Who says you always have to sit in silence? Ryan Winger explains how you can bring the mind of meditation to the music you love — with friends. Music is the background of our lives—playing in the supermarket, accompanying us as we wait to speak with the next customer service representative, shuffling on our iPhones as we commute to work. Music is ubiquitous, but much of the [...]
We’re All Different: Musician Glenn Copeland on his journey as a Black, Buddhist, transgender artist
"The message of my Buddhist practice is, 'Be courageous. You are exactly what is wanted. We’re all different,'" says Glenn Copeland musician and composer Glenn Copeland. John Harvey Negru talks to Copeland about his life as a pioneer in music, his fourty-four years of Buddhist practice in the Soka Gakkai tradition, and his mission for the future. If you haven’t heard of [...]
Trevor Hall Is Making Music Out of “The Fruitful Darkness”
More than 20 years after its publication, Roshi Joan Halifax's book The Fruitful Darkness is still bearing fruit. It's a great inspiration behind Trevor Hall's latest album of its namesake, which is currently in the midst of a four-part release. Lilly Greenblatt spoke with Hall about his new album, the spiritual path behind it, and his own journey through darkness. In the [...]
How Tune-Yards created an indie-rock meditation on race and Buddhism
Lilly Greenblatt talks to Tune-Yards' Merrill Garbus about how race and Buddhism informed the band's latest release. Close your eyes Get in touch With the physical sensations coursing through your body (Honesty) Breathe (Honesty, honesty) Those are the instructions from frontwoman Merrill Garbus on “Honesty,” the fifth track of Tune-Yards’ latest album. The song also [...]
How to Get Lost — and Found — in Music
Music connects us to the present moment like nothing else, says Teenage Bottlerocket bassist Miguel Chen. In this excerpt from his new book, I Wanna Be Well: How a Punk Found Peace and You Can Too, coauthored with LionsRoar.com editorial director Rod Meade Sperry, Chen explains how to really listen to music. Playing shows, writing songs, recording albums, and most of all, [...]
Watch this viral video of a Zen priest singing the “Heart Sutra” with acoustic backing
A video of the Japanese band Kissaquo reciting the Heart Sutra has gone viral, collecting over a million views. In Kissaquo's performance of Buddhism's Heart Sutra, the musical duo adds guitar, drums, and melody to the Buddhist scripture, recited in Japanese. But the track is a crossover hit, going viral on social media in America. That's an impressive feat for a millennia-old [...]
Trane of No-Thought: How Meditation Inspired Jazz Great John Coltrane
In the 50th-anniversary year of the death of John Coltrane, Zen teacher Sean Murphy looks back at the jazz icon and how meditation practice and a deep interest in Eastern traditions informed his monumental late-period work. One predawn morning in 1964, the already-legendary saxophonist John Coltrane was sitting in meditation in his Long Island home when the structure and [...]
Tina Turner, Ani Choying Drolma, collaborate with diverse female vocalists on “Awakening Beyond”
Rock icon and Buddhist Tina Turner is featured alongside Nepal’s “rockstar Buddhist nun,” Ani Choying Drolma, and a diverse mix of female voices, on the new collaborative album, Awakening Beyond. The album is the fourth the Beyond Foundation has created and features the six female voices from six different backgrounds — co-founder of the Beyond Foundation, Regula Curti from [...]
Zen-informed musician Tyshawn Sorey wins $625,000 “Genius Grant”
The 2017 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellows were announced on Oct. 10, and among the 24 individuals was 37-year-old musician and composer Tyshawn Sorey. The MacArthur fellowship — also known as the “genius grant”— is a $625,000 no-strings-attached award distributed over a five year period to those who show “exceptional creativity” based on significant past [...]
Watch: Leonard Cohen’s contemplative “Leaving the Table” video
A moving new video for "Leaving the Table," from the late Leonard Cohen's last LP, "You Want It Darker," has been released. It begins with what one might read as a meditating Cohen -- he was a dedicated Zen student, after all -- atop an abstract mountaintop/cross hybrid, and then leaping into the air, flying into a version of the world packed with references his to his life [...]
