Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 63, Ramesha Nani

<em>Ananda Joy Singers, 2010 - clockwise from bottom: Ramesha, Bhagavati, Peter Kretzmann, Satyana Hall</em>
Ananda Joy Singers, 2010 – clockwise from bottom: Ramesha, Bhagavati, Peter Kretzmann, Satyana Hall

Ramesha and his wife Bhagavati are the co‑directors, with Jeannie Tschantz, of the Ananda music ministry. They live at Ananda Village. A professional singer and violinist, Ramesha offers singing lessons and coaching through his website, www.vocalbliss.net. (Photo: 2012)

Q: How did you get started in music?

Ramesha: When I was four or five years old we were living in Lugano, Switzerland and I decided I wanted to play guitar, so my parents bought me a toy guitar, but I wanted a real one, and then I started taking lessons.

When I was thirteen, some friends of our family had a son who was an accomplished violinist and who’s now very well-known in Europe, and because I was inspired by listening to him practice I decided to switch to violin.

My violin teacher was the one who introduced me to Paramhansa Yogananda – he was a disciple of Master’s through SRF, and through a series of serendipities I became interested in the path and I took the SRF lessons and got more deeply involved. I didn’t find Ananda until I was twenty-six, but I took Kriya through SRF and I was deeply engaged.

When my violin teacher began to pursue his career, I found other teachers until I graduated from the conservatory at twenty-five. Meanwhile I had started taking voice lessons from an accomplished opera singer with whom I studied for about seven years, until she passed away.

Singing became my passion – of all the instruments I had learned, it was the one that felt closest to my heart. After graduating, I didn’t touch the violin for nine years, because it had taken so much energy and will power to finish my studies, and I felt I was done with it.

I discovered Ananda around 1996 and began visiting the center in Assisi fairly regularly, but I never told anybody that I was a musician. I remember listening to the choir and thinking, “Oh, that’s cute.” Because it was pleasant, but I really didn’t get why the music was so important.

In 2002, Bhagavati came to Lugano on tour with a singing group from Ananda, and in 2003 I was in Assisi again, and we became good friends. When she found out that I was a musician, she said, “Wow, you have to come back for the Festival of Joyful Arts in July!” she mentioned to Shivani that I was a violinist, and Shivani got all excited and wanted to put on Swami’s string quartet. The quartet needs two violins, a viola, and a cello, but there was only one violinist floating around Ananda at the time, so they had never been able to perform it.

Neither of them knew that I hadn’t played in years, and let me tell you, to put together the first violin part was an endeavor! I practiced for an entire week in Assisi and it was hell, because after nine years without playing I was very rusty. So it wasn’t perfect, but we managed to muddle through.

Swamiji came north with some people from Assisi to give lectures in Milan and Como, and I attended. They were struggling to arrange some music at the last minute and they didn’t have enough singers, so I learned the tenor parts for some of the songs and performed with them, and that was when I began to take more interest in Swami’s music.

It was really through Bhagavati that I got more deeply involved with Ananda and the music. I had a job in Lugano, so I couldn’t move to Assisi right away, but I would go there often, and Bhagavati and I got to know each other better, and we became engaged and got married. We lived in Lugano for a couple of years, but we would travel to Assisi to help with the music and the events that Swami would put on.

After a time we felt guided to go to the U.S., and I took a year’s sabbatical from my job. After we’d been in California for several months, Jyotish and Devi asked if we wanted to move to the Village and help out with the music, so the music gradually became my main dharma, and I resigned from my job and here we are.

Last summer, Swami asked us to move to Los Angeles to help build the music ministry there, because there was no music at all, not even chanting. They were doing great things, but the music was completely neglected – they couldn’t even do the Festival of Light on Sundays because nobody could play the songs.

Q: By the way, every person I’ve interviewed who’s had a professional background in music has said the same thing – they came to Ananda and heard the music, and they thought, “Oh, that’s nice.” And for a long time they didn’t feel how central it is to the teachings and to Ananda’s work. Was there a landmark moment for you, when you began to take it more seriously?

Ramesha: Bhagavati gave me a couple of CDs of herself playing the flute, and that’s when I actually started to hear the music. Then it was the Oratorio that got my attention, because it was so deep and powerful, and the more I listened to it the more I began to understand what the music is about.

When we got married and Bhagavati moved to Lugano, she started a choir at the center, and I began singing and playing guitar. By performing the music instead of just listening to it, I started to understand what it meant.

To some extent, I have to admit that, even now, I don’t think I “get” the full scope of it, so I guess there’s a learning curve.

Q: On your website, you say that you’ve begun to explore ways to help people deepen their attunement with the inspiration in the music.

Ramesha: I’ve worked with lots of singers, many of whom have sung the music much longer than I have, yet I found that there was something I could help them with, and that was how to use their instrument better.

I realized that it’s possible to be inspiring even if you don’t have solid technique, but you might not be able to go as deeply into the flow of inspiration if the technical aspects are getting in your way.

I realized that if I could help people sing with greater ease, they could have a deeper experience of being a channel for God’s inspiration, because they could relax and take it for granted that their instrument would respond the right way. I felt that I could help them get to the point where they weren’t always worrying, “Oh gosh, that high note is coming!”

All of the singers are meditators, so they’re naturally interested in trying to sing with devotion, but I realized that it can sometimes be more dynamic if you can just open up and focus deeply on the meaning of the song and let then the song “decide” how it wants to be sung.

It’s a way of singing where you’re focused on what you’re saying, and then you can focus on the energy that’s behind the words and try to open up to it as you sing, and let it flow out through you.

When I’m able to do that I feel a consciousness flowing through me, and I’m no longer so self-aware, “Oh, I’m singing, I’ve got to make something happen.” No – the song has an intelligence of its own, because Swami wrote it with that divine consciousness in it, and if we can open up and merge with that consciousness, realizing that each word and note is there for a reason, there’s no way we’ll be able to sing it “wrong.”

But in order to do that, you have to be able to get rid of the burden of all these worries – “Oh gosh, how am I going to sing that high G?” Because that’s the voice of the ego.

On the one hand, you focus on technique and try to get the most out of your instrument, and on other – okay, you’ve honed the technique and now you can forget about it and focus on the inspiration, knowing that your instrument will respond because you’ve trained it to do so.

Q: In the sample lessons on your website, you sing “Life Is a Dream” with a very round, rich and relaxed tone. It feels as if you’re opening your instrument so that the song can “sing itself” through you. Do you think it’s a question of people doing a volume of that kind of singing until they get used to it?

<em>Ramesha sings during a choir performance at Spiritual Renewal Week, Ananda Village, 2012.</em>
Ramesha sings during a choir performance at Spiritual Renewal Week, Ananda Village, 2012.

Ramesha: On the technical side, yes, it’s about physically opening up and trying to stay as relaxed as they possibly can.

Ninety-five percent of the people who try to sing make the mistake of doing too much. They put out more energy than is necessary, and the first thing that happens is that the throat gets tense. You’re trying so hard, and the harder you’re trying the worse it sounds. The whole training in singing is basically about relaxing – just relaxing and trying to create a sound that is round and smooth. But in order to produce that sound, you have to open your throat and stay relaxed.

If you could analyze the spectrum of frequencies that your sound has, you would notice that the more your throat is relaxed and open, the richer the sound becomes. So that’s really all there is to it, as far as the technical side goes.

It’s a training, you know – it’s not that I can simply say “Okay, relax your throat.” Because it takes practice over time to develop the ability to use your voice with a relaxed throat.

For some reason, most of us are conditioned to use the voice with a certain degree of strain. If you listen to Swami, his voice is always full. He’s the only speaker I listen to where I never have to adjust the volume. Whether he’s speaking softly or loudly, you can always hear him. Why? Because his voice is always open and free, so it projects outwardly all the time.

This is where the technical side of singing merges with the consciousness with which we sing. Swami not only has a very refined technique, he’s obviously inspired. This is what I’m trying to help people understand, that you must develop your technique, but try to open up in a deeper way also.

Q: Swami has said that everybody at Ananda should sing the music. Can you share your thoughts about why he says that, and how people can benefit from it.

Ramesha: I think that singing this music is a very real form of spiritual practice, of sadhana. At the Village, people like Nayaswami Seva have sung this music for more than forty years. I used to think, “Boy, don’t they get tired of singing ‘Life Is a Dream’?” But I realized that it’s a form of spiritual practice, because God is in the music.

If you think of the divinity in the music, you never tire of it. “What is this power that is trying to flow through me in this song? What kind of consciousness is trying to flow out and share itself with the world?” It’s the way you never get tired of your breathing practices in meditation, because they can always take you deeper, and it’s very satisfying.

Chanting is between you and God. It’s a devotional practice, but it doesn’t matter how you sing because you’re focused on the words and on merging with them. But singing Swami’s music is translating spiritual realities into music that you share.

Whether you’re singing in the choir or singing a solo, the goal is to tap the inspiration but not go so deep that it’s only between you and God. You have to share it. You have to connect with your inner Self as deeply as you can, but stay alert and not let yourself go too far inward, but open up to share with all.

If you’re singing in a choir, it means tuning into the realities of the people around you. It’s what we do when we warm up and blend our voices. We’re expanding our aura to match the energy and consciousness of the people around us. We aren’t just saying “Okay, I’m singing pretty well, see you later.” It’s amazing to see how it can be an effective spiritual practice, and there’s no limit to how deep you can go.

Q: What do you offer people to help them learn the music? If someone loves the music and wants to be part of it, for example, but they haven’t sung, or they’re more advanced and would like to join the choir and maybe improve their singing.

Ramesha: For those who’ve never sung, and maybe they’re a bit shy, I would say that singing this music isn’t about how great you sound, it’s not about how beautiful your voice is; it’s really about tuning into something bigger and becoming an instrument for it. It might sound like I’m contradicting everything I teach, but really I’m not.

I run into so many people who are shy about singing. They would secretly love to sing, but they don’t dare. Who knows – maybe somebody told them they had an ugly voice when they were young, and they’ve carried that criticism all these years. I always try to convince them that even if they can’t carry a tune, they should give it a try anyway.

It’s really not about how good you sound. As I said, it’s about opening to a flow of consciousness, and the music itself can be a powerful instrument to help you experience that.

So that’s the first thing I would say. And then after they’ve gained a little confidence and they think maybe they’d like to keep trying, I’ll offer them basic vocal training, which is just doing some simple exercises to help develop their voice, and get to know their voice and learn to use it.

Then I can help them learn the songs, note by note as you saw in the sample videos where I go through a song very slowly. I can record it for them, or I can help them download the part so they can learn it note by note and get it into their head. We can record it and put it on their music player, or burn a CD so they can listen to it until they learn.

The next step is to take that knowledge of the melody, and I’ll help them make it more beautiful, so they aren’t just singing the notes but applying what they’re learning in our basic exercises to an actual song.

That’s the preliminary part. If somebody’s more advanced it might just be a matter of refining their technique. I’ve worked with Dambara, for example. He has one of the most beautiful voices in the Ananda world, and I’ve always thought it would be wonderful if he could learn to use it a little better, because it would make a big difference for him.

For someone like Dambara who’s already advanced and deep in the music, all it takes is learning a few tricks to get more out of your voice with less strain. That was his problem, that he couldn’t sing for very long because his throat would get sore.

It was interesting to me to see how Chaitanya was able to solve lots of technical problems by himself, which, I must say, is very rare. In my experience, very few people discover these things by themselves, but he was following his intuition and it guided him very well. He can go up high in a very relaxed way that’s so pleasant to hear. It took me years of training with my teacher before I could understand it. So it does happen, but it’s rare.

So far, of the people who’ve come to me for training, I can think of only one where I thought, “I don’t think I can teach him anything.” It might sound presumptuous, but unless they’re a very accomplished singer, there’s almost always something I can help them with.

Most singers are only interested in singing in a way that shows off their voice. For them, it’s all about the beauty of the tone, and not necessarily in an egoic way. Maybe they aren’t putting much ego into it, but the focus is on the beauty. And the approach we have is so different. It’s pleasant to hear Dambara with his beautiful voice, but that’s not the whole enchilada. If you took away the depth and inspiration he conveys and just listened to the beautiful tone, you’d probably get tired of it pretty quickly. But the reason we don’t is that there’s so much more there.

For most singers, even those who try to go deeper in their singing, it’s very rare that they can tap into superconsciousness. It’s usually about conveying an emotion, and not trying to go deeper and higher. And the problem is that it doesn’t make you feel better afterward. As Asha put it, it brings your energy into motion and when the song ends, bloop, it drops you on the sidewalk. [Laughs]

It’s why our music is so amazing. It’s a new approach to music and singing. It’s about giving people an experience of what we can all aspire to spiritually, and no other music that I’ve ever been aware of can do that.

Here in Los Angeles we’re trying to take the music out to the public, and I’m realizing that the music has its own agenda. Swami has told us many times in recent months that it’s time for the music to get out. I realize that it doesn’t matter who does it, but the music is trying to go out, and if it’s not through us, someone else will do it. It’s all about consciousness – it’s not about the people who are doing it, it’s about the conscious flow of energy from God through Yogananda and Swami that’s trying to go out into the world.

 

2 thoughts on “Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 63, Ramesha Nani”

  1. What a remarkable interview! I hadn’t thought of singing Swami’s Music quite the way you describe. Wow! 🕉️

    Reply

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