22Degrees of Beatitude: the New Album by Tarun Nayar

In the 90s, as we caught the first glimpses of the World Wide Web and Digital Culture, we fantasized a “Global Village;” a world made small by the acceleration of communication; a world in which national boundaries and cultural distinctions are made soft and fuzzy by the increasingly rapid exchange of media. We imagined a Global Dance Floor on which the differences between Folk Music and Electronica blurred, and the idea of Asian Beats, or African, or Latin, would be absurd.

22 Degrees of Beatitude by Tarun Nayar reminds us of that vision-- Global Dance Music for Human Beings. Born of East Indian parents in Montreal, Canada, the tabla player and digital programmer is one of the founding members of the World Beats collective, Delhi2Dublin, that has been rocking music festivals with their electro-acoustic fusion of Bhangra and Celtic folk music for over 5 years.

Nayar describes this album as a chronicle of his own development as an artist and musician over the last 10 years. It is personal and private, and tangibly subtler than the driving beats of D2D. Chill trance beats and mystic voices, from unfinished tracks that collected on his hard drive for years, have been polished and complimented with guest performances on sarangi, bansuri, and other “folk” instruments. It is refreshing that although there are elements borrowed from Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist cultures, from India, Turkey, Bhutan, and elsewhere, the album does not become one more example of “Digital Exoticism” appropriating, for example, an Oriental flavor. The music on this album is difficult to pinpoint by geography. It is truly international, trans-cultural, and like music itself belongs to all of humanity.

Leaving The Desert

The sun is just now creeping up over the edge of the horizon, lighting stark relief on another cold brisk Joshua Tree morning. This is the last morning I will wake up here as a resident. I am loading up the back hatch of my little old honda (her liscence plate reads "Be Grace" )and heading to my new home in Topanga, a wee little guest house up on the ridge overlooking the Canyon. I am anxiously moving forward towards a life of teaching Yoga and Making Sacred Music in LA and Santa Monica.
I have been here for ten years now. I helped build the Harrison House, the first Permitted Straw Bale Vaulted Structure in California (check it out at http://bit.ly/6hlEpa ) For two years I hosted a High Desert Butoh Festival. I opened my own Yoga Studio, Medicine Rock Yoga, which did fairly well for awhile. Frankly, my struggle with marijuana led to its demise, and contributed to the seperation and divorce of my ex-wife and I. I struggled to know myself. And struggled with confidence. Self-doubt plagued me, and cast a shadow over my yoga teaching. 2 years ago it all began to unravel. But I am leaving all of that behind, the addiction, the lack of confidence, the fear of Success.

I've stuck around, and stuck it out. Trying desperately to stay in the area with my kids. I realized recently I was telling myself the story that I was staying here so my kids would not feel abandoned, like I felt abandoned by my Dad after my parents divorced. When I woke up to the fact that it was myself, my inner child I was staying for, trying hard to heal that feeling of abandonment, things rapidly began to shift; opportunities began to open up in LA, and the Universe began to offer me a reflection I did not recogninze. The reflection of a man, gifted and talented, compassionate and caring and capable.

A friend told me last Sunday was what is called Kings Day. It is also known as Epiphany. Kings Day is the beginning of Carnival season, but represents in its most exoteric, Christ's realization that he was the Son of God, and the adoration of the Magi. Its esoteric meaning represents a reevaluation of Masculinity, which may make itself known as a crisis in the Masculine. I was already going through this crisis, so it was only with mild surprise that I learned this event was taking place at a Universal level.

I have been at odds with my Masculinity. I have always doubted my Manliness. I've never felt Macho the way it is represented in our culture, and have doubted my ability, doubted my strength, my power. I feel the weight of collective cultural guilt over centuries of oppression, repression and imperialism represented by the Patriarchy. I have felt guilt and shame over my own sensitivity, both emotional and energetic/intuitive. I have identified with the Feminine, with the Matrilineal tradition of Healing, of taking care, but I realize, at the expense of my Masculinity. I suspect I am not the only man that has lived with this for the last ten twenty thirty years.

I have had my own Epiphany. I have reawakened to the knowledge that I, and every man, am the Son of God. I have remembered I am a Good Dad, and a Good Man, and as I assimilate my sensitivity and intuition with my confidence, my talent and my strength, I begin to embody the New Man, the Radical reeevaluation of the Masculine.

The Mayans have predicted that 2010 is the end of an era, and the beginning of a new cycle, which they call the era of Big Woman Power. This does not mean as fearmongers might suggest that we are moving into a period when men will be enslaved to women. This is a negative fantasy of the Patriarchy that clings to old definitions of Power. The energetic shift into the Feminine will radically change the way we, Humans, perceive power. Our values will radically shift, we will no longer judge value in material terms. The predominant myths will not be tales of the Dynamic Individual. Organized Religions will break down as system of social and political control. Community will reign supreme, and every individual will remember he or she has always had direct access to the divine.

You will hear me often speak of Big Woman Power as I raise a challenge to my Brothers to step up and rise up to the new Masculinity. This is my Yoga. This IS Yoga: unifying the Masculine and Feminine, bringing them into Balance. This IS Tantra. Yoga, by its very nature as a path of Self-Realization, Self-Understanding, Self-Discovery is Political. The end result being a rejection of all external systems of control that keep us down through the Mythologies of Lack and Seperation.

There is No Seperation: you are One with Everything Right Now. You are Divinity Itself caught in a dream of Difference and Distinction. You are the Universe. There is NO Lack: you are the Energy of Abundance, Self-Creating, Self-Generating. But in that dream of Seperation is a Nightmare of Limits, of Not Enough. Wake Up.

"You have been asleep now for a thousand years.
Why not wake up on THIS morning." -Kabir