Deserts and music

There is a program on Public Radio that I've enjoyed for several years. It airs different times in different places and here from the station on the university campus in Las Cruces is on Sunday night from 9:00 to 10:00. It is called Hearts of Space and features ambient and alternative music, most very enjoyable, at least to me. You can visit the program on the net at www.hos.org. Some programs or excerpts can be downloaded and there are play lists etc.

This past Sunday they had a program on music inspired by the desert. It was awesome! I found it very fascinating how the idea of a desert and the desert landscape was interpreted by different composers and the audio pictures they painted with their music.

Of course I also like much of the Native American music and some other ambient music inspired by native styles. A favorite is the group Cusco; I especially like their CD The Journey. Then there is a CD by another group titled Cries from the Earth and one titled Ancient Visions. Cries is put out by BCI Eclipse and Visions by Neo Pacifica. I expect you could google the names and find them or search on Amazon.

They were my fave road trip music for awhile and I can flash back to the high plains of southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico or the barren lands between El Paso and Carlsbad, NM which I traversed several times going to visit a friend in Carlsbad when I lived near Silver City and also a detour coming down from Colorado.. One time --and this is weird--I was driving south from Colorado Springs somewhere along between Raton and Las Vegas, NM and listening to one of these when I spoke aloud in a voice not at all my normal tone but guttural and low--just  three syllables Ah ho nay. To this day I have no idea what that means or where it came from but it was a very odd moment, one of those that sends a shiver down your spine and raises fine hairs on the back of your neck! Someone or some spirit said something to me using my own vocal capacity; I just wish I could translate it! Maybe an ancestor or my own self in a past life? I have no idea but it was powerful!!

This shot is some of that high plains grass.desert scenery along I-25 at the Fort Union rest stop and I can visualize the Comanche or other tribes riding their ponies over the rolling hills after buffalo etc.It was not too far from here where that experience occurred.