what's on the planet newspaper, australia

March/April 1995

Music is a universal force. While we may be drawn to different genres, we are all under the spell music has to make us feel happy, mad or sad. It has the potential to push people over the edge, but similarly it can bring such a wonderful feeling of well being that most find listening to music an enjoyable pastime. Many others make it the centre of their lives, most notably, Eckart Rahn the founder and creative force behind Celestial Harmonies.

Sounds & harmony

"In 1976 I was studying Kepler—he was a Czechoslovakian astronomer (1571-1630) who wrote a book called The Harmony of the Spheres. According to Kepler the stars, planets and heavenly bodies permeate a harmonious sound. Each heavenly body has a particular pitch and it's a bit like a lot of piano keys playing all at once—you get a chord, a harmony. Celestial Harmonies means the sound of the universe," said Eckart.

Celestial Harmonies was established in 1968. When the company first formed it didn't have the luxury of being able to have a lot of policies or philosophies—it had to struggle to survive from one day to the next. But as the company got bigger a lot of policies were put into place. For example, Celestial Harmonies does not produce pop music—this is one policy that is taken very seriously.

"We don't try to have a hit. We don't do pop music or any branch of pop music; country, dance, hip hop or rap. We record music as art, we don't record music as business. This is our very strict company policy—we don't do pop music, we only make art music," said Eckart.

This is obviously a policy that works: today, Eckart's publishing catalogue includes more than 6,000 titles, including compositions by artists such as Dexter Gordon, Cecil Taylor, Benny Golson and Paul Horn.

Eckart believes "music cannot be separated from where it was made" and he stresses the importance of, where possible, not producing music in a recording studio.

"The recording studio was designed for engineers and, I believe, it doesn't make music sound particularly good nor does it add a spiritual dimension to it. Therefore, when someone like David Parsons goes to Cambodia to record classical music he doesn't drive the musicians into a recording studio. He goes with them to Ankgor Wat instead. When you have musicians play 'in their place', their music has a lot more feeling to it.

"You must go to a place that relates to where the music has been made originally. For example, Gregorian chant—it's written to be sung in a church."

This begins to make perfect sense when you imagine the sound of a flute being played in a recording studio and then compare this to it being played in the Taj Mahal.

"When you play the solo flute in a recording studio it sounds quite awful—totally dry, no life, no inspiration—dead, it's just a buffered room that is void of any kind of reverberation. The flute doesn't spread and the engineer then has to enhance it later to make it sound good. But in the Taj Mahal there is an 18 second reverberation—that's how long it takes for the last corner of the building to reflect the sound back to you. So when you play in this famous building there is a feeling of awe and inspiration."

Celestial Harmonies will always try to avoid recording in a studio but at times this is not possible. When it is unavoidable a small concert hall is used for a bit of ambience and good acoustics. In Sydney, the company uses Goossens Hall at the ABC. The concert hall seats about 300 and provides access to a recording studio.

Eckart is committed to recording, and he preserves the finest traditions and offerings of cultural music from virtually all regions of the world. In this quest, he has traveled to more than 30 countries, recording such diverse music and instruments as Gregorian chants, Chinese classical, Celtic harp, one–string Vietnamese zithers, Native American drumming, Cambodian folk, Australian didgeridoo, classical polyphony, and traditional Turkish.

To help explain Eckart's musical goal let's look briefly at the buildings of renowned Japanese architect, Kisho Kurokawa. Kisho's buildings are recognisable for their incorporation of other cultures into the Japanese. He has an openness to new elements that reconfirms his own traditions. The same values that motivate Kisho in architecture, motivate Eckart in music. Both share a common spirit—they both delight in the variety of our world's cultures and with great enthusiasm seek out ways to combine the qualities of seemingly disparate cultures in fascinating new ways.

"Our music represents an intercultural dichotomy in which each cultural style is valued for itself while being influenced by the others," said Eckart.

Eckart began to explore this concept in his Tibetan Bells series, with Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings bringing together sounds never associated, sounds vastly separated in time, space and tradition. The ancient resonances of the bells of Tibet were deployed within a musical framework uncompromisingly 20th Century and Western. It was a novel synthesis of the sounds of East–West, past–present, then–now and here–beyond.

The music of Celestial Harmonies spans the globe, from Europe, Northern Africa, India and the Asia–Pacific, to North and South America.

"We're not attempting to mix the cultures—it just happens. When people meet from different parts of the world and make music together a third type of music comes out of it. If one guy comes from Turkey and another from Australia its not going to be Turkish/Australian music but a different kind of music that no one has ever heard before," said Eckart.

Eckart is a staunch environmentalist and has brought many environmentally–conscious innovations to the music packaging process. He believes that if we allow the industry to continue spewing fumes, the places where music is made will completely deteriorate and will no longer be able to be used.

"The musician needs to be aware of the environment because if s/he's not there's not going to be one in which to make music," said Eckart.

Celestial Harmonies is deeply committed to providing packaging the reflects the quality and substance of the music inside. The company has therefore always taken care to bring new ideas as to how its recordings are presented to listeners. It was one of the first record companies to convert its entire catalogue to compact disks format, beginning the process in 1984.

Celestial Harmonies' goal is to reduce the amount of waste in CD packaging, incorporate recyclable materials into all elements of music product production, minimise the toxicity in the packaging materials used for CDs, and to record artists whose environmental positions are in accord with the company's policies.

"For decades the record industry has been a major user of packaging materials for its products yet, on a company–by–company basis, is far behind other industries in demonstrating a firm commitment to protecting the environment," said Eckart.

"During the last several years, we have taken several steps to bring our company up to speed with the environmental movement, and we encourage other companies in the industry to follow suit."

As part of Celestial Harmonies' overall intercultural policy, the company prefers to record artists who share its environmental–visionary goals. "The artists on our various labels have indeed expressed a similar commitment to environmentally–conscious packaging and we feel equally responsible to them to support their views as well," said Eckart.

Celestial Harmonies' catalogue includes more than 200 releases under several labels, including Celestial Harmonies, Black Sun Music, Kuckuck, Fortuna Records, E.R.P.; and a video label, MonteVideo. The company's releases include a wide array of musical styles, including jazz, non–European and European classical, new age, intercultural, and blues. Celestial Harmonies is a company committed to producing music that is felt at a deeper, spiritual level.