The Voice 88.7 Cable FM in Sacramento, CA
interview with Andrea Payton, "Beyond the Invisible"
Arpil 6, 2004

THE VOICE: Wah!  welcome to "Beyond the Invisible". I'm looking forward to speaking with you because I took a trip to a Krishna Temple in Utah, and when I came back I had all this inspiration to find artists who did Krishna music. And guess who came up? WAH! Tell me, back in 1999, what started you making CD Krishna (it's CD Krishna, isn't it?)

WAH!: Well actually the title is a play on words. Instead of saying Siri Krishna or Shree Krishna, if you say it with a proper Indian accent, CD Krishna is just about the same sound.

THE VOICE: You are a mulit-instrumentalist - harmonium (hand organ), tablas, guitar - Let me ask you about Hare Ram Krishna. Are these chants something you learned while you were travelling in India, or did someone teach you here in the US?

WAH!: Most of the people who are visible now as musicians, teachers, authors in the new age/yoga market, followed some discipline in the 60's and 70's, when the flower revolution started. That time sprouted some seeds, and those people who were inclined, pursued various disciplines in order to recreate what they were searching for in the hippie experience.

THE VOICE: Well they didn't call it enlightenment back then-

WAH!: We didn't really, but it was a feeling of opening, a feeling of community, that we could make the world a better place, both externally and internally. So a lot of us were involved in some kind of discipline, as was I. Back then, there wasn't really any information. There weren't books, no yoga centers certainly, no music, there wasn't much available. What I did was immersed myself in the whole thing - the mantras, the lifestyle, the clothes, the head-bobbing, the accent, rising before the sun, going to the temples, learning the music, learning the dialects - adopting everything from that tradition.

THE VOICE: You immersed yourself -

WAH!: Right. And India offers many disciplines - Jains, Hindus, Yogis, Muslims, Sikhs, Sufis, Buddhists, Vipassana - there's a lot to choose from. I initially got involved in a tradition that did not use the Hare Krishna mantra, but as I developed and reached out more, I came to know it well. I came to the experience of Krishna through a saint from Southern India, named Ammachi. As a young child, She went into ecstatic trances that embodied Krishna consciousness in Her. It was said Her skin turned blue, Her energy was beautiful and ecstatic. When She chants or sings bhajans, She often cries out to Krishna or the Divine Mother. It is an incredible experience. My longing drew me to these mantras, and it also drew me to create a CD like CD Krishna... I wanted to know, what could that experience possibly be like? What would it be like to be absorbed in Krishna, or any deity, unaware of the outside world? What is that experience? Not how it looks from the outside, but how it feels from the inside, from the perspective of the person experiencing it. So I took Krishna mantras, and sang them, composed them while I was walking to get my daughter from school... It started as a musing - "What would that be like, to be immersed in Krishna?" - and it turned into a very expansive experience. The more I chanted, the deeper it became, until I was 24/7 into it. Getting up in the middle of the night and composing Krishna in 7. At 2 in the morning, I heard the music, and I felt this <wow!> and I just wanted to have a record of it.

THE VOICE: It had a lasting impression ...

WAH!: Yes. I have a longing to understand spiritual experience. Different people are drawn to different things. Some people who are spiritually inclined, at a very young age go into ecstatic trances, deep meditative states. I want to know, what that is. The Tibetan culture has certain mantras that are so deeply imbedded into the culture - like Amen in American culture, everybody knows that - I want to know what's it like to live in a deeply spiritual culture, where music and art is part of daily life, where each person has a song in their heart, where dance is an expression of the Creator. I am interested in this. I want to know more about it, but from the inside. So, I have kind of tried on all these experiences, in an effort to find some answers.

THE VOICE: You are a performing artist. Yes, that works well for me. The Krishna CD is what I was found first, but when I got your other CDs, I was really pleased. You are a very well rounded musician. You seem to be able to cross all genres, and you do it pretty well. In 1999, you were in love with God, you expressed it through your music with your creative ability, and then further down the line, you came up with Opium, which is a slightly different texture...

WAH!: Well the main difference is that Opium is in English. As we travelled and toured, the experience became as much about the talk, stories and sharing in between the songs as it was about the songs themselves. People were coming not only for the music but for the stories. The Opium songs are a result of those sharings. It's about the personal work each of us has to do. It's one thing to do yoga, take some tai chi, do something good for yourself, but it's another thing to really take those practices and have them enhance your personal work. I talk about 12-step programs, I talk about any and all forms of emotional healing that are necessary for anybody who is in an incarnation.

THE VOICE: Well, the titles of your songs are quite captivating. Some of the titles are self-explanatory (Open, Opium), but then you say Show Up & Be Heard. I listened to the words and I hear you making a statement of what you expect of yourself. So?  Did you show up and were you heard?

WAH!: Who you are is already there, all you have to do is show up so those aspects of your personality and destiny will be activated.

THE VOICE: What about Midstream? It's like, I'm not going forward, I'm not going backward, I'm just right there. It's like Be Here Now. What were you trying to say? Were you saying Be Here Now?

WAH!: I'm not trying to inspire anybody or direct anyone. I don't feel like I have a message, like "this is what we should be doing." I'm not telling anyone to show up, or to not show up, or flow with the current of grace, or do anything. I'm just trying to share my experiences - what it feels like on the inside. What are the states of human existence? Not just the ecstatic states but the cleansing, the brutal introspection that's necessary to evolve, to bring yourself forward. You shouldn't die feeling like you're exactly where you started - well - I guess that's impossible. No one can end up where they started. Everyone has enough pain to move them forward, it's guaranteed! (laughter) The idea behind Opium was to start a conversation, to understand that "yeah, these things are part of the program." If you have a human incarnation, you're going to have to work on some of the rough edges, push beyond your boundaries, change your patterns of abuse, rework your feelings of trying to dominate others, help the poor, surrender to what is..... all this is part of having a human experience. The idea behind the CD was to open up those stories, not only for myself and my own work, but for others. We need to share our stories and experiences; they are vital. It's not something to save for your therapist.

THE VOICE: Your new CD Jai Jai Jai  has a different feel. The first track Bolo Ram - you took a traditional chant and made a version different than anything I have ever heard. And I thought, "Gee, that's original!" And the fact that it's 15 minutes long - I will let you know that I have played the whole song on my show and I have listened to it several times, instead of prepping stuff for my show (which is what we DJs normally do). This is a version I have not heard before. How did you come about the development of this song. It's like you're standing way way far away from the microphone when you're singing-

WAH!: Yes, that's called a radio effect -

THE VOICE: When you start off, it's slow, I'm listening and I like that. And then it starts picking up speed and then you've got a real good momentum going, then you take it back a pace and by the end I feel like I've just done aerobics.

WAH!: How 'bout that -

THE VOICE: Every time I ask an artist how they come up with the idea for a particular song, they say, "Oh it just kind of happened. I wasn't really trying to do this, it just kind of happened." And I think, "Well I don't understand that process." Really, I don't. Sometimes people have a dream that comes to them, or they're sitting there and they hear it in their mind and they try to get close to matching what they were hearing...

WAH!: I'm hearing melodies and words in my mind and I'm simply recording them as I hear them. I don't record things on paper anymore. I just go in the studio and do it. Or we might try it in performance and if there are a few kinks, we'll work them out for the next performance. And the song gets written that way.

THE VOICE: You left a little R&B in Jai Jai Jai, with the song What She Has to Give. This is one track where you are really giving people the option. The ones who are less spiritually inclined are coming for the miracles; but what she really has to offer is a little deeper and higher. The listener has the option of taking the surface material (the appearance of a rosary or whatever) versus the knowledge of what God is and what it's like to have a relationship with Him. All right, you accomplished it very successfully -

WAH!: That's nice.

THE VOICE: -but you credit someone else's experience for the inspiration for the song. You give someone else the credit - it was their experience that you wrote the song about.

WAH!: Well, yes, a lot of songwriters act as storytellers. If that song was about me, I might not have had the perspective to be able to say "She's giving me what I want, but I'm not really matching the experience She would like to give me." (laughter) Come on, if She's giving me what I want, I'm gonna take it and run! (laughter) It's easier to see the progress that needs to be made in someone else. So, yes, this song was written about a man I know. His Guru kept giving him what he wanted, and I just thought to myself, "Well at some point it's gonna run out." The money, the girls, - well allright - temporary pleasures - but it's got to run out at some point, man! Are you gonna get down to it or not? The inspiration for that song was definitely telling someone else's story, but it's from my perspective.

THE VOICE: You're performing this weekend?

WAH!: Yes at the Body Mind Expo in Santa Clara. Their website is www.bodymindexpo.com. My website is www.wahmusic.com. All the info is there.

THE VOICE: Anything else you'd like to share?

WAH!: No, just thank you for doing the show. Thank you for offering engaging conversation and music that's such a great alternative to what's out there.