{So, here we are a couple days from our 11th anniversary, and I’m realizing I’m almost in the same spot I was last year in terms of posts and music. Much of this quarantine life has been spent teaching, but it’s now finally Summer for me and I’ll have much more free time and a more free mind. Thus, expect a flurry of posts here before the 7th, beginning now!}
Over the past couple of months, much of my desire to share music has been directed towards Moods In Free Time. The regularity of that show makes it a bit easier to focus on than regular posts. But now that Spring has fully given way to Summer, which in my case means a much needed break from teaching to fully to account of how this moment has changed things for me personally, I’m finding that I’m starting to get that fire to share more music and words about music.
This album first showed up on my radar at one of Cool Chris’ Groove Merchant X Rappcats pop-ups here in LA. With so many records, many of which none of those who were there had ever seen, there were more than a few records that I was interested in that I just had to put back. For whatever reason, this album stuck with me and so at a much later date I got a sealed copy off the internets.
I was surprised to find that Murari Band was based out of my home town of Atlanta. They were associated with the Hare Krishna movement (Swami Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta is one of many faces featured on the trippy cover above), but aside from “Dreaming,” I don’t feel like a lot of the Krishna consciousness comes directly (and successfully) through in the music.
Despite being recorded a bit “late” in 1980, “Dreaming” has a nice “soft-psych” early/mid-1970s feel, and the vibe is pure. In this moment of our lives, where it feels like we are living during a very bad sci-fi pandemic dystopian film (or maybe series, since this is gonna go on for a long time), the possibility of retreating to the land of dreams is definitely seductive. But I prefer to think of the way that our dreams may allow us to manifest and conjure up a better version of the reality we are living. With all we are dealing with in the moment, it’s definitely something much needed here in the US and worldwide…