Before you confront her influences, philosophical constructs and musical theories, you have to confront the voice. It’s an instrument that is seductive and serene, a voice of rapture tempered by intellect. Singing a cappella, in multi-tracked harmonies and counterpoint, over sinuous drones, it’s the voice of promise and mystery.
Sheila Chandra captured the Zeitgeist of modern vocal music with her 1992 album, WEAVING MY ANCESTORS’ VOICES. She wrapped her extraordinary instrument around themes from Ireland and India as well as mediaeval Gregorian chants. In the process, Chandra embodied a more archetypal sound. WEAVING was the first in a trilogy of recordings with THE ZEN KISS and ABONECRONEDRONE. If those were definitive statements, then the music heard here, recorded before and after the trilogy, is of an artist on an odyssey of discovery, with ancient maps, tarnished signposts and cloudy prophecy.
Although WEAVING MY ANCESTOR’S VOICES illuminated Sheila Chandra as a beacon of vocal exploration, she had already spent a decade exploring many of the sounds that would become codified on the trilogy.
Although WEAVING MY ANCESTOR’S VOICES illuminated Sheila Chandra as a beacon of vocal exploration, she had already spent a decade exploring many of the sounds that would become codified on the trilogy.
ROOTS AND WINGS paved the way for the trilogy where Chandra perfected her vocal drone concepts and global connections. In a 1993 interview for the radio program, Echoes, she said:
“I was intending to highlight the spiritual ancestors that I’ve claimed rather than my actual ancestors. It might be a great soul and gospel singer or it might be an Andalusian singer or it might be an Indonesian singer, or it might be Gregorian chant or Bulgarian music. Any of the things which I think are very, very skilful and ornate but also heart-rending. Those are the things that I’ve listened to and just been compelled to try and sing”.
“I was intending to highlight the spiritual ancestors that I’ve claimed rather than my actual ancestors. It might be a great soul and gospel singer or it might be an Andalusian singer or it might be an Indonesian singer, or it might be Gregorian chant or Bulgarian music. Any of the things which I think are very, very skilful and ornate but also heart-rending. Those are the things that I’ve listened to and just been compelled to try and sing”.
And that’s where Sheila Chandra has always worked, beneath the surface, deeper than the soothing tones of New Age divas, more emotionally resonant. Her radiant voice lures you in with its sensuous, soothing tones and perfect pitch technical mastery, then unfolds a world of archetypal connections and emotional nuance. Sheila Chandra creates a music that touches the spirit, that speaks to a primal source within us.
John Diliberto
http://www.sheilachandra.com/albums/retrospect.html
http://www.sheilachandra.com/
http://www.sheilachandra.com/
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