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d2b : History
d2b means 'Directions to Bliss' and is the
project name for the CD's that Bhakta produces with a number
of musicians from all over the world. These cds are produced
for the My Master Music label. The idea of d2b was born while
Bhakta was recording in the late hours at the music studio
at Osho's Ashram in Poona India. Many great singers and musicians
come to visit the ashram and play together. The aim is to
bring the best moments to you, the moments when the artist
has disappeared into silence, when a fragrance of the unknowable
becomes audible. Some of the artists that d2b has woked with
include: Maneesh ( Indian Slide Guita)r, Bharam (Santur /
Nay/ Voice), Avinash (Indian Violin Tamasan / Voice), Millind
(Bamboo flute), Rashmi (Voice), Agar (Shakuhachi), Nadama
(Piano), Antar (Sitar), Chirag (Veena).
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Disha
Born in Germany in 1969, Disha traveled
over land with her mother from Munich to Bombay in '77, and
spent her childhood years living in India with the enlightened
mystic, Osho. She lived in the USA and in Italy in her teens,
always at home traveling the world, until '96 when she settled
in Australia. She spent the last ten years exploring both
her passion for music and love for working with people in
leading singing workshops, Path of Love Intensives and youth
seminars worldwide. In '97 back in India she studied the
ancient art of Drupad-singing with the world-known vocalist
Sayeed'uddin Dagar, from "the Dagar Brothers".
The combination of a life of meditation with Osho, the devotional
style of Drupad, and her many western influences of music
- Sarah McLachlan, Morcheeba, Lauryn Hill, Everything But
the Girl, Lamb, Alanis Morissette – inspired her to
start writing songs on the guitar, working on her own music
at home in the Wilson's Creek rainforest near Byron Bay,
Australia. Collaborating with Dutch-born musician and producer
Bhakta, she devoted her heart & soul to recording a debut
album. Innocent, sensual and with a deep gratitude to existence,
she sings her song on "Drowning in Grace". Disha
is currently working on her second album with Bhakta, performing
around Australia, and she was nominated for a Dolphin Award
for best Female Vocalist in NSW. She has just completed a
degree in Counselling and become a civil marriage celebrant,
as well as offering Youth Seminars, in Byron Bay.
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Bhakta Bhakta was born in Holland to a tumultuous
extended family – an ideal setting for music, art and
experimentation. At age 15 he left home for India to explore
meditation, and subsequently lived for 10 years in India
and 3 in Japan. Those years of meditation became the backbone
to his music: influences of Eastern cultures and his own
path in life wind into the world of sound thought his unique
style of classical-chill, experimental-ambient and electronic
dance music. Following a successful career in the 90s as
a producer and engineer, recording and playing with some
of the greatest Eastern and Western master-musicians around
the world, he now lives deep in the rainforest of Byron Bay
producing, recording and playing music for the dancing soul.
In the past two years Bhakta won
2 Dolphin Awards for Best World Music, 2 Koori Achievement
awards and a MusicOz award; Drowning in Grace was a finalist
in best production and best female vocal categories, and
Bhakta is currently getting much acclaim and radio play in
Europe and the US with his world beat album Open Transmission,
released by New Earth Records. Recently several of his tracks
were included on popular compilations such as Zen Connection
3 and Momo by One World / New World, Goddess Groove by Music
Mosaic, and Sutras of the Heart by New Earth Records, as
well as featured on the supermodel Saira Mohan's new site
(check out www.saira.com).
Bhakta is passionately devoted to creating music for the dancing
soul, and he is presently working on several exciting projects
to be released in February and March 2005. |
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| Interview
New Life Magazine, Italy with Bhakta, September
2002 |
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1) Let's begin from your charming
personal history. You were born in Holland. How did you
pass your childhood?
2) At 15 years old you left Holland for India, where you lived
for 10 years. What kind of experience did you have there, what
did you learn?
3) You lived in Japan as well, for about three years, another
time of meditation, can you give us more detail?
4) How have these experience influenced the muisc?
5) How much has eastern music influenced your music?
6) As musician and producer you aternate european electronic
music and the discovery of natural sounds, like the Australian
ones. Is it possible to conciliate nature and culture, electronic
artifice with a spontaneus sound, entertainment and meditation?
7) Is there anything else you'd like to add in regards to your
album 'Open Transmission'? |
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Born
and raised in a small village ('Boxmeer') in the south of
Holland, in my grandfather's big family (that's: 23 people
at the dinner table, every night)...and in the same house
we had two hairdressing-salons as well, upstairs for the
ladies-my grandfather and three of his daughters took care
of that department - and downstairs for the gentlemen: run
by the oldest of his sons and two younger brothers. It was
the sixties and it was a time which left some good memories,
I remember heaps of laughter and drama, and freedom...I mean
the situation was pretty uncontrollable...and I remember
people telling great-but impossible-stories or playing live-music
after dinner. Life gets better all the time.
So one moves on. And life really does take care ... So by the time
I reached fifteen I was visited many nights a week by a strange phenomenon.
For two years the moment when I would go to sleep at night I was
visited by the roaring sound of an ocean...filling up the room leaving
me helpless and bewildered and with just one quest: I knew I had
to let go!...but 'how'...the quest was burning deep until one night
I had a conscious vision of being initiated by Osho ... life taking
care ... so I went to India and a year later I arrived at Bombay-airport
with $450 and no visa...('visa'?!?) (but they were friendly and within
15 min I had a temporary-extendible visa). Osho is beyond words,
and after returning to the west I have been involved in meditation,
music & art ever since. India is ... well, India!
So I lived there for ten years, a quarter of my life. Mainly, when
not traveling and recording sounds and local music, I stayed in Osho's
ashram in Poona where in 1987 I started the art-department, devoted
to art and meditation. I was mainly playing music and painting at
that time and fell in love with zen-meditation & zen-art. So,
ha!...I went to Japan and lived in Kyoto for nearly three years.
The first four months I bought all the works of the Japanese poet-masters
I could lay my hand on, and read them in a different temple or temple-garden
everyday, (Kyoto has over 7 thousand temples).In matter of fact my
firstyear I lived in a Buddhist temple. After that very confronting
time I came to the understanding that there was a goal-orientation
in whatever I thought was meditation, I got lost in a-spiritual-
trick that the mind likes to play: starting to believe that 'Meditation'
and the 'Original face' can be achieved...and the very effort becomes
one's meditation... a tough learning that one...a good zen-hit though!
So, life does take care and al my energy went to music & meditation
after this hit. And at this time I started to get interested into
recording music, to sit in complete stillness, and with sound go
deeper into this moment...
And for the next seven years I moved between playing live music and
mixing jobs in Europe, and mixing projects in the Music Studio in
Osho's Ashram in India.
There I played -and recorded with many great Indian master singers
and musicians, "Open Transmission" is actually featuring
quite a few of them, Ashok Bharti, Millind Date, Avinash ...! Being
in the studio is like being in a temple for me... and starting from
stillness, just being and receiving...for years I would start every
recording of a track in the studio with the sound of the ocean, and
I would take it from there, until a moment of vastness, or timelessness
descends...'diving until the pearl is found'...and still now I start
of with something 'vast', something that rips and expands me, and
that can be literary a sound from anything... sound as such is like
a color....depending where you put it within the silence to emphasize
silence itself...and within this silence any sound is ok, 'organic',
'a bird landing on a tree', 'Bhakta's finger touching a drum or a
synthesizer'
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... in the end, it's
all about Silence ... that's the golden secret, then whatever
the music you do will carry that flavor. Something I would
like to add about "Open Transmission"...the first
track on the album is the first piece I wrote after the 11th
of September...so originally I was gonna call that track "Peace" because
I had the idea to record a 1000 different voices saying the
word "Peace"...1000's of times over and over again.
Later I decided for the monks in Swayambhunath, Nepal reciting
the Heart-Sutra-(breathing in misery, exhaling bliss)...and
call it 'Third Eye" so it might penetrate a bit deeper
this time. New Earth got the message!
...Sound is life, as such, and I want to taste it so deep that it
should be possible to enjoy it in dance and within stillness, so
the very question of conciliating reminds me of that zen story where
these two monks decide, separately, to ask their master the ancient
question of smoking and meditation...the first monk asked : o honorable
master, can I smoke when I meditate. The master lost it, he was furious
and threw him out ... the other monk goes to the master: oh venerable
master, can I meditate when I smoke...master: of course you can meditate
while you smoke... So, I like to meditate when I dance, here at night
on my deck overlooking the valley, in the rain forest here in Australia,
one hour from Byron Bay, and a million stars in an endless Silence
... |
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FREE MP3 Samples
You can download samples from all the
albums in MP3 format and check out some video clips, just click on
Video and Sound Clips. Or if you would like to mail order CDs
please click on CDs Orders.
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Meditative Music
Tantra from Mongolia.
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