ALBUM SYNOPSIS   
INNOSENSE

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I had pretty much stopped playing guitar for some time, focusing on piano, singing and other mediums of art, except for when working with youth-at-risk participants in group facilitation sessions. These sessions explored the use of rite of passage methodology to harness new opportunities and potential. There was always something powerful connecting across barriers in these moments, and music is one of the universal mediums that helps us do this. A co-facilitator and I had found a sweet nylon-string guitar that we both particularly loved to do this. Years later, after I had left the group facilitation work, my colleague arrived at my door and gifted me the same model guitar, new. It was a powerful, visionary moment.

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I was studying at the time, and the assignment before the final thesis was a calming meditative one. The brief was to choose something to slow one down and focus thought before starting to write. It could have been anything, but I chose 20 minutes of guitar playing on this new instrument I had acquired. At first there were only sounds and breathing, but as with all creative processes, and one that mirrored the process of writing the thesis, soon sounds melted into melodies, melodies into concepts, and concepts into songs that incorporated themes and meaning.

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All this guitar playing coincided with the pregnancy of my first child, and so even after the assignments and papers were done, I continued to play to my unborn son each evening for twenty minutes, feeling his soul and life-presence from within the womb. Toward the end of the pregnancy he would respond to the playing with movement and activity.

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Once born the music became a way for us to relate and communicate. I could feel where he was at as I played with how he responded. The songs melded into a collection of pieces that he too was in some way the author of, as I would adapt my tone, rhythm, intonation, and structure daily to soothe his mood and meet his needs.

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In a way, this relating then became a theme of the music, and was expanded out once I went into the studio with other artists and music minded professionals. We again found a language to relate, and they took the songs to a much wider and more expansive place than the original compositions. I started to realise the potential of the music to grow and hold its own destiny, and am honoured and privileged to have worked with such fine people from all walks of life.

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This part of the journey is a further expansion of the same thought and energy. If music can be the vehicle two humans can relate across the divide of age, language and experience; and it can be the vehicle of expression and connection between a diverse group of musicians, what can it do across a nation of people, or a continent, or a globe?

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My hope is that it can continue to connect people across common purposes, such as respect for African people or unity against oppression such as gender-based violence, or even the lifelong reflective process of reconciliation, as well as being a calming and enjoyable sonic experience. These are bold themes, but they are carried through here by the most basic of first expressions between a father and a son, the creative process and the intention to connect and find commonality. All these are ceremonies and rites of passages to new understanding, and so in particular the second half of the album expresses this chronologically, from loss, to acceptance, rejuvenation (sleeping), birth and then new action.

What journey are you on?

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Image: Monique Bermeister