PART TWO (MATT'S REVIEW)

DaKah sprouted out of this rich, funky LA soil some five years back. Double G had been dreaming about it for years and intuitively knew that LA was the right environment for it to grow. He wanted to take what he'd learned from playing and studying the music of luminaries like Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, Stravinsky and Debussy, Parliament and Tower of Power, among many others, and somehow weave it all together on the loom of hip hop. He wanted to take the driving grooves and pure energy of funk, rock, salsa, samba and hip hop, and build a foundation on which more conceptual structures could stand, fleshed out in strings, brass and winds. From here, a myriad of soloists, from MC's to saxophonists to soul crooners to electric violinists could tell their personal stories from the heart, likes jewels on top of a big, multifaceted crown.

Incredibly, daKah has been a sailing ship now for four years, starting at a humble 20 members, playing at a club in Santa Monica called the Temple Bar, and culminating in a sold out performance at Frank Gehry’s newly built ode to acoustic perfection, Disney Hall. A full-fledged orchestra, nearly 60 members strong, tore the roof off of a legitimate concert hall!

It hasn’t been easy. At its lower points daKah could be a noisy blob of sound, too many beads of brilliance with no continuous string to tie them all together. But at its best, the music of DaKah raises goose bumps, takes one’s breath away and gives, to both performers and audiences alike, a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself, transcending and including its myriad elements in an integral embrace.

In order to create depth and meaning out of so many diverse and seemingly incongruent elements, one must have an overarching vision, which entails working on all quadrants and all levels. One must understand where each of these elements fits in to the big picture, both technically and aesthetically. Plus one must be able to navigate the daunting logistics of organizing so many people on little or no budget, finding the right venue in which to play, and forming a web of harmonious interpersonal relationships, not only within the orchestra, but also within the community at large.

And this is where, for me, the orchestra becomes a venue for an integral artistic life. In terms of balancing the I, We, and It, it’s an optimal environment. It challenges both my interior and exterior development along musical lines since it is often quite difficult technically, not only to nail my part, but also to blend properly with the orchestra. But then I also need to be able to play with so much groove and soul and feeling that all of my emotional and spiritual resources are drawn upon.

When I am called on to solo, for example, and there are fifty or so musicians backing me up, it’s hard not to go through an immediate state change and become a direct conduit for spirit, only to come back into waking consciousness some minutes later, trembling with shakti. This state change is a commonly reported experience among musicians, and is enhanced in the swirling pressure cooker of a daKah performance. In fact, a community of musicians who play technically well and pouring their hearts, souls, and chi into a performance make jumping into deep subtle and sometimes even causal states practically inevitable.

Audiences receive this transmission in a palpable way. They get fired up, they are transported, and they pour that energy back into the orchestra, and the whole room becomes a swirling vortex of joy and excitement. After every daKah performance, I like to walk around and look into the audience members’ beaming faces. It’s very gratifying.

I see all the levels at play in the orchestra as well, which is a tip off for me that the orchestra may be pushing towards an integral embrace, at least in its brighter moments. I see a respect for the importance of the levels of development. There are the beige, survivalist hip-hop grooves, and a healthy dose of purple magic when we surround the stage with Santeria candles and incorporate African Yoruban rhythms. There is an ample dose of rock-power red when daKah tears it up, sixty heads bobbing in unison. Double G, through his composing, conducting, and leadership, imposes a blue order, channeling this raw egoic energy towards something more structured. Through his orchestrations and incorporation of orange western classical music, gives the music a deeper sense of harmony. (Plus, in order to keep the orchestra afloat, quite a bit of orange pavement-pounding is required). Then of course there’s the green pluralism, the bringing together of many styles of music, types of musicians, and a message of equality, caring, and universal love. With daKah, pluralism does not repress blue order, and in general, red does not try to take over. For all of this to work together, an overarching yellow integral embrace is needed. Otherwise, the other values would be at odds, instead of in concert and working together in service to a greater, more encompassing entity. And this has been my experience more and more frequently as we all grow together.

For me daKah, is a musical sangha in the truest sense of the word, and offers a shining example of what is possible when a group of artists comes together to create something good, true, and beautiful together. It’s a community of individuals who support one another in waking up to wider levels of truth, compassion, freedom, and love, and then allowing that gift to overflow into the community. In a world that seems to be going more insane every day, a sangha like this is a welcome refuge indeed.