During the deep relaxation, gongs, mounted gongs or hand-held gongs, are used to punctuate the journey inward and to support listeners’ detaching from a formal sense of their body in order to float into a more ethereal presence. What I prepared myself to actually attract a musical The Guardian writes about the workshop experience: The Brian Eno of Laughter. Dress comfortably and expect to have some serious fun! It’s 1970 when I deliberately investigated the practice of meditation to find my own period of meditative sitting, from 12 at night to five in the morning and really That was your first instrument when you were a young man, and as I understand it you started out playing popular music like R&B and gospel. available on line At : laraajimusic.bandcamp.com I’m doing now. Laraaji Nadabrahmananda: Born: 1943 (age 76–77) Origin: Philadelphia, United States: Genres: Ambient, drone, new age: Occupation(s) musician: Instruments: Zither, hammered dulcimer, piano, violin, music sequencer, keyboards: Years active : 1979–present: Website: Laraaji.blogspot.com: Laraaji (born Edward Larry Gordon, 1943) is an American multi-instrumentalist specializing in piano, zither and … Aquarium Drunkard: What language does it come from? So, all of that music was spontaneous but with those influences shaping and guiding it along the way. Music has a power to remind the emotional imagination that it can survive, that it is surviving. It really feels like it’s moving upwards. Ji. I Laraaji: Yes. piano like Little Richard or Fats Domino or Jerry Lee Lewis. Laraaji: Is there one up there near you, a piano? Howard. It can inspire movement so far as dance, which is a way of bringing the spirit back into the present moment and to the mood of creation, honoring gratitude. On one particular day, I remember coming up above ground and sitting in Grand Army Plaza, which is a place in Brooklyn, New York. Did that affect how you were playing? spontaneous piano improvisation. inspired by the likes of Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor and a few other artists. Here I am playing piano in an empty church. A large grand piano in an empty church. The producer at Warp, Matthew Jones, suggested that I do an album [in this style] because he’d heard something I had done in San Francisco at the Lab two years ago with piano. I’m in a circle, and we’re all on the same level. Can you tell me about that? But the music reflects on the isolation period. into our heart in a very warm, soft peaceful way, and then into the abdominal People become available and vulnerable, and we get into our nice, yummy laughter space. Where do you think we are now with it? Laraaji: Yes, it comes through as that way. We use the Srivastava corpse pose, where the participants are just lying on the floor like a corpse, noticing the powerful release that heavy laughter can afford our nervous system, our breath, and our mental process. I go through old influences, and then it acts The stand-up was fun, but the prospects of it becoming a Am I trying to make money? Laraaji is synonymous with ambient music, meditation and cosmic energy - his Laughter workshops, deep listening performances and yoga tours have become a program highlight at some of the worlds finest arts institutions, festivals and clubs. That’s how I started and here I am now doing this piano album on a concert grand piano in a very professional recording situation. In that deep relaxation place, natural meditation can come forward into the foreground of the awareness. develop a new sound using the electric autoharp, The Aquarium Drunkard Picture Show, Episode V, Unearthed, Vol. Laraaji: Yes. The idea of lightness could have been one of the flowing images that came to me at the time. It’s a really old piano and it’s out of tune, and it’s so old that it would be hard to tune it without breaking it, so I kind of stopped playing it. was released by Warp Records, and I thought, well, maybe here’s a chance. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Aquarium Drunkard: Did the setting affect what you were doing? And in the church, of course, there was no one [there] except the recording people. I feel it in the moment. Laraaji: Depending on the population, if it’s a New Age conference or meditation community, I will open it up with some call and response chanting. Brian Eno heard him playing in Washington Square Park in New York City in the late 1970s and recruited Laraaji for his Ambient Series, producing the artist’s breakthrough Ambient 3: Days of Radiance in 1980. different ways of talking. What am I Which was researched by a French doctor in the last century who discovered the link between intentional smiling and stimulating the happiness center at the base of the brain. It can sound like so many different things. I love laughter. I wanted to have the What was it like there? During those five days, I noticed the difference between my pace and the pace of New York.I felt isolation. Whenever I have an opportunity to play a piano, I do. It’s like as a kid listening to rock songs and I’m not sure what they’re supposed to mean, but there was a poetic edge in there somewhere. It may have been going on. All Tomorrows Parties: Video describing the Work/Playshop . So, I would just rock out on the piano in the church basement. It’s suggested that you try them in the morning before getting out of bed. At that time, we were performing in smoke filled from Howard with the intention of finding some income as a stand-up comic, Laraaji: There’s little bits of influence when I go into That’s good for Laraaji: I’ve always loved the piano and always release, plus it’s good to go to the piano without an agenda and just let Laraaji: Yes, right on the spot. way into the meditation experience. I’ve done so much music the last few years that AD: Why Sun Piano? It’s about 15 minutes. musicians and jam. don’t I get back to the piano? Perhaps not surprisingly, there was quite a lot of laughter and equal amount of contemplation as we spoke about things that can’t easily be put into words. All of this occurred during that recording session in Brooklyn. Eventually, I was able to develop it into a workshop, and so here I am now in a world of laughter. The participants can either notice themselves in a deeply relaxed meditative state, either a place they’ve never really been before, or they’ll be noticing inner sounds in between the ears, the cosmic sound current, or they will have drifted out, way out of the body and done crazy things like travel around the planet, see planetary systems, I’ve heard some very stimulating reports from people who have given themselves to laughter very deeply and gone into that relaxed state. Without audiences. It’s directed inwardly into the brain to stimulate the release of Or to become famous? I still play with them. Another one became an opera singer, Jessye Norman. stimulate the thymus which is claimed to be the seat of our immune system, then Something about the song…we must have sung it in high school choir or college choir. But I did like the discipline.