Days of Radiance: An Interview with Laraaji

Writer Teo Blake Beauchamp sits down with the musician in Idyllwild to discuss his work, his practice and his history.

Every word we speak is an affirmation.

Laraaji has been joyfully producing visionary work for nearly half a century. He released his first album, Celestial Vibration, in 1978 and two years later collaborated with Brian Eno on one of the seminal works of ambient music, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance. Decade after decade, Laraaji has broken new ground and challenged the perceived limits of experimental, ambient, and new-age music. But in recent years, while still creating new work, Laraaji has been swept up, like few other artists, in the sea of reissue culture. Celestial Music 1978 – 2011 (2013) on All Saints and last year’s Segue to Infinity on Numero Group are two of the most expansive rereleases. Still, there are others, such as Lotus Collage / Unicorns In Paradise / Connecting With the Inner Healer Through Music on Leaving Records from 2015 and Vision Songs Vol. 1, also on Numero Group from 2018. Laraaji stands as a singular force in the experimental music canon. An artist who embodies creative freedom, he reminds the listener at every turn that there are no rules. In short, he is a treasure. 

I met up with Laraaji in the mountains of Idyllwild, California at FWB Fest, a musical gathering and conference concerned with emerging tech and culture. It’s a festival that brings people together from across the globe to celebrate and interrogate the future — in an environment that often feels like summer camp. 

Finding Laraaji ensconced in this cutting-edge cultural gathering shouldn’t be surprising. He has continuously operated on the margins. But it’s a testament to his forward vision that this youth-driven movement would embrace this elder statesperson so completely. Even the way Laraaji performs is devoted to the present, or more accurately, the eternal now. Instead of drawing on his back catalog, he sets up parameters and improvises. No two performances are the same; in a world of algorithmic streaming, the idea of a singular performance is deeply refreshing. 

A mythology has developed around Laraaji. Moments in his life that entered into experimental music folklore, such as the epiphany that led him to trade his guitar for a zither at a New York pawn shop in the late 70s, which he then electrified and augmented to create otherworldly soundscapes, catching the attention of Brian Eno while busking in Washington Square Park and connecting with the famed producer to create what would become Ambient 3: Day of Radiance. I was eager to meet with the pioneer, dig beneath the myth, and, as much as possible, get to know the person. In our time together, Laraaji revealed himself to be as kind, beautiful, and insightful as one would hope. I learned a lot, and in classic Laraaji style, we laughed a lot. — Teo Blake Beauchamp 

Teo Blake Beauchamp: Does it feel like a critical mass of people are finally catching up to the music you have been making for decades? 

Laraaji: I hear that from people who interview me. I’m just aware of people liking my music. I don’t know if there’s a critical mass. There are a lot of young people and they seem to be open to the idea of something new and spontaneous, improvisational, and experimental. It’s very experimental, the music that I was doing and I still am doing. And if there’s a critical mass, I don’t know that. I have to listen to you all tell me.

What years were you at Howard University? 

1962 to 1966. I could have gone another year if I wanted a degree in teaching music, but I felt I had reached my goal. And the goal was to move beyond feeling like a trespasser in music. So, I got the skills that helped me feel comfortable composing and writing music. 

What was it like for you being at Howard during that transformative period of the Civil Rights Movement? 

It was a stunning experience, being immersed in a sea of people of color. Different skin complexions, different eye complexions, different hair textures, different bone structures, different ways of speaking, people from around the world. That was impressive. Secondly, of course, it was a socially active school, partying. Stokely Carmichael was there. I was aware of the emerging social protest energy on campus. I respected Howard as a good college. I got a strong education there at the College of Fine Arts Music School, where I went. And I was impressed with the warmth and the ability of the teachers to inspire me. I remember the homecoming; I don’t know if you know about homecoming. 

“I call it a celestially guided music. Generally, the music that I do perform or record involves tuning in before the session, coming into a familiar cosmic field.”

Laraaji

That was big time on campus. I always volunteered my comedic services for the talent shows. That second year, I joined a fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi. That helped to punctuate the experience there. That’s a good question, my years at Howard. I just remember one fine day, somebody running across campus saying the President’s been shot. I said, who would shoot the president? Thinking it’s the president of Howard. It was President Kennedy. And, you know, all the time that I was in Washington, DC, four years, I never went to the White House. I kind of took it for granted. I did enjoy Howard. It was a very strong experience, a very organizational experience for me. Some of my friends there were the Mizell Brothers, Freddie Perren, Donny Hathaway. A few other people who went on to make a name for themselves in the music field. Howard gave me the confidence that I was looking for with music. 

You released your first solo record in 1978, Celestial Vibration. It is a beautiful album and remarkably refined, especially for a debut. How did you develop your musical language? 

I call it a celestially guided music. Generally, the music that I do perform or record involves tuning in before the session, coming into a familiar cosmic field. And that fills me up with so much inspiration. I massage the field, interact with the field, touch the field, let the field move through me into spontaneous sound. So, the idea of sounding fully formed is that it is relevant to the continual present moment.

That's beautiful.

I must add that my years at Howard University studying theory and composition prepared me to feel a sense of spontaneous composition. I learned how to move in improvisation and still involve a sense of form, starting out with a theme and improvising. So, there are some composer’s sensibilities going on there.

This music was unusual for 1978. Is there a musical lineage to which you see your music belonging?

No. There are so many influences, from gospel to gamelan music to R&B to jazz. In 1974, I had a very deep experience of cosmic Nadam or cosmic music during a meditation experience, which really made the big shift for me. I began thinking of music as representing the wholeness of the universe at every moment. I’m less concerned with an official ending or beginning or linear music; instead, I think of it as a vertical music that’s whole and full at every moment.

“One of the profound things about the meditation years was that it took me out of what I call residual slave behavior. Meditation and mind science took me into a tighter sense of oneness with the God current.”

Laraaji

How did you get the creative bravery to present something so new and unfamiliar? 

Well, when I’m playing music, if I like it, I’m filled up with this sense of, gee, I’d like to share this. Something in me intuitively feels like people will like it, mainly because I’ve danced a lot and gotten a sense of what people like to hear. So I have a sense that this or that should be interesting, not only to the ears but the spirit within a listener will feel a sense of permission, freedom to breathe, freedom of body motion, freedom to let the mind relax from over congestion. I feel like it’s medicinal music, and I sense that people will like it because of its medicinal qualities. 

In 1984, you released Om Namah Shivaya and Vision Songs Vol.1. This marked a departure from your instrumental work. What made you start singing? 

I’ve always loved singing, but the idea of putting it into recordings happened during the early 1980s when I would visit places like Florida, where meditation groups would offer me an engagement to play music for people who are into Siddha Yoga or meditation or various forms of yoga. I was studying meditation and yoga, so I felt like I had some words of inspiration to share with this community. My voice would spontaneously bring forth these messages that hadn’t been written down on paper before. They’re spontaneous teachings, insight, and encouragement to be still, know, and feel. They are also inspired by teachers who have influenced me to dive deep into the present moment and feel the self. When I started doing these practices on myself, I had such a profound evolution in my spirit that I just wanted to share it. It’s like when you have something that’s good, you want to share it. One of the profound things about the meditation years was that it took me out of what I call residual slave behavior. Meditation and mind science took me into a tighter sense of oneness with the God current. So that just lifted me out of the sense of being just a human body and took me back to this impersonal identity. That opened me up big time. There was such a joy at that time that is expressed in my music, a freedom, a looseness, and creative courage, as you call it.

Can you expand on what you mean by residual slave behavior? 

Anyone who is identifying with their skin color or their race is not all the way home [laughter]. You’re operating within boundaries; if I’m black, then you’re white. There’s a sense of ethnic boundaries that creep up. Like in slave mentality, you did not make direct eye contact with your master or confront your master in the sense of I’m equal, or we’re equal in the eyes of God. Also, what’s available to me if I have a black history? Certain things in the world, positions, and ideals were not accessible until I came out from under residual slave behavior and realized that I am not the body and the mind but the God Spirit. More became accessible to me, more ideas became, yeah, I can do that too, I can go there with these ideas, I can speak at this level of authority.

So, unlearning some of the societal lessons?

Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. Sometimes, it’s unconscious, too. One thing that I tread carefully with is soul food [Laughter]. Learning about consciousness and evolution develops a sense of an expanded oneness and unity with life. And when I got to that level, I dropped out of meat-eating because of my sense of what I was doing to animals. So, things like that were becoming part of my awakening.

You mentioned doing workshops in Florida. What sort of workshops were they? 

Certain communities in Florida were heavily involved in the meditation and yoga practice of Siddha Yoga and Om Namah Shivaya. Also, there was the Sondra Ray people who were into loving relationships. These were large communities that would meet in Florida. They would hold, conferences, seminars, and retreats and have me open up with music and also play somewhere in the middle to provide a musical support for that direction of consciousness.

I imagine you were surprised at how your music career developed from your time at Howard to the spiritual workshops in Florida. 

Very. But Howard did prepare me with the fundamentals and made me feel no longer like a trespasser in music. Still, there was nothing at Howard that pointed in this direction. I thought I would want to write more jazz, rock, or pop.

And you did for a while. You played Fender Rhodes in The Winds of Change in the 70s, right?

Yeah, right. It was a jazz-rock group I was in. 

You also started using a drum machine on those ‘84 records. What inspired that? 

Yes. It was part of this Casio MT70. It had a groovy pop rhythm. Of all the rhythms on there, that was one that encouraged songwriting. I used it mostly because I would write at late hours in the night. I was by myself, alone with a simple tape recorder in many cases. It’s very portable; it has a nice organ sound to it too. It was on Om Namah Shivaya, and some of the Vision Songs tracks came out of that period. 

It's a really fun sound with a lot of character. 

It’s very interesting because as I evolved, I started exploring more expensive and complicated synthesizers. And along the way, I’ll get somebody who says, “Do you ever use that Casio?” So I go back. I have a few, just in case they stop making them. So I intend to travel with one of those sooner or later. 

How do you approach collaboration vs. solo work?

Collaboration is a good way of getting better at what I do solo. I can focus on rhythm or the ambient backdrop. This also gives me a chance to listen to other songwriters or arrangers and what they would have me do that I would probably never think of doing, like putting duct tape on my zither [laughter] or playing a rhythm mechanically. It pushes me into areas that I might have forgotten are still left to experiment in. I liked the idea of being in the background. As a matter of fact, I believe that’s my primary forte, background. The ambient background, especially. I feel that that’s more in sync with how the God current is. Although the God current is creating everything upfront, there’s still a background called Nadam. The ambient background is a field experience of sound; some call it Nadam or the cosmic sound current. And I identify with that because I listened to it a lot. So playing in the background, soft, almost imperceptible, is one of the things I can do when I’m playing with other people, like providing a soft cushion in the background.

Can you talk about your collaboration with Beverly Glenn-Copeland? 

We met Beverly Glenn-Copeland and their wife in Canada a few months ago. They came to my concert. And we agreed that we should get together and record and there are wheels in progress to get us together. We’ve been feeling out for a common date when we can come together go into the studio, and let something happen. 

Getting into some of your earlier days, you were born in Philadelphia.

The body was born in Philadelphia.

Excuse me. The body was born in Philadelphia in 1943 [Laughter]. And how old were you when you moved to New Jersey? 

The family moved to New Jersey when I was two. Philadelphia, then to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where we resided until I went to college.

So you never lived in Virginia?

I lived in Virginia from December to August 1950 something. That was my family’s response to a house fire. They moved the children to stay with the grand folks until my family regrouped up north. Living in Virginia I got to experience country life. The immersion into the country life after city life was mildly traumatic [laughter]. You’ve got body odors, you got drinking water from the well. I didn’t really develop walking barefoot. But the idea of drinking buttermilk and seeing your Sunday dinner get their heads chopped off on Saturday and things like that [laughter].

What was growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s like for you?

It was very interracial. I went to a Baptist church. But a public school that was very strong with Spanish, Jewish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian. So, the idea of a multi-ethnic environment prepared me to relate very comfortably in a world where I travel all around. Also, church community was very strong in my life. We grew up in a government housing project that was near the industrial oil refinery plant. Now and then, I was accustomed to the smell of sulfur permeating our living situation. I don’t usually answer that question, “What was it like?” It was fun. There was always an opportunity of partying. Parties were big. We grew up under the shadow of Newark and New York, so in teenage years, when you were seeking girls and the idea of moving away from Perth Amboy and traveling by car to parties elsewhere. I belong to the school choir, band, marching band, orchestra with violin, marching band with trombone. And the choirs were from grade school on up to high school. Very much into musical self-expression, dancing, and laughter. The family I grew up in was very laughter-friendly.

Your father was a tailor?

Yes, right. 

And your mom? 

She was a registered nurse. My father had left home to go start another family in California when I was 10. It was not clear to me what was going on, but I didn’t hold anything negative about him. I just felt that it was something he had to do, and he did it. And so my mother supported us as a registered nurse. 

You mentioned you played violin, but I believe you also had a piano in the house. 

Yes, my mother was very supportive of my musical interests. She got a piano into the house when she saw how interested I was. She sprung for piano and violin lessons.

That's extraordinary. You attribute a quote to her, “Take care of yourself, and you're taking care of me.”

Yes. That’s how she ended her phone conversations.

That's a powerful and beautiful parental ethos. How did your family support or challenge your creative freedom?

Never challenged it. Supported it. Never questioned it. Even when I made a radical change in high school from thinking that I wanted to go to MIT and study to become a chemical engineer or architect. In mid-High School, I realized that music was my real calling and I shifted my whole direction to go to Howard, and no one challenged it except my physics teacher [laughter].

How did being in Robert Downey Sr.’s 1969 cult classic Putney Swope affect your career? 

Laraaji: I was in it for the money and the excitement. This was one step toward getting into the nitty gritty of the actor lifestyle. I was given only two pages and only two nights to record that area of Putney Swope without knowing what the whole script was about. I had no idea what it was. I thought maybe it was a Greek tragedy. But when I did see the final, completed version, I was stunned to think I could participate in something without knowing what the whole product was. There was marijuana use, sex, violent language. And I began thinking, gee, do I really want to monitor my participation in the mass media? And I said I don’t know. Do I want money? Does it really matter?

Until one particular Sunday, I’m walking down the street in Harlem, just to have a Harlem Sunday. And there was this church with the doors open; it said, “Free poetry reading, come inside.” I went inside and just as I sat down, this young, very vibrant, young black brother was reading this poem that went, “Dadadadada and the niggas who did Putney Swope should be offed. Dadadadada and the niggas who did Putney Swope should be offed.” “Offed” means neutralized. And I’m thinking, whoa [laughter]. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I said, okay, let me put my foot down and get clear what I’m going to do about this. Am I going to take responsibility for this? Does it matter to me? It did matter to me. That’s when I started researching meditation.

It took a while to find my own inroads into meditation because I thought that it was a monopoly that Indian people had. They were the masters. So, I found a Western teacher named Richard Hittleman. He simplified the term transcendental meditation. He explained it in the generic sense of going beyond all my titles, names, and classifications. And that’s what really took me out of being anything other than pure ‘I am.’ That’s what gave me a clearer sense of the place that I wanted to speak from. It also shifted my approach to stand-up comedy. As a matter of fact, I softened on that because I could see by the laws of consciousness that comedy, for me at that time, was polarizing. When I got into the laws of consciousness, I realized I could not afford the luxury of that anymore. Every word we speak is an affirmation and it’s either sinking us into a belief or it’s taking us away from a belief.

One of the profound things about the meditation years was that it took me out of what I call residual slave behavior. Meditation and mind science took me into a tighter sense of oneness with the God current.

“Take off every title that was ever used for me. I’m not a son, I’m not a father and sit with just a pure I am, just I am. Sit with that. I found out that all anxiety and problems belong to the titles, not to the underlying pure I am.”

Laraaji on his meditation practice

Are you aware of your importance to us, particularly as a pioneering black creative in experimental music? 

For a while, I felt like I was not relevant, because more Europeans and people of European descent embraced my music more passionately. Whereas, for people of color, it may be bored them, or it wasn’t enough gospel energy in it. It was maybe too serene or relating too much to the consciousness beyond the race factor, who we are at pure consciousness. That might be one way of putting it. And then slowly, in the last 10 years, I’m starting to see the faces of brown and black people saying, I really like your music. I’ve been listening for a while. And I’m thinking, Well, where were you? [laughter] So, I think they’re listening in far reaches of the world, and they’re appreciating it. 

Similarly, do you consider your value and importance as a black elder statesperson in the arts today? 

That’s a good way of putting it, value. It’s a lifestyle; I feel my art grows out of a lifestyle, or my art is an extension of my lifestyle. If my lifestyle is, take care of yourself, and you’re taking care of me, mind your physical diet, your mental diet, exercise, mental positivity, practicing positive thinking. All of these, I believe, contribute to my ability to be around in this body for 81 years. This path, musically, is not to get rich quick lifestyle. You’re buddying up with God, or Christ, or Allah, or whoever it is, and you don’t have to go out and become a millionaire and make big bucks.

Perhaps then somebody can be comfortable with pursuing ambient music and experimental music without feeling, and I’ve got to make it big. Maybe you have to support a family, a house, and a car. But in my case, I didn’t burden myself with big expenses. That allowed me the freedom to not have to push for big money. Ambient music was not the way to get rich quick, at least for me. But then again, I can say, what does rich mean? I got health, freedom of mind, the freedom to walk on the street without bodyguards, the freedom to be here. I have a free-flowing lifestyle. Sometimes, they call it nomadic. The wealth of freedom, the wealth of exploring your individuality through your art.

I would probably add the wealth of being exactly who you are.

Oh, yes. That’s probably allowed because I don’t have anyone who needs me to be otherwise. Whether I’m working for somebody and they need me to be on board with their direction, in the case of working with a dance company, but there’s still a lot of freedom there. They usually come to me and say, “What would you do here?” Or a recording company says, “We’d like to record you, put you in the studio. What do you want to do?” 

Your music is inextricably linked with meditation and your spiritual journey. What's your meditation practice like today, and how has it evolved over the decades?

That’s a good question. How does it evolve? When I started out, I heard that the spiritual life starts boring and humdrum, then it gets sweeter and sweeter and deeper and deeper, ad infinitum. And the sensual life, the physical world, starts with a big bang, and then it gets boring [laughter]. And I find the spiritual life gets deeper and sweeter in ways that I couldn’t have imagined using the linear imagination. I also discovered through meditation that if we go deep enough, I’m not just contacting my meditation, but I’m contacting the meditation of the infinite universe, which is very potent. And the experiment is to bring that information into musical expression in this locale, in this sense of linear time.

And what is your meditation practice like? 

I would start out by doing breathwork and then taking off all titles. I’m not a body, I’m not a social security number, I’m not a telephone address, I’m not a musician. Take off every title that was ever used for me. I’m not a son, I’m not a father and sit with just a pure I am, just I am. Sit with that. I found out that all anxiety and problems belong to the titles, not to the underlying pure I am. That was a great discovery. And I could sit for hours in that state. Yeah, no problem at all.

You were a comedian, and now you do laughter workshops. How do you negotiate the healing power of laughter and the taboo-pushing ways comedians often get us to laugh? 

I appreciate so many comedians today. There might not be spiritual truth underlying what they’re doing. But if they got me to the laughter zone, I’ll enjoy it. I do feel that the laughter work I do now gets people to use the positive psychological energy of their laughing voice. Our body recognizes our own laughter, so we can send it into our head and pituitary gland, the pineal gland, the thyroid, the thymus, our heart, our abdominal organs, and our lungs. The workshop, or the playshop as I like to call it, gets people to radiate their internal space with their own laughter. And it can change the texture and character of their laughter from a maniacal lunatic laughter to a mindful laughter. Laughter with mindfulness is what these playshops are about. People can do it in the morning before getting out of bed. Or I like to say, if you’re a musician in the afternoon, before getting out of bed. I have come to learn that laughter is infectious and contagious. So why not develop it as a performance art and instill it into my performance?

Did your time in comedy and acting inform your musical point of view?

Yes, it gives me the confidence I have on stage. And the knowledge that I’m going to bring people to a certain state. In music performance, I feel that I’m bringing forth a music that will allow people to come to a certain place, whether Shavasana —corpse pose — inner stillness, or reduction of the flow of chitter chatter. And so, in comedy, I felt like I was bringing something of value, emotional value. Now, I feel I’m bringing something deeper and sustainable.

You are an inspiration to many. What's inspiring you? 

Nothing. I really mean that. Diving into meditation and experiencing the zone where there’s no thinking going on anywhere in the universe. That nothingness space inspires me because in that space there is a total drop out of anxiety. Regardless of how emphatically the mass media is trying to promote a planet that’s in anxiety, I can dive into the nothing. Some call it the emptiness. So, emptiness is my biggest relevant inspiration right now.

How do you stay looking so young? 

[Laughter] I try to eat all my greens. I do a lot of ginger drinks, and green smoothies. I don’t drink as much water as some people say I should drink. I get enough rest. There’s some Cherokee in my bloodline, I don’t know if that contributes to anything. What else can I say? I don’t do any special beauty salon-type things. But I do eat my greens. I understand vitamin A helps. And laugh a lot. And dance a lot, too. I do a lot of dancing. Find ways of play to stay young, and positive. Try to avoid toxic emotions. When I say try to avoid them, it means reworking your lifestyle so that you don’t have to process them. Toxic emotions can, I think, wear you down age-wise… Maybe I should start heading over to the stage. 

All right. Let’s get you over there. I cannot thank you enough for this time.

Thank you for the questions.