Swara - swara
CD Album £10.00
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Swara -swara

  1-constance

  2-salmiakki

  3-govinda

  4-horizon

  5-in between

  6-blessed

  7-reflections

"Swara" is a new musical collaboration between experienced musicians and Yoga teachers, Joe Cang and Demian Dorelli.

"Swara" is a Sanskrit word meaning, 'The subtle inner tone of ones balanced breath'.

Inspired by the discipline of Yoga, our sounds have evolved from many hours of practice on the floors of the Innergy Yoga Centre and at the controls of our studio mixers!

We've had a great response so far in London and other areas, and people have found the music especially inspiring not only for the practice of Yoga, bodywork, but also general relaxation and simple listening pleasure.

"Swara" has also become 'CD of the month' in Covent Garden's 'Mysteries'.

2004 sees the release of our second CD, entitled 'The sounds Of Innergy', featuring 'Vedic Chants' and a more modern edge to the production. The third "Swara" project is already in the pipeline, so expect a full range of Swara CDs very soon!

Here is a review from  North West Magazine...

Joe Cang believes in synchronicity. That’s how this local-singer songwriter explains the amazing story behind his latest album, Suitable for Vegetarians.

You couldn’t spin a better yarn.

Two vegetarian musicians meet whilst selling their studio equipment on Ebay. After hearing each other’s music online, they decide to hook up. Within three weeks their first album is written and recorded.

Uncannily similar in appearance, people assume they are brothers. It is at this point they discover they have a Polish cousin in common – a polish pig farmer. So what do you think they call the band? Ham.

“It all came together so effortlessly”, he muses, settling into a big black armchair in his smart Crouch End flat.

“There was no resistance. We have the same ideas about life, we are the same age, the minute we started writing together, the music just flowed.” That’s another of Joe’s life-guiding principles: being in flow with life. The 42 year old musician, songwriter and singer has experienced this state of grace many times, not only with his music – he’s played with everyone from Aswad and Hall and Oates to KT Tunstall and Robert Palmer but also, in his other guise, as a yoga teacher and spiritual seeker.

 “Being in flow means not resisting anything coming towards you, or meeting with any resistance. It’s the state all yogis seek and most artists touch on because it is inherently creative.” Joe first experienced the unlimited joy of being in flow as a 19 year-old bassist playing with the late African master drummer Reebop Kwakubaah, whose drumming and percussion had appeared in numerous albums from the Rolling Stones to Steve Winwood’s Traffic. Kwakubaah him under his wing and became his mentor. “I had always been into my music. Instead of going to school and getting an education, I played bass at the Dublin Castle in Camden but Reebop, he taught me how to play from the heart. He made me question everything I knew. He was a very free spirit,” Joe recalls.

The day Reebop died was also the day Joe started writing songs. “Reebop’s death brought about the collapse of everything I knew. I had all this overwhelming emotion that I needed to express. So I started writing, and discovered it had a healing quality. It was a way of dealing with all this overwhelming emotion.”

Until then, he had never known how to filter that- except through drugs: “I was a troubled child,” he explains. Despite the most stable of backgrounds; his dad an academic, his mum a school teacher, stable home in Belsize park (he grew up in the house two down from Sting’s), “I was difficult…writing was a safe way of expressing myself. It’s still a beautiful humbling process.” As a songwriter Joe was a big hit. Publishing  company Hit and run (home to Phill Collins, Pink Floyd and other big names) signed him up and  paid him well to write and record songs for Daryl Hall and John Oates. But from a spiritual perspective Joe had only scratched the surface of something he instinctively knew was bigger and deeper. “I was feeling restless, I was aware that music was no longer satisfying me, I was becoming reclusive and drugs were becoming a main part of my life.” Famous healer Betty Shine insightfully guided him onto the yogic path. “She suggested I give up the drugs and go and have a few yoga lessons instead. It transformed my life.”

Sessions in the studio were interspersed with trips to India where he discovered that yoga, far from being a physical discipline that you practised until mastered, was about learning how to undo and open yourself.

When he returned from India he hooked up with a manager and within six months signed a deal with Arista Records not just as a songwriter but as a singer this time.

“It was a huge deal. I was living in Gloucester Crescent, recording all day long in the studio, I had all this money in the bank, should have been fun right?” But despite all this promise his path was filled with resistance.

“It was a nightmare,” he says shaking his head, “first the MD was sacked (some scandal) , the company had issues the same week that my album was released. My album got lost in the hoo-ha. So despite critical acclaim, it came and went with a whimper. It just wasn’t the right time.” However it was right for songwriting. By now in his new Crouch End apartment complete with studio, he penned whole albums for Aswad including the million-selling Shine in the summer of 1995. He’d also discovered Innergy, the North West London-based yoga centre that was to become his spiritual home. “I found a teacher whose beliefs I resonated with and stuck with him.”

He’s even written music to practice yoga to – Swara – his first attempt co-written with Damian Dorelli is a beautiful album of ambient music and song. “You snooze a lot when you record that kind of work; it’s so mellow.”

But now he says he’s ready to sing again. “It’s been a long time coming but it’s where my heart lies.” A solo album, called Firefly, generated good reviews and now Suitable for Vegetarians is just completed. “It’s the synchronicity thing again. It feels like the right time. Like I said it all just fits.

For more information about Swara please contact Chris or Tom at MAPMUSIC on 020 7916 0544 or e-mail: info@mapmusic.net

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