Exploring a New Style

Recently I spent about a week in Vancouver recording new songs and working intensively on other projects in Jarome’s studio. Opportunities to work together in person are rare, so this was a wonderful chance to finally record and finish songs we have been waiting to complete.
In a previous post, I mentioned that we will soon finish a Chinese spiritual CD with several accomplished musicians including Cheng Lin, Phil Morrison, Keith Williams, Jin R, Lily and Siria Rutstein.  We just released Rose of Love about a month ago which will be included on the CD.
I’m excited to tell you about the newest songs as they are quite different in style from anything I’ve recorded vocals for before.  The songs are a New-Age, Latin-infused, Middle-Eastern style.  It has been fascinating recording for these songs as I have been exploring what my voice can do to suit the style.  There have been challenging moments when recording them because the style is so different from what I’m used to singing and the lyrics are original so I had to get the feel for them as I sang them.  We hope to release several of these new songs as digital downloads quite soon so that you won’t have to wait till we release the whole album.
One of the songs is about the struggle between our spiritual nature and our attachments to this world.  I love this song because of the rhythm, the lyrics and the flamenco guitar which is one of my favorite live instruments.  Eric Harper plays the guitar infusing the song with gorgeous rhythms on top of Jarome’s lovely composition.  It has been a thrilling journey exploring this new style of music and incorporating harmonies and rhythm.  I’ve been so looking forward to adding more percussion to my music – after all I was raised in Kenya which is full of wonderful African rhythms!