Multi-Instrumentalist, Joseph "Pepe" Danza

One of my articles recently included in the Yoga Barn's newsletter:

International Musician, Pepe Danza, Brings Sacred Chants and Rhythms to the Yoga Barn

BALI, Indonesia – On May 22, 2011; Yoga Barn guests were treated to a multi-instrumental sound healing, meditation, and prayer performance from Uruguayan sound sculptor, Joseph “Pepe” Danza. Danza, a traveling musician with 35 years of world music experience, wove a mystical music-tapestry at the live recital using many instruments from various indigenous traditions.

“Wherever I would go, I would spend years trying to understand and get into the culture,” said Danza, who is a collector of over 400 instruments and is trained in the musical practices of Africa, Japan, India, and Tibet as well as his native South America.

According to Danza, his “Ocean of Sound” performance was a 100 percent improvised musical experience involving voice, woodwinds, crystal bowls, and percussion instruments, among others.

Integrating the full range of his multiethnic music gifts, Danza’s sound alternated from ethereal wavelike swells to frenetic drum solos, and he often played different musical instruments simultaneously and in unorthodox ways. Danza skillfully blended the entire range of his voice into his music: from impromptu chants to staccato rhythmic stabs.

“It’s very shamanic,” noted accompanying musician, Sparrow Deviyani, implying that Danza’s unrehearsed mystical sounds could induce powerful altered states through what Danza called a “sonic journey.”

Guests in the audience each took what they needed from the different sound modes on offer. Some sat or lay on their backs in meditative states while others moved their limbs to the rapid beats that would phase in and out of Danza’s music performance.

Pepe Danza comes to Bali and the Yoga Barn annually and will return in February of 2012. He considers Bali as “one of the highest civilizations on earth right now.” “As a whole, they live in a sacred way,” Danza said with appreciation.

As someone who honors the sacred dimensions of his own work, Danza emphasized the spiritual undercurrents that he offers, “I develop my techniques to a very high degree and then get out of the way,” he said, “I gather all these treasures in a ceremonial way.”

Danza will travel to Vancouver, Uruguay, and Mexico over the next few months. Learn more about him by visiting his website: http://www.pepedanza.com/home.html  

Some Principals of Sound Therapy

I drafted this article which is drawn mostly from the Fabien Maman radio interview with Jonathan Goldman last year and his Tama-Do Academy books. In a nutshell, it describes the science and reasoning behind his pioneering sound therapy treatment system. 


According to those in the sound healing world, music is the universal language. Fabien Maman experienced what he calls his first “meditative concert”—when touring Japan as a musician. He was first confused because Japanese audiences did not clap after each song like most Western audiences. It was this experience that helped Maman discover that music has a cosmic vibration that can travel through the field, become absorbed by the listener and then can return to the musician; and that clapping hands can get in the way of this feedback.

CELLULAR RESEARCH
Fabien’s most famous book, “The Role of Music in the 21st Century” contains the story of Maman’s research. At that time he was testing the effects of musical instruments and tones on human cells. His experiments evaluated the double bass, human voice, vibraphone, flute, gong, and guitar, among others, and were conducted from 1 a.m.-5 a.m., between the hours when the Paris subway was closed. He played musical notes on a scale with different instruments, one note at a time and each time examined how blood cells changed shape and appearance. Maman discovered through this process that sound was changing the cells' shape and color; “doing something around people and cells; and around the aura of people.” To Maman, this was proof positive on the power of sound and its ability to help the body on a cellular level-- not just internally but externally.

Maman believes that sound travels first through the layers of the “subtle bodies” surrounding the cells and then it travels through to the physical body. On one hand, his results showed that different notes enabled healthy cells to expand, change shape or change color. On the other hand, cancer cells responded negatively to dissonant tones, which they could not handle in vitro, according to Maman. "With enough time, these cells would explode." Certain cells responded well to a frequency of a certain instrument, while others did not. But The human voice, he concluded, was the most powerful timbre of sound of all the instruments he tested. "The human voice carries something in its vibration that makes it more powerful than any musical instrument: consciousness."

Consistently, around the middle of the scale, there would form what Maman calls “a mandala, which represented what might be described as a sonic sweet-spot particular to an individual, or what Maman calls the "fundamental sound" of the person. To Fabien, these results confirmed that sound is a more powerful healing agent than we think.

THE “AURA OF SOUND”
Maman believes that the healing force of sound is not primarily in the striking of a note, it lies in the overtones and the harmonics that occur when the tone starts to fade, even when the tone can no longer be heard or is out of the range of human hearing. He believes that these can penetrate the aura and the body when it is naturally struck and acoustically shaped. Having to contend with the loud volumes and harsh modern urban sounds can expose people to detrimental sound waves that deplete the subtle field and shoot energy out of the body. People are often unaware of how sound can bombard their space. If the healing part of sound is primarily in the overtone, as Maman suggests, and the power of the harmonics is in the shape of the sound then most healing sounds "must be very subtle. Bigger and louder is not always better."

TAMA-DO ACADEMY--THE WAY OF THE SOUL
Maman was taught early on about the Kototama, which is an ancient science of vocalization and sound. After putting on hold his musical career, he was given the inspiration to start an academy for the development of human beings while he was in Egypt. His academy combines sound, color and movement and much of the science is based on acupuncture and the Chinese Medicine system. Maman's aim has been to marry music and acupuncture through this system, and he has developed 30 techniques that involve healing with sound over the years.

Why Acupuncture?—Maman found that this historic and precise practice provided an excellent established structure and preestablished body of knowledge for the application of Fabien’s research. Seven years after gaining his license to practice acupuncture in Paris and experimenting with tuning forks, Maman found connections and correspondences between tuning fork notes and each organ in the body. He finished the research in 1989 and started the Tama-Do Academy at that point. “The body is like a Swiss clock, every thing is precise; is in tune. So we have to apply sound in a precise way.”

Maman presented his work and findings at the World Research Foundation in 1988 and is considered the founding father of tuning fork therapy. When he returned to the US, he discovered a series of new tuning fork schools and theories. He was critical of the development of the massive wave of tuning fork therapists, and considers a lot of the work behind them as “incoherent”. “People who use tuning forks today, it is such a mess.”

For more information, visit the Tama-Do Academy site.