, and in the middle of our convo, drawing from an experience with my friend Randy here in Arizona, I stated that a writer also puts something in the public eye to make a statement.
This strikes me as a credo for all artists, and while I’ve not put anything in public with sitar before, here is a combined sitar and written word work. Wait till it’s dark, light a candle, hear the story and sound wash over you like a gentle river.

My sitar flows in 19 bands of light: baaj, chikari, and tarab. Its journey to my hand is a mystery, but its music-medicine came to my doorstep from an old land, gripped me from the eons, and pulled my soul into its orbit. It’s a path unlike any other, bending more than notes.

A musician said, “Its all angles.”

Sitar bends the note, Saraswati dances with a swan, and because I’ve felt this resonance I participate in its step toward the depths from which rises a watery siren-song of the fathoms.

Sitar bends the note, Saraswati dances with a swan, and because I’ve felt this resonance I participate in its step toward the depths from which rises a watery siren-song of the fathoms.… read more...

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