I'm starting a weekly series of posts called "AlenThin stumbles upon", where I'll be presenting you people who inspire me through their work or simply by their way of living, be it musicians, artists of any sort or just amazing human beings.
With that being said, let me introduce you to the beautiful Laraaji:
Laraaji is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City. He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising experimental jams on a modified auto-harp processed through various electronic effects. He has since released albums for a variety of labels, often recording himself at home and selling the results as cassettes during his street performances.
I discovered Laraaji stumbling upon one of his tracks - Bring on the Sun, an amazing piece that features ambient sounds with processed acoustic instruments as well as spontaneous laughter and bits of poetry. At a first listen, you might find the song quite peculiar, that would be because of its irregular, organic structure. Everything comes together and blends nicely in a surrealist video that portrays accurately the joy of just being alive. That's what made me resonate with his music and convinced me to find out the story behind Laraaji.
If that sparked up your interest, here's an album he made in the 80's together with Brian Eno, shortly after they met, called Ambient 3 - Day of Radiance .
Laraaji's work has an obvious spiritual background, being the result of experimenting with meditation through sound. He speaks about his journey in this short doc bellow:
For all these posts I'll be using #alenthinstumblesupon tag, so you can easily find and read them if you wish.
Much love,
AlenThin.
