Live studio recording & interview with Geoff Wood, Rhythm Divine, ABC Radio
AIred on 20 August 2014.
Click here to listen to the interview.
Yoga means many things to many people – exercise, well being and spiritual practice. But it can also include music. And it’s Sacred Sound Yoga that’s at the heart of our program this week as we hear an exclusive live session of new mantra songs from the young Australian singer-songwriters and spiritual seekers, Edo & Jo.
Edo Kahn, a former member of the Australian band Gelbison, is an award-winning songwriter whose songs appear regularly in films, TV and on radio while Jo Mall Kahn, who grew up in Malaysia studying piano and flute, is also a singer and songwriter.
We first met them last year, just back from Tamil Nadu in the south of India where they live part of every year at the temple complex of their spiritual teacher, Sri Narayani Amma. More than a devotional centre, Narayani Peedam is also the place where Edo & Jo study, lead regular kirtan and yoga events and take part in daily pujas or ritual offerings.
Kirtan is mantra-based devotional music drawing on ancient Hindu scriptures like the Upanishads but influenced by the more recent bhakti yoga tradition of ecstatic worship. It’s also a growing musical style in the West where the influence of rock, folk and electronic music, have combined with the lifestyle philosophy of bhakti yoga to create a new mantra-based music or New Kirtan.
But you know I really don’t like labels. Let the music speak for itself. Edo and Jo have a new album of mantra songs just out called Bliss and they came into our studio 227 this week to lay down a set of live songs from that album, along with a unreleased song just for The Rhythm Divine. On this session engineered by RN's Louis 'The Upsetter' Mitchell, Edo plays a Gibson acoustic guitar with Jo on harmonium, flute, and our Steinway grand piano.
