PREM JOSHUA
Mudra
(p) (c) 1998 Prem Joshua
10tks/67mins

The magic performance of Prem Joshua swoops you up from the first accords and invites to forget everything and be involved into a spontaneous dance, where your body will express by itself everything YOU want to express. No control is needed there, there you can give up to the music completely and just to be in this beautiful moment, sacrificed by the amazing music.

In «Mudra» East meets West, traditional Indian music is mixed with ambient, trip-hop and trance dance melodies. By the way, the word «mudra» means «hang gesture» in Sanskrit; the mudras are used in the classical Indian dances, where hands are more expressive than words. They even don't express anything definite, but channel the energy flows. And one really wants to «dance with hands» to the music of Prem Joshua and his friends. You can express everything by their movements: joy of being, sadness, passion, delight, the most intimate words of love… absolutely everything… And it would be more than all the words..

There is oceanic quality in the music of Prem Joshua, it washes you with its waves, it plunges you into an infinite space, quite different, and this space seems to be the only reality for you, because, unlike our world, in that space love, fondness and sincerity are real. And it's very comfortable there, and one wants to stay there more and more…

And there's so much freedom in this music! There's lot of life and free wind, fuddled by joy of a being, for which the world is full of miracles. The miracles really happen with this being, and there is yet something more - an inexpressible by words delight...

The idea of this album arose when Prem Joshua and his friend, young Danish keyboarder Maneesh de Moor took part in a night trance dance party in India. Then both dancers and musicians felt that they have moved without any effort to a totally different space, finding themselves in a moment. They felt tremendously refreshed and grateful after that celebration. The idea was implemented in spring 1998, when Prem Joshua and his friends lived in an old house in country-side in Toscana Italy, and enjoyed simply life, cracking firewood, bringing water from a well and firing furnace. They recorded this project using their sophisticated recording machinery, being at the same time near the nature and making such the simple activities.

The music of the album has the spirit of simple life and returns you to the present. And everything is so simple, and the problems are vain, when you're listening «Mudra»!

Except of Prem Joshua (Bamboo Flutes, Sitar, Surbahar, Santoor - an ancient Persian instrument, an forefather of the modern cymbals, Voice, Soprano Saxophone, Swarmandal Harp, Tanpura) and Maneesh de Moor (Keyboards, Programming), Rishi Vlote (Djembe, Clayrot, Moorsing, Percussions), Manish Vyas (Tablas) and Hena (Whispers) took part in the album. Hena studied Indian classical dances, African and modern forms of dance; later she danced at the concerts of Prem Joshua and his group «Hamsafar».

I should tell something more about one of the instruments Prem Joshua uses, bass sitar (surbahar). One of Prem Joshua's friends found it when arranging an attic in an old building in Poona, India. The fact is that the owners of the building moved 15 years ago from Pakistan to India, because they were not Moslems and had to escape from persecution. They took the old instrument surbahar with them and forgot it in the attic. The box protecting went almost completely bad, but the surbahar itself, created by an unknown master more than a century ago, for a wonder remained undamaged. And when Prem Joshua took it with his hands, it seemed to him that the instrument plays by itself, singing the melodies and telling stories about enlightened beggars and forgotten saints. You can hear surabhar in compositions «Lahore Connection» and «Banyan Tales».

And I especially like «Shiva Moon I» («The Crescent Moon Mudra»). There's so much passion and fire!

Blessed Prem Joshua! «Mudra» is an unbounded love.

And in the dance, filled by rhythm and fire,
Full of love and ecstasy,
You can feel your Love,
You can touch it.
You can merge with it and be with it,
And that's more than words, more than body,
The energy of Love itself will flow through you.
And you'll be it, you'll become it...
You will be face to face with each other,
Face to face with Existence itself...

Serge Kozlovsky