In an era where the cacophony of modern life drowns out our inner rhythms, a quiet revolution is unfolding - one note, one ceremony, one song and collective breath at a time. At the heart of this movement is “medicine music”.

My name is Tony Moss and I am a visionary artist whose life bridges the worlds of activism, spirituality, and sound. As the founder of the I AM LIFE Music label and a creative force behind the musical collective Bird Tribe, I’ve now dedicated over three decades to exploration of music not just as entertainment, but as a profound medicine for the soul. Through my work, I invite a reclaiming of our connection to self, community, and the cosmos, with the intention that music can heal.

My journey into the world of music as medicine began in the fertile ground of a musical family. Born to Rejoyce Moss, a member of the 1960s gospel group The Stovall Sisters, I grew up immersed in the soul-stirring harmonies of R&B and gospel. California's psychedelic undercurrents further shaped my later years, exposing me to the expansive possibilities of altered states and collective ecstasy.

But it was in the 1990s, amid the raw intensity of activism - protesting war and inequality - that I encountered ayahuasca, the Amazonian plant medicine known as the "vine of the soul." Nearly 30 years ago, my first ceremony shattered the barriers of my worldview. It was a profound recalibration. As I’ve shared often in interviews, the brew induced visions that healed ancestral wounds and ignited a passionate decades long commitment to entheogenic exploration fueled by the power of music.

I didn’t know it at the time. But this pivotal shift marked the end of “the protester” and the birth of the medicine music artist. No longer content with shouting against the darkness, I saw that the front lines of my activism could be expanding consciousness. In 2012, I founded I AM LIFE (iamlife.music), a youth empowerment initiative, now non-profit music label, dedicated to fostering unity through the synthesis of modern science, indigenous wisdom, and artistic expression.

Our mission is deceptively simple: to help cure humanity's epidemic of disconnection. As I often share publicly, "At the core of most problems facing humanity is a lack of connection - with ourselves, the cosmos, and certainly nature." Through events, retreats, and music, I AM LIFE invited people to integrate ancient practices into contemporary lives.

Central to this ethos is Bird Tribe, the ephemeral musical collective and recording project I co-founded in 2012 alongside collaborators Sunny Solwind, David Daniel Brown (Deva Runa), and Shireen Jarrahian. What began as informal ceremonial gatherings in Los Angeles's bohemian enclaves - cacao ceremonies in Venice Beach art galleries, tea ceremonies under canyon stars - evolved into large, well attended, public ceremonial music events presented by I AM LIFE.

The heart of those events were and are medicine music. Bird Tribe isn't a traditional band; it's a flock of souls converging to share medicine music - original compositions inspired by shamanic traditions, designed to support psycho-spiritual healing. It didn’t start off that way - it was realized along the way. Our sound defies easy categorization: a fusion of world music, devotional soul, and traditional and contemporary medicine music, infusing contemporary pop production.

The pinnacle of our work to date is the 2018 album Birds in Paradise, an 11-track album I produced, released on I AM LIFE MUSIC. Structured like a ceremonial arc - opening with invocations of love and flowing into ecstatic dances and reflective codas - the album is a sonic journey through a very contemporary medicine ceremony, and Amazonian rainforest of the spirit. Tracks like "All My Love" pulse with invocations of gratitude, while "Amazonia ∞" evokes the infinite heart & beat of the jungle. Many of the album songs, along with the single "Grateful," an ayahuasca inspired, gospel-infused hymn, to our surprise, have become staples in ayahuasca circles worldwide. We never saw that coming.

At its core, Bird Tribe's music embodies the philosophy of music as medicine - a concept I have championed since those early entheogenic encounters. In indigenous traditions, particularly those of the Shipibo people who steward ayahuasca ceremonies, icaros (healing songs) are not mere accompaniments; they are the medicine itself. Sung by shamans (curanderos & curanderas), these melodies - more often than not shared with just the human voice - guide the psyche through visions, dissolve traumas, and realign energies. Drawing from two decades of study with various indigenous ayahuasca using peoples, we were inspired to adapt the role of icaro and join the community of artists who are bringing this ancient healing art - some say, technology - to a now global audience. Music, especially in the context of ceremony, can profoundly shift states of consciousness. And the right melody can mend what words alone cannot.

This isn't abstract theory; it's been our lived experience. Bird Tribe's live performances often double as ceremonial spaces, where attendees sip ceremonial cacao or journey with breathwork. It became fairly common for participants to report subtle healing experiences and profound releases: long-held grief dissolving into tears of joy, fractured relationships mending through shared song.

Scientifically, this aligns with emerging research on sound therapy. Studies from institutions like Harvard's mindfulness programs show that rhythmic entrainment - syncing brainwaves to musical pulses - reduces cortisol, enhances neuroplasticity, and promotes emotional regulation. We bridge this understanding with shamanism, creating "fusion ceremony" music & events that honor tradition while innovating for accessibility. Not appropriation - adaptation. I think Bird Tribe's popularity mirrors the broader psychedelic renaissance, where plant medicines like ayahuasca are gaining legitimacy for treating PTSD, depression, and addiction. Understandably, many want to preserve indigenous practices - we do to. AND we’re in a renaissance where modern medicine music extends tradition, reaches more people, and invites modern hearts to heal.

Inspired by that, with the current project, the 2025 album JOY, I wanted to push the medicine music boundaries even further. With collaborations from multiple artists, including Stanley Clarke, Ksenia Luki, and Fabiano Do Nascimento, JOY is a concept album that features eleven interconnected compositions designed for a modern, yet familiar sounding, contemplative, soulful, sound journey. My intent was to harmoniously bring all the music genres that most influenced me growing up into a “medicine space”. It was a bit of a gamble to follow the Birds In Paradise and Grateful releases with this album. Because I knew some of the albums tracks would depart from the sonic feel of those earlier, popular works. But so far I'm thrilled and encouraged with the feedback. Working with such amazing musicians to synthesize my love and passion for music with the science of sound healing into a psycho-therapeutic, soulful-ceremonial album was, well… one of the great Joys of my life.

Encouraged by that, as we launch into production for the next Bird Tribe album, we are constantly reminded and empowered by music's alchemical power to heal, transform, and meet people wherever they’re at. In the symphony of existence, where dissonance threatens to overwhelm, music whispers a healing truth: we are life. And sometimes it’s our most potent elixir - mending minds, bridging divides, and harmonizing the human mind and heart. I was asked in a recent podcast, "There's only one of you in all eternity. How can we empower that unique essence?" My answer: through sound that vibrates at the frequency of love. Yes, I know that can be easily dismiss as woo-woo. But it’s grounded in pragmatism and life experience. I am a very modern mystic.

In a world grappling with multiple challenges and social fracture, I’ve found that medicine music, particularly in concert with ceremony, offers practical solace. It doesn't promise utopia; it inspires us to build it. Life itself is ceremony. And a playlist can become prayer.

From the time I was three years old I was falling asleep in the center of the evening dances of Universal Peace, next to a beautiful shrine on the earth in the center of a marquee. It was at a beautiful spiritual camp which happens for a week a year, which has roots in western Sufism and is welcoming to a wealth of spiritual practices and lineages.

As a pre-teen girl I sat beside a fire next to Glastonbury Tor at Lammas whilst rolls of bread in the shape of Goddesses were being baked, listening to an Icelandic woman invoke the wild icy landscape in her voice and sing back ancient feminine power into my bones. I was given dark chocolate by my inspiration Carolyn Hillyer as an 11 year old when I was told off for lighting too many candles outside the Goddess Temple opening in Glastonbury.

As a young maiden I was celebrated with others in a menarche ceremony, a celebration of first blood. The day before I experienced my first sweat lodge ceremony, entering the dark hot earths’ womb and being reborn again, being celebrated by our yearly community with a flower crown, chocolate and belly dancing - and song, lots of songs.

I grew up around natural voice choirs that held space for unexplained tears, and a yearly fire night where us teens would paint our bodies and drum and dance the fire dance in community. These experiences shaped me and also set me apart from the 'normal’ world, where I went to school and struggled to fit in.

My teenagehood was chaotic with family struggles. I experimented with psychedelics from 14 years of age, rebelled by skipping school, painting my school clothes rainbow and writing poetry about the crazy and dark system - stuck in school I could see how people were slaves to an unequal and unjust system. I was a troubled teenager who had tasted a world where living barefoot and living simply were normal and I saw the system as it pushed people into a mold that did not feel natural.

Finding a way to first live as a connected and natural human, and then finding a way to bring all the gifts from my experiences into the world to create much needed medicine has been my life's mission. As a 16 year old I started to carve my way out of this murky path, I was repeatedly getting chest infections and singing was the simple way that connected me to my truth, and so I started learning about natural health, eating raw foods and practicing yoga. I also studied astrology and having an understanding of my birth chart has been a map to myself that has been my guide when I feel lost in the world.

It was lockdown and I was 26 and a single mother with a 4 year old son. I felt the longing to reconnect with Avalon and I started my priestess training with a wise elder offering a correspondence course. I journeyed through the Celtic wheel of the year as Mary Magdalene the keeper of the Rose guided me through each initiation portal to reclaim the divine feminine aspects within.

The journey for me was so powerful - to be held by the divine spirit of the Rose through the seasons of the earth awoke my power and devotion, and I was finally able to feel my tears as I was held in the softness of the Rose. I was finding this after being a mother and being on a healing journey after a 5 year co-dependent and abusive relationship where we were homeless and on the run, my partner at the time struggled with poor mental health and I was recovering from substance misuse as a young teen.

Being a mother rebirthed me and grounded me, and this journey led me back home to my spirit. One of the first songs that came through was Maria de la Rosa, a song of devotion and healing honouring Mary of the Rose. I also began working with plant spirits around this time which gave me a mixture of experiences, all leading me to come home to my body and embrace my mission on this earth.

The Rose has been my muse ever since, holding me and allowing me to soften into my experience, so that the medicine of presence and song may flow through. I found connection through the medicine family and was a part of the Rose collective singing world kirtan and devotional songs from around the world at regular events in Brighton which helped bring me out of my shell in a safe and loving community of like-minded souls.

I started to open my channel and write songs and my song Mama Cacao came through honouring this plant spirit that helped guide our journeys in opening our hearts, this amazing plant spirit that is now almost mainstream in its use, and I felt how important it is to honour the plant and where it comes from. It is amazing how this song has now travelled and is being remixed by producer Charlie Roscoe and will be out next year.

Since embracing this path of music and arts of the soul I have learnt to produce and songs flow through so often I can't keep up. I also occasionally get the time and impulse to paint the visions I see and in an ideal world I would do this more often. I have also found a deep connection to the ancestors through this path of healing, through my personal and our collective lineages. There is so much wisdom that needs protecting and huge wounds that need healing.

My upcoming EP Spin Woman (released 23rd Nov on Bandcamp) speaks to this - through the past few years I have been learning the ancestral arts of spinning and weaving local wool, an art that has been all but lost in the UK. It feels like a revolution just like Gandhi started in India. These songs are deeply inspired by the symbolic arts of spinning and weaving, like the myths spinning straw into gold to guide the way out of the darkness. The act of spinning is the same as Whirling dervishes or an Orisha trance, the spiralling of galaxies and the center of a rose. Creating energy, transmuting energy, rebirthing into something new. And weaving a new fabric of Earth, something beautiful, something true and harmonious.

The spiral of the Goddess, the fabric of Life, She is singing and we must let her sing through us. Sometimes I have thought - who am I to change the world? I am just a drop in the ocean, but my voice is powerful when I know it is Her song rising in me, and so is yours, so keep shining your light!

Hear my EP on Bandcamp - it’s out on streaming platforms over the next 6 months, with the release of Red Blood Earth Woman, 2 more videos released for Imbolc and Spring equinox, Red Berries and Spin Woman, with other songs released such as Weaver of Stars, She Walks the Edges, Wild Rose and Into the Belly. These songs explore the wisdom of women's moon cycles and the feminine wisdom that is mirrored in the earth's cycles and the rites of passage that have all but been lost to time.

This year 2025 has been a pivotal year for me, the year of the snake, an activation in many ways that feels like a rebirth. I have visited lots of sacred sites and connected deeply to the energy of the black rose, the cosmic womb, for in order to transform we need to enter the void of the unknown and allow death and the ultimate rest in order for new life to be born.

In my next projects I will be working on some more recently written songs with harmony parts that work well for singing groups, and also some full arrangements with a theme of our connection to nature and mother earth with Songs for a New Earth, remembering how we can live in right relationship with all beings, and how deeply we are all connected. I feel connected and alive when I have my hands in the earth, I garden at least one day a week, it keeps me grounded.

I am excited about what will unfold next. Producing my own music came out of necessity - as a creative with no hedge fund and as a mother, production does not come cheap. To live as a healthy human, care for a child and have time to create true beauty is extremely challenging in these times and I am grateful as an introvert to have raised a little bit of money to cover a small part of the costs. But I wouldn't change it and I love the creative and organic process of inspiration as a song develops.

I have had the desire from a young age to make everything I use myself so this goes towards satisfying this! I am also excited about holding more in person voice workshops and retreats. I have been doing this on and off since 18 years old and this year I have witnessed so much beauty and power through the journey of opening our voices in a ceremonially held space, especially as women in a way that is primally connected to the power in our bodies and souls. It is deeply healing for the feminine to be witnessed in this way. It has also inspired me to write songs that we can sing together. I am also excited to create some beautiful events collaborating my music with a Sufi whirling friend of mine and weaver artists.

So much of my music has come from a deep longing to create a world in harmony with nature, for the awakening and thriving of our spiritual nature. The longing has come from the beauty of my experiences in life and the contrast of the suffering from our disconnection from our true and natural states of being. I believe in the power of music and song to change us on a cellular level. Sound is the first language of the universe - in Sufism creation is said to be the beat of a drum, and in Genesis it is the word that creates all life.

Sound is inseparable from intention, used for healing, remembering the lost parts of our individual and collective psyches’ whole again, this will be the bridge to harmony on earth. When we reclaim the power of our voices, and unlock the medicine of our sound from deep within our soul, we can find freedom, peace and a new relationship with ourselves, each other and the earth and all life. It's time to create the New Earth together, singing.

I guess our story is all about hopes, aspirations and dreams. We wrote a song back in 2023, called “Still Dreaming”. The first verse says: “When we were young, we used to dream, imagine what we'd be”.

We were looking back at our lives and realised we could so easily lose the sense of adventure we had in our younger days. We needed to look forward and dream some new dreams.

Early dreams

We seem to have had dreams for our futures, for most of our lives. Tricia dreamed of one day performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Noel used to create a makeshift stage in his backyard and pretend he was performing to a big audience. Strumming a toy guitar and dreaming!

We met for the first time in 1975. Noel had just started to work full-time as a singer/songwriter and visited Tricia's home city of Plymouth for a gig. Tricia was the support artist.

From this first meeting a friendship grew and our first date was writing a song together.

In the first years of our friendship, we gigged continually, taking every opportunity to play to an audience. Sometimes just a handful of people in someone's home, with everyone seated on couches and bean bags. We believed that we had a simple message of faith and spirituality to communicate to people and music was a great vehicle for this.

We also realised that music is a wonderful way of connecting with the creator of the universe. When we were young, we heard examples of this in songs such as “Morning Has Broken” - Cat Stevens, “My Sweet Lord” - George Harrison and many others.

So we began to write songs that took us and our friends on a spiritual journey. Songs that could be described as modern hymns.

We were both involved with a church that was made up of students and schoolkids. When we met together, we wanted to sing. But there weren't many hymns that worked with guitar. So we decided to try writing our own. Little did we realise that our songs would one day reach many more than our own little group.

We also formed a band with our friends and gigged throughout Devon and Cornwall.

After we married in 1978, we travelled around the UK together, performing in all sorts of venues - schools, colleges, prisons, churches and more.

Our early dream, to be singer/songwriters was being realised.

Crazy Dreams

We moved to Cobham, Surrey (near London) in 1980 and this created more opportunities for us to dream. Our songwriting was improving and they were being published and recorded. We had two children and Tricia did most of the home-making while Noel went out and performed.

It was during 1987 that we wrote a song that really put us on the map as songwriters - “All Heaven Declares”. It has been recorded by many artists. On one YouTube channel alone, the song has had 3.6 million plays.

In the late 1980s, Noel saw a televised broadcast of Queen playing at London's Wembley Stadium. When they sang “We Are The Champions”, he had a wild thought. It would be great to play there one day!

A crazy dream had been born.

We shared this dream with our friends, other musicians and songwriters and found that it resonated with them. We all thought it was a crazy dream but as someone once said: “Why believe for the inevitable, when you can dream for the impossible”.

Over the next ten years, we held onto that dream and took every opportunity to prepare for it. At every concert we shared this dream with our audience.

Finally, with the support of our close friends, fellow artists and our record company, we booked Wembley Stadium. We and another friend underwrote the risk with our homes. If no-one bought tickets, we would lose everything!

But on Saturday 28th June 1997, almost 45,000 people attended our event - “Champion of the World”.

In doing this event, we inspired others to dream. We helped to launch other artists into being more successful than we could ever be. Our ceiling became their floor!

Still Dreaming

Thanks for reading this far. We don't want to give you the impression that we are famous, successful songwriters. Far from it. We sometimes wish we could be more prolific and often label ourselves as 'accidental songwriters'. It seems that our best songs have come when we don't try too hard to write.

We haven't sold millions of albums, we don't have a huge following on social media.

We are ordinary people, who have had the privilege of making a living out of songwriting and performing.

We are grateful for the opportunities that have come our way. For the countries we have been able to visit with our music. For the dreams of our youth that have come to pass.

Since 2010, our base has been in Spain. We stepped outside of our British culture and our church culture and found ourselves on a fresh spiritual journey. We have formed new friendships with people who may have no particular belief in a deity, but would call themselves spiritual.

We have also become friends with people who have an entirely different faith to our own.

This has impacted our life in a positive way.

After writing so many songs for people to sing in their churches, we wanted to go back to our roots and write songs and poems that tell stories about the joys and struggles of life, love, friendship and faith.

So we are still dreaming! That's why we wrote the song a few years back. To remind ourselves of who we are.

If our songs, words and music are the sails of our ship, we are going to raise them and let the wind blow us to new destinations. The unknown beckons. There are new dreams to dream!

I’m a polyglot polymath: a background as a classical guitarist, singer, actor and visual artist, together with passions for Vedic mantra, martial arts and languages. I’m at my best when fusing and combining all my various creative and spiritual training; everything I am passionate about, to make something new, that has not been done before. I delight in bringing the ancient into the future and in as many languages as possible! (To date I have composed and performed in fourteen languages, in twenty-three countries). I want to entice, inspire and transform, to encapsulate the voice of the Zeitgeist in surprising and entertaining ways to raise conscious awareness. I would describe myself as an eclectic ‘Artist of the Renaissance’ as opposed to someone who fits into one category or genre or discipline alone.

I have been described as a bewitching Ninja* or entertaining Chanteuse. And my music, as a signature ‘Conscious Chanson meets Art-Pop meets Organica’ sound. Let me know what words ring true with you!

(* For my single 'Where Venus Meets Mars', I performed the world's first ‘aerial-pole with swords & nunchaku’ routine, covered by the BBC. A meeting of the female and male energies on the battlefield.)

I am delighted to have been championed by Kate Bush over the years, and to have recently performed alongside Errollyn Wallen CBE (Master of the King’s Music) and Mike Lindup (Level 42) in London.

So, how did it all start? What came first?

Well, I was handed my first guitar by my Romanian father at a very young age. Having been learning violin and all manner of recorders, purely because they were the instruments my wonderful state school had to offer, the guitar immediately took me to a different place. To this day I have written so many songs about the connection I have with my dearly-departed father through the guitar. Devastatingly, he has never heard any of my music, because I only started writing and performing my own music after he passed away. Ironically and with beautiful tragedy, it was his passing that gave birth to my music career. Song-writing and meditation gave me not only ways to heal, but rapidly also showed me I could engage and help others though the sharing of such life-experiences. It has always been clear to me that the stories that form our greatest growth are the stories we have to share.

I was extremely lucky to receive a County Scholarship for private tuition in classical guitar (and violin) from a very young age. And it was normal for me in my teens to be simultaneously living various personas, from performer to athlete to linguist, and earning my pocket money teaching classical guitar to my own pupils on the side. I was in love with acting, playing music, singing, dancing, most sports, learning languages, making friends, travelling and cramming as much as I could into each day. And now more than ever, I continue to be power-charged by my creativity and ability to live parallel lives, connecting and channelling a source and energy beyond the mind. I feel blessed that whenever anything challenging happens, I can harness the experience, express it through my creativity and make a difference to others going through a similar challenging experience.

After years working worldwide under various stage names as an actor, singer and musician, I eventually came back to the UK, in time for Covid.

Covid brought about a spiritual re-branding. I was having more contact with my Jyotish (Vedic Astrology) mentor, who made the revelation that in line with my (Jyotish) chart, I needed a new artist name to ensure I fulfil my potential. After great study and analysis, he conceived my new professional (and spiritual name) from Sanskrit : Ch’Lu.

I continue to grow into this name: it feels really right. Pronounced ‘Choo LOO’, it's all about the vibration; it is activating my spiritual and creative paths, and very much altering the shape and direction my performance work takes me. I no longer feel the need to try and fit in, and can embrace my unique flavour as an artist, following the vibration of ‘Ch’Lu’. This has led me to shape my current Campfire-meets-Kirtan-meets-Club vibe. (And why my social media handle is @ChLuVibration!)

Soon after we first met, my mentor described my life’s purpose as quite simply: “You are here to trick people into consciousness”. And I completely resonate with this. (And his words are even more pertinent since he sadly passed away this year).

So, yes, I like to blend the unexpected to create a new route into conscious awareness.

During Covid, I found myself performing online concerts to global audiences of hundreds on the world's largest meditation app: Insight Timer, taking them on a weekly transformational journey which soon became known as the “Ch’Lu Campfire'.

It was for me, another example of the energy of my name leading my creative direction, which is forever evolving. I would sit with my classical guitar in my home studio space, with my boxing gloves and artwork in the background, sharing comic anecdotes and encouraging audience participation in songs about anything from internet dating to technology stress. Audiences might have a fixed idea about what they need to relax or feel more connected, but when they leave the Ch’Lu Campfire, the feedback I get is how much fun they had and how unexpected and different it was.

For me, languages are music, and I pick them up quickly. I am fluent in six, and have composed in a further eight languages. My most recent album ‘The Goddess Within’ (supported by Arts Council England, and the largest music charity in the UK, Help Musicians) explored the experiential vibrations of The Mandukya Upanishads, a set of sacred Sanskrit verses, stemming from my twelve year study of mantra and Vedic meditation. The Mandukya Upanishads create the experience of the journey through Om.

The idea for the album also came about as I was staring at a recent painting of mine called ‘The Goddess Within’, about everything of importance and influence in my life, which then also went on to become the album cover and indeed album name! The fruition of the album also coincided with me learning to self-record and produce my music at home, and embracing new recording techniques, including using in-ear binaural microphones.

I released The Goddess Within album on Global Wellness Day, under my own label, Noroc (the Romanian word for ‘Cheers’). I am proud to say that Sanskrit is being brought to worldwide airwaves via this album, and I’m particularly happy that BBC6 Music’s Tom Robinson picked four tracks for the Fresh on the Net ‘Eclectic Picks’ and invited me to be a guest curator. Tracks have also been played in Ibiza, as a winding down tonic, and selected for all-female albums for ‘Re-enchanting the Label’ (Brighton) and ‘The Sound of Us Vol.2’ (Berlin & Bristol).

I now regularly produce music that is interlacing binaural field recordings that I make on my travels and everyday moments in life; it is a big part of my texture. As is writing almost daily words (in whatever language feels right) and/or guitar parts, based on experiences that range from the hysterical to tragic – and are always relatable.

I always have a feeling or theme I want to create sonically, and often I simply set up my mics in my home recording space, and start improvising on the guitar. Then I add vocals, improvise harmonies, and I then interlace it with hypnotic beats and electronic soundscapes if I want to create further developed sound. The composition always finds itself without a rigid plan. Indeed one of my next albums is further carving out this approach and honing a new sound. (I am currently exploring funding and donation support to make this possible).

One day I asked in a Ch’Lu Campfire if anyone would buy a t-shirt with a Ch’Lu Campfire logo and the response was unanimous….YES! But the surprising twist was that the gig turned into a brain-storming session where people were saying all the Campfire-themed merch they would want: “we’re gonna need Ch’Lu blankets and trousers and jumpers and woolly socks and hats to keep warm, and mugs for hot drinks, and a torch…” and since that night the Ch’Lu store was born. I now have in the region of 150 self-designed products featuring my artwork. And bit by bit, my world-wide sales are growing.

I love how forward thinking and positive my crowd are – recently a fan asked me when the Ch’Lu app was coming out!! And someone else wants a Ch’Lu songbook so they can learn to play my songs…it’s all in the pipeline for sure!

So it’s like a Ch’Lu Campfire family is out there. And together we are finding where the Ch’Lu flame is heading next!

Every online show I do touches me greatly, and my followers tell me how I’ve helped get them out of bed, or through an emergency situation or given them hope…so I can’t wait to grow my reach and get a physical tour going, especially if it is fan-led.

And my ability to create against all odds has grown. I self-produced a single whilst I had also lost my voice (on and off over a period of two years), after devastatingly losing two cousins in the Gaza/Israel conflict. The track ‘Beyond Words’ has helped in a crowd-fund, raising over £250,000 for the now orphaned children of my cousins.

I am also passionate about shifting global trends that can create lasting change in attitudes and treatment of women worldwide.

My new podcast: ‘Ch’Lu Moves’ is a travel documentary meets story-time meets walking meditation. Recorded myself binaurally on my travels around the world, from jungle to temple to street, where unusual adventures unfold around me in real time.

And a TV comedy series about letting go, co-created with my sister and her comedy collective Melon Comedy, in which I will be acting and providing the music.

And a good few albums.

And a tour. Hopefully to wherever you are based, reading this now.

I’ve no idea where it’s all moving. But it’s moving, that’s for sure.

There are certain songs that don’t just rise from the throat—they echo from the soul. I don’t remember the first time I sang. I only know that I always did. It was instinctive, like breathing or dreaming. I was barely more than a toddler when my mother—wild, radiant, and Irish to her bones—taught me the ancient songs of her homeland. Lullabies and laments, folk tales and fairies, saints and sinners—they became my lullaby, my language, my lineage. The songs carried names I couldn’t yet pronounce, stories I didn’t fully understand, but they rooted themselves in me like ivy, curling through every part of my being.

Even now, I can still hear her voice, strong and silvery, rising like mist over a green hill. Music was never simply entertainment in our household—it was the connective tissue of memory, ancestry, and imagination. I sang for the same reason I later learned people pray: to feel less alone. To send something out into the ether and hope the universe sings back.

As I grew, my voice wandered, exploring other landscapes—jazz clubs, smoky blues, glittering musical theatre, even the grand, aching heights of operatic arias. Each genre offered a new lens through which to glimpse the world, and in turn, myself. But no matter how far I strayed, I always returned to the music that felt like home—Celtic melodies, with their lonesome drones and lilting cadences. They carried something primal, something older than time. Music, for me, has always been a kind of remembering.

It wasn’t until I met Neil, my creative soulmate, that the puzzle began to complete itself. We didn’t just write music—we conjured it. Crafted it from myths and moorlands, legends and longing. The first time we created together, it was like opening a secret door inside myself. Since then, we’ve written hundreds of songs, and each one has held a piece of something larger than us—a kind of unseen thread we follow with faith and instinct. Our debut album, Siren’s Song, which later won ‘Best Celtic Album’ at the Lakemusic Awards, felt like a rite of passage. Not because of accolades, but because it captured my spirit—especially the track My Spirit, which became a mirror to my own awakening.

That word—awakening—has taken on many forms over the years. For some, it’s a moment of lightning. For me, it was a slow unfurling, a peeling back of layers built by heartbreak, grief, and the long, quiet ache of not quite knowing where I belonged. I had lived life at full volume for many years—on stages, in studios, in cities that never stopped buzzing. And then, one day, I stepped away. Or perhaps, I stepped toward something else entirely.

I moved onto the water.

Trading concrete for the gentle lapping of waves, I found something I hadn’t even known I was missing: stillness. It is impossible to live surrounded by water and not be changed by it. It seeps into your bones, your breath, your way of being. The rhythms of the river slowed me, soothed me, and eventually reshaped me. The music I make now is quieter, deeper—though no less powerful. It listens as much as it sings. I often say I am a “water gypsy,” and I suppose that’s true. My life now is one of movement and peace, solitude and story.

From this floating sanctuary, I’ve delved into the sacredness of sound in ways I never could before. Music has become my ritual, my offering, my bridge between the seen and unseen. There are moments, mid-composition, when time dissolves. I’ll look up and hours will have passed, and yet I’ve returned with something that feels... ancient. Not written, but retrieved.

Myth, legend, and folklore are constant companions. I’ve always been drawn to the women of story: the selkies, the sibyls, the fae. The high-born lady who flees into the forest to join the Romany camp. The girl who dances barefoot under moonlight. The healer who sings spells into the wind. These are not just archetypes—they are fragments of myself I’ve stitched together through song. I see the world as layered. There is always more beneath the surface if we are willing to listen.

And I listen a lot. I listen to the voices of ancestors in lullabies. I listen to the wind as it whistles through reeds and rigging. I listen to the silence between chords. I’ve learned that silence isn’t absence—it’s invitation. In silence, songs are born.

Of course, like many, I have known loss. I have wept with a guitar in my lap. I have sung through grief when no words would come. But music, in its infinite generosity, has always offered me a path through. And somehow, in my own process of healing, I have, I hope, helped others do the same. I don’t think this is accidental. I think that’s what music is for.

Working with Neil has only deepened this truth. There’s a synergy in our partnership that’s hard to describe—one that’s equal parts alchemy and trust. Together we’ve composed soundtracks for films, written for others, created audio landscapes from pop to cinematic to spiritual. But our real work, I believe, is invisible. It lies in the frequency beneath the note, the energy behind the breath. We don’t just want people to hear—we want them to feel.

Lately, I’ve been channelling this intention into guided meditations and artist support work. For years, I suffered from debilitating stage fright. Now, I help others turn nerves into power, fear into presence. Because it’s all the same root—energy needing somewhere to go. Whether it’s through singing, speaking, or simply being, my mission remains the same: to help people remember who they are, through music.

I’m often asked what my genre is, and I struggle to answer. My music lives at the crossroads—between folk and fantasy, ballad and boldness, reverie and rebellion. It is Celtic, yes. Ethereal, often. But mostly, it’s a conversation between my soul and the world around me.

These days, I feel less like I’m making music and more like I’m receiving it. As if I am just the vessel through which melody flows. And perhaps that is the most spiritual part of all—that surrender. That knowing that what we create is never just ours, but something offered. A torch in the dark. A song on the wind. A memory waiting to be born.

Caitlin x

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt things deeply. Music was my first language of healing, before I had words for pain or wonder - I had melodies. As a young girl, I’d write poems in the quiet and play songs on the piano - soothing my soul with melody, even when I didn’t believe I could ever do more with it.  I’d sing only when I was alone at my piano, or my voice would find safety in the company of trees, wind, and sky.

I loved the stage and performed often, but my tendency to compare myself and a fear of being fully seen kept me small.  My knees would shake at piano recitals. I was the shy one - the good girl.  I’d smile and play with precision, always the excellent student.  But beneath it all, a tender, powerful voice stayed quiet. My standards were sky-high, and they convinced me I was never quite good enough.

It took decades to undo that silence.

I didn’t release my first album until after the age of 40. I didn’t perform with a full band until my 50s. And I didn’t begin recording music videos until I was 60 - fulfilling a dream I’d quietly carried since MTV first aired in the 1980s. Now, at 61, I am creating the most aligned, purpose-filled work of my life.

But the journey here wasn’t linear.  It wasn’t loud. It was a spiral of self-remembrance - through motherhood, marriage, healing, hiding, and finally, rising.

Music has always been my medicine. But it wasn’t until I began integrating the spiritual and energetic tools I’d been studying - Human Design, Gene Keys, sound alchemy, shamanic practices, and connecting with the sacred rhythms of nature - that my art became something more than expression.   It became a transmission.

I hold a master’s degree in Educational Theater from NYU. That training gave me a strong foundation in storytelling, multimedia, and the art of creating transformative experiences. I understand the power of story, ritual, and embodied experience to teach and to heal.

But this desire to create meaning runs even deeper - it’s rooted in my upbringing, with parents who instilled a longing to make the world more peaceful, and in my 30 years of Buddhist practice.  

Growing up in Washington, DC, I was surrounded by music as a force for social change - attending rallies and concerts in the 70s and 80s that shaped my belief in the power of art to heal and awaken.

In the 1990s, a poem by Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda stirred something in me - urging me to realize my dreams not just for myself, but for the healing of the world.  Around that same time, I met my first music mentor, Billy Davis, whose encouragement helped me see that my voice had a place beyond my living room.  My writing - whether a song or a soul activation - isn’t meant to just entertain.  It’s meant to remember. To reawaken what was once buried.

When I sit down to write, I often begin with an emotion.  Something I’m working through.   A feeling in the body.  A riff.  A phrase that won’t let me go.  I write in circles, spirals, whispers -  letting the song unfold in its own time. I find shapes on the piano and experiment with chords and sound.  I play by ear.  By connecting to my soul.  By tapping into the energy of the collective.

I write for the woman who’s been hiding. For the girl who was told to be smaller. For the part of myself that still wonders, “Is it too late?”

It’s never too late.

My latest body of work is called Soul Alive- an album and collection of healing experiences designed to help people come back to life, back to themselves, back to the truth.  Each song is a seed of transformation. From “Remembrance” to “Butterfly,” from “Goodbye” to “Mary Magdalene,” and into the sacred grounding of  “Beautiful Earth”  - each carries a frequency of empowerment, surrender, devotion, and rebirth.

I choose words very consciously.  Words are magic.  They create our reality, and I’m very aware of that as I write.  I tap into my truth and craft first and foremost in a frequency that resonates and is healing to me.   Then I review how it feels with the listener in mind.   Sometimes lyrics can be very sparse or mantra like.   Other times the songs are more like sacred storytelling.   They are intended to activate - to move energy.  To awaken clarity. To open the heart.

One of the most profound extensions of my current work is my project I Am a Queen - a song born from my own healing and now being turned into a music video in partnership with charities that support girls rescued from extreme abuse.   When I wrote the song, I was reclaiming something in myself. But now it’s becoming a global mirror  - a message of worth, dignity, and the safety of being seen.

This is the kind of art I want to make. Not just beautiful, but useful. Not just personal, but universal. Art that invites you into your own voice, your own rhythm, your own knowing.

In a world that feels noisy and overwhelming, I bring sound with intention.

When everything moves too fast, I offer space for something slower, more meaningful.

And in times of burnout, I return to beauty - not as a luxury, but as a way to soothe and remember.

I write to wake something up.

I sing to feel connected.

And I don’t believe healing has to be hard, but I do believe it has to be honest.

My process is deeply intuitive and emotionally driven.  I write in devotion to truth. I sing in devotion to love. And I show up again and again to the creative altar, trusting that what moves through me will find who it’s meant for.

So here I am - an artist in her 60s, still blooming. A mother of three grown children. I’m committed to living with courage, using my voice, and having no regrets - to making the most of my life for the sake of my children and future generations.  A woman who once feared being seen, now helping others find the courage to shine.

My story isn’t one of overnight success. It’s one of sacred timing, radical trust, and creative resurrection.

And my hope is that in hearing it, something in you stirs too. A dream long dormant. A gift waiting to rise. A truth ready to be sung.

Because you are a queen. And it’s safe to be seen.

I often think of my life not as a straight path, but as a spiral. Each loop brings me back to something I thought I had already healed, understood, or moved beyond—but this time, I meet it from a deeper place. My journey as a spiritual artist has been much the same: a weaving of breath, voice, body, and story, unfolding slowly over time. It is not a polished process. It is tender, cyclical, and often deeply humbling.

I was raised largely as an atheist. Both of my parents had rejected the religions they were brought up in, but developed interests in meditation, Buddhism, astrology, and, later on, shamanic practices. I was fascinated by history — especially the period of the Renaissance, Reformation, and witch hunts — from an early age. But this also brought with it a fear of spirituality, which I associated with the organised religions that had caused so much suffering and oppression over the centuries.

My own earliest spiritual memories are visceral rather than religious. I grew up moving between cultures and languages, caught in the liminal space between worlds. I was a sensitive child, easily overwhelmed by noise and tension, and prone to vivid dreams and nightmares. I didn’t always have the language then (or now) to explain what I felt, but I often sensed things that weren’t being spoken. Singing was my safe place — the only way I could express my feelings with ease.

There are moments in life when the body whispers what the mind refuses to hear — until it becomes so loud that we can no longer ignore it. Many of us begin exploring healing or spirituality out of moments of crisis.

For me, the breakdown came early. I was 19 and had just spent three months with a constant fever, following a year of experiencing a series of mysterious illnesses. When I finally found out what was wrong — ‘chronic’ Lyme disease — I felt like my life was over before it had even begun. In the months and years of relative silence that followed, I began to listen: to my breath, my dreams, my body, and eventually, the creative impulses that had long been waiting for space.

In my twenties, I trained as a yoga teacher and began to reconnect with my physical self after years of disconnection. Around that time, I also began to explore dreamwork — writing down every dream, studying their symbols, and watching patterns emerge. I believe this opened a door into my subconscious that would become foundational to my path as both a healing practitioner and an artist. I later ran a yoga studio in Brighton for five years and found a lot of joy and fulfilment in creating a beautiful community centred around the love of this practice.

But despite all of this, it wasn’t until I found Transformational Breath® in 2018 that everything began to click into place. My first session blew my mind on so many levels. My dear friend and mentor, Michèle Barocchi, was visiting to help us lead a yoga teacher training. She was completing her case studies for her breathwork certification at the time and asked me if I wanted to breathe.

I found myself reliving a traumatic surgery I had gone through six years earlier during a family trip to Namibia. Lacking other options, they had given me Ketanest (essentially ketamine) due to my low blood pressure while performing open surgery. I woke up hallucinating to my own screams and had been battling night terrors, recurring bladder infections, and general dissociation ever since.

That first breath session brought me right back into the operating theatre. My body went ice-cold, and I found myself shivering and crying in Michèle’s arms. It was one of those moments that completely changed the course of my life. I came to with a strange feeling of presence and a connection to my physical body that I don’t remember having before that day — not even as a child.

A year later, I began my path as a breathwork facilitator. During this time, I felt like I retrieved parts of myself I hadn’t even realised were missing. I often say that breathwork gave me back my voice — not just metaphorically, but literally. Shortly after that first deep immersion, songs began to come through. At first, I wrote them only for myself. I had no intention of recording anything, let alone releasing an album. But the songs kept coming through, and I kept following them. And in 2021, in the wake of lockdowns, I recorded my first four singles with my multi-talented producer, Sebastian Brice, in Frome, UK.

My creative process is deeply interwoven with my healing. I write in cycles that mirror my own emotional states. Breathwork opens the channel, music gives the emotion form, and visual art helps me integrate it all. My illustrations — often accompanying my songs or poems — begin as hand-drawn sketches and then evolve through digital layering, in itself a slow and meditative process.

Over the last six years, this multidimensional practice has become a map of sorts — tracking my path through inner child healing, ancestral reconnection, motherhood, and grief. In 2022, I gave birth to my daughter. In 2023, I lost my mother — the two events separated by a single day, exactly one year apart. That period was an initiation in every sense. Birth and death are both spiritual passages, and experiencing them so close together cracked me wide open (once again).

There were moments I didn’t know how to keep creating, and perhaps this is why it has been such a long, winding road. I was — and, if I'm honest, still am — exhausted, grieving, and responsible for a tiny human. But the songs kept coming. Two years ago, I began recording vocals in my father’s walk-in wardrobe in Tavira, Portugal, while Seb laid down the instrumentation in his studio in the UK. It wasn’t the most glamorous setting, but it was real and practical. That space — lovingly dubbed the “Wardrobe Studios” — became my own little portal. Through it, I recorded the vocals for my first full-length album, Ways of the Dreamer.

This album features nine of the songs I’ve written since 2019. It is a sonic journal of my inner world, interwoven with cello by Garwyn Linnell, guest vocals by fellow singer-songwriters Lucy Wylde and Maria Payne Vlahogiannis, and the voice of my father, Maged Younes. Each track carries a piece of my journey, an echo of my breath, a fragment of my dreams. The process was slow — spread out over two years to fit around motherhood, retreats, and daily life. It feels surreal that it's now out in the world.

What guides me now is not ambition, but alignment. I create not to perform, but to process. No longer to impress, but to connect. I have learned that the most powerful art doesn’t shout; it resonates. It carries the frequency of authenticity. And in a world that often rewards performance over presence, staying true to this path can feel slightly on edge.

Looking ahead, I hope to continue weaving these threads — breath, music, movement, and imagery — into spaces that support others in their healing. I co-facilitate retreats, offer breathwork sessions, and share my music through live performance and recordings. I envision creating immersive experiences where people can breathe, move, and listen their way back to themselves.

But more than anything, I believe I will keep walking this spiral path — returning, remembering, reweaving. For me, the spiritual journey isn’t about transcendence. It’s about coming home. To the body. To the breath. To the — at times — broken and beautiful truth of being human.

Louisa Love is a singer and healer whose music journey began with a deep commitment to creating meaningful and authentic songs. Her debut album, "The Glow," is a powerful expression of decades of life experience and holistic healing.

I was born in Cape Town, South Africa where I grew up in the national botanical gardens called Kirstenbosch, nestled in the backyard of the beautiful Table Mountain. I was a wild child, and a tomboy, and spent most of my time roaming free, climbing trees and giant rocks, and exploring the mountain paths. 

My idyllic sounding childhood also had a very dark side. Unfortunately I was the victim of childhood sexual abuse from my maternal grandfather, but even worse than this was the daily emotional abuse I suffered at home. Aged fifteen I became so desperate to escape and felt so estranged that I tried to end my life.

Growing up, I knew my voice was a gift, as when I sang I was almost instantly transported into a world of what I can only describe now as a deep sense of safety, a healthy means to escape, true love and reverie. I also noticed that when I sang, that it would effect others very deeply. Age twelve, I won a singing cup at the Western Cape Eisteddfod, which spurred me on. I devoured music and even worked at our local CD shop aged 18 just so I could listen to music each day, (and for the discounts!). At this stage music was my only healing. I was a huge fan of Tori Amos, Sarah Mclachlan, Heather Nova and Portishead, to name but a few. 

In my 20’s after moving to London, I became very ill with chronic fatigue and autoimmune disorder (often thought to be linked to childhood trauma). It was at this stage that I was forced to change my life, and I stopped drinking alcohol and overhauled my diet. A Kinesiologist was pivotal in my healing journey and I was so blown away I decided to train in it myself. As my physical body healed I was shown the immense amounts of childhood trauma I needed to heal, and so the real deep holistic healing journey began.

After 10 years of this in-depth healing work I began to assist and support others on their paths of healing. I’ve had a fully booked clinic for over a decade, helping hundreds of clients working as a Kinesiologist, whilst also incorporating modalities such as Emotional Freedom Technique, Australian Bushflower Essences, and recently I also became an Internal Family Systems practitioner.

What I have noticed, is that as the true path of healing begins to unfold, it unleashes a process where we are called to confront, feel and heal all of our trauma, our hidden shame and pain, our fears, limiting beliefs and negative patterns. This is why the healing path can feel so relentless and challenging at times. It is not an easy journey to take. I had to go through nearly 20 years of this deep inner healing process before I was able to create these songs (this album), and I believe this is why these songs are true healers in their own right. 

However, before I was able to create my up and coming album, ‘The Glow’, I had to overcome a few hurdles along the way. After meeting with a certain producer, I was ‘lured’ with promises of US success and high-end connections. Feeling the excitement, a verbal agreement was put into place, and I paid a significant payment upfront. However I soon experienced lies, control and manipulation, and without warning, a change to our agreement. I was faced with a spiritual test: stay and continue my work with this person, but walk on eggshells and feel disempowered; or leave, pray and trust the right producer will be brought to me. Of course I chose the latter.

I walked away, grieved the dream of fame and connections, and then synchronistically was guided to a young and very talented producer who wants none of my royalties, and who is deeply in tune with my music. ‘He just gets you, your voice and songs’ one of my friends commented, and it is true. And as for fame and connections, who cares when I know Spirit is with me always, guiding me. I know I’m exactly where I am meant to be. I now see, with the wisdom of age and experience, that for me to birth this album, I needed all those years of inner healing so that I would be able to translate the magic of this alchemy authentically into this creative work.

Each and every one of these songs carry a seed of healing, and all I can do is trust that they’ll find their way to the ears and hearts of those who need to hear and feel them. I have now finished recording the first album, and have started the process of releasing singles. Not only this, but I have already begun recording the second album. I feel a fire has been lit, and there is no stopping me now.

We are one.

Three very powerful words. What do these words mean to you? Do you believe them? Do they stir something deep inside your soul? Or does your body reject them? I most certainly had trouble believing this concept at the beginning of my spiritual journey but this is all part of the miraculous, step by step journey we take towards oneness. As we release ourselves from the binds of our past we step further each day into our “whole’  identity integrating all parts of ourselves to become one whole entity.

Who am I?

There we go again. Another powerful 3-word combination. I am Natalie. I am light. I am singer. I am divine. I am energy. I am woman. I am alive. I am writer. I am spiritual. This is my truth. But at 27 when I had my first spiritual awakening  the 3-word combinations coming out of my mouth were very different.

I was depressed. I was bulimic. I needed help. I was struggling. I was stuck. I was unhappy.

Lost Soul

At this point in my career, I was a singer and vocal coach. On paper, my life was looking really good. I had a property. I had money flowing into the bank. I had a lot of friends. I had opportunities. But inside. I was dying. I was suffocating. I hated myself. I hated the skin I lived in. And on the nights I was alone, I felt so lost. And on the days when I was in a room full of people, I also felt alone. Until one day I said to myself enough is enough and I surrendered and allowed myself time for a healing journey exploring all aspects of well-being including physical, psychological and metaphysical.

When I think back on this period of my life, I see a small person, trapped within a multitude of constricting confines which controlled my attitudes to my body and my sense of self. Instead of looking inward, I was constantly focusing outwards and my inner critical parent was firmly in control. Any self-esteem I did have was drowned by behavioural traits and survival traits such as people pleasing, perfectionism, and self-judgement.

Quantum Leaps

At the age of 33, I quit my job and took time out for travelling and studied to be a yoga teacher.  I asked myself those 3-words who am I? I wanted to really get to know Natalie. What she wanted. What made her truly feel alive.

During this time, I overcame many small, but big challenges; managing my travel budget, meeting people I didn’t know, going to places where I had never been, driving on the other side of the road, walking across cities without a plan or a destination, adjusting to the huge, open spaces of Nevada and the contrasting busyness and claustrophobia of Rome. Being a lone traveller in Italy opened the path to conversations with strangers, inspired a new internal dialogue and thoughts and provided moments of mindfulness and self-indulgence. I had come from such a restrictive place, that I was opening myself up and changing, thinking, “I’m not the person I was, I feel differently now, and I feel the world’s a beautiful place.” 

This blend of self-discovery and self-devotion has offered me a depth of insights that at 27 I never knew was possible. Taking quantum leaps of faith has been a big part of the process. I took the time during my 30s to expand myself and my offerings. After leaving my vocal coaching business I became a well-being coach, yoga teacher and founder of an online yoga business called Yummy Yoga Girl guiding people to discover their true identities and find peace within themselves.

Quantum Shifts

In 2020 when the world came to a halt, the year of a new decade and my 40th birthday I was asked to be a radio presenter for Wellbeing Radio. I plunged into this adventure with my heart, body and soul. It was incredible.

I loved being part of the Well-being Radio family. Cosmic Soul Sunday show taught me about reciprocity, the beautiful exchange of giving and receiving for the highest good of all. I felt connected through this network of listeners and presenters. I began to fully embody the concept of wholeness.

During my time at the radio, connections began sprouting  for me. I met Nicola Humber who would later become the publisher for my first book. At last, I was  meeting soul-led business owners whose values and principles aligned with mine. As a result of this I was feeling safe to truly start to speak out loud, use my voice and explore the depths of my soul purpose and job here on planet Earth.

Voice Activation

Who am I? I am Natalie, a cosmic songbird with a passion for guiding people to tune into their innate wisdom, find sanctuary in their hearts and freedom in their souls. Through my work as a writer, author, and singer, I empower changemakers to push to their edges: to activate the power of their intuitive voice I use sound to break down barriers and uncover psychological trauma tears stored within the cells releasing it through the use of vibration, free singing, brainwave entrainment, frequency, coded music  and and to begin truly dancing with life.

Singing you into alignment

As a leader, and Soulpreneur, I embody all aspects of my raw, divine femininity while breaking conventions, creating change and paving the way for others to follow. My unique strength lies in my gentle, loving essence and intuitive, mystical powers which light the way for women to rise, awakening to their mastery and owning it fully.

The Essence

I’m a natural communicator with music, dance, creativity and colour flowing through my DNA, translating the light I see in the world into something tangible to amplify the human experience.

“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.” Eckhart Tolle,

On reflection, I am reminded of this quote by Eckhart Tolle, which profoundly impacted me at the age of 27. When I look back something deep inside of me knew that I had to ‘stand up’ and, metaphorically speaking; ‘throw open my wings and fly’ through those constricting confines programming from my life and programming from my ancestor’s life to fully wake up and be who I was born to be.

Today I take the path of least resistance daily. I love myself. I trust in my higher power. I am of service to others. I make conscious decisions to help the planet within my circle of influence. I boldly step each day into the unknown and trust the creations that come through me and the connections I make are all divinely planned in divine timing.

Natalie Farrell is a leader in voice activation, intuitive sound healing and linguistic psychology. With an accomplished 20+ year background in singing, voice coaching, presenting, and writing her work with Soulpreneurs acts as a catalyst for profound transformation guiding them to be fully visible within their field of expertise. In 2021, she published her first book, ‘Light The Way’ a powerful companion for modern-day change makers who are ready to go all-in and approach business and life the unconventional way.

In 2022 Natalie’s debut album Born To Stand Out released on I-Tunes & Spotify: these sonic soundscapes create an immersive experience both emotionally and physically for the listener to remember & reclaim the power of their voice. Her mission: to release reverberant voices.

I am a drummer, composer, producer, field recordist, writer, photographer, and documentary film maker. I was born in what was then the British Protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, since 1964 the Republic of Zambia.

Ohhh I had a carefree childhood, looked after by my African nanny who took me down the compound strapped on her back, music was omnipresent, part of everyday life, singing, clapping, drumming, the magical tinkling sound of the thumb-piano (now called ‘lamellophone’ by ethnomusicologists), xylophones.

And all that space – the bush was vast and unspoilt, the few roads largely unpaved. Until, aged six, I then had to go to school, and wear shoes. The school I went to was a ‘European’ school. My African friends went to an ‘African’ school, yes we got split up, and that reality hit hard: something deeply unfair was going on.

And to top it off, my parents always talked about ‘home’ being some far away place called England. But this was my home, the smell of the bush after the first rains, the sound of the birds and insects, the warmth of the people, with music for every occasion, fruits from the garden. From an early age I also listened to the colonial radio station, the likes of Harry Belafonte, Cliff Richard et al – I had my favourite songs – and then the Beatles took hold.

Out in the colonies it was if law and order was being challenged back in Britain, but I spent my saved-up pocket money managing to order the Beatles’ single ‘Twist and Shout’. And after about four months it arrived – in one piece!

After independence ‘repatriated’ to Britain aged 10, had to wear long trousers as well as a coat, and saw television. On ‘Top of the Pops’ for the first time saw the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, the Who performing – wow! I decided then and there I wanted to be the drummer.

And when a little later Jimi Hendrix came on the scene, for me there was then no turning back: I was going to become a musician! After a couple of years my father got a job with Philips Electronics and the family moved to Holland. Went through secondary school, doing what was expected of me, but I can tell you it was utterly clear to me that music was by far the most superior form of communication. Music is a reality unto itself, hearing is the most sensitive of the senses. I discovered modern jazz, Messiaen, Scriabin, music from India, Indonesia, Tibet, Japan, Brazil – I soaked it all up.

And yet I went along with the indoctrination that I should go to university ‘to enrich my mind’: after a short spell at Leicester University studying Philosophy, I ceased being a pleaser and I left, and became a professional musician aged 20.

In 1984 I started my first own group: Sharp Wood. Because I heard a kind of ‘modern primeval’ music in my head. I started composing. My African childhood had caught up with me – in fact it had never gone away! Sharp Wood became known for its ritualistic approach and exorcistic rhythms, the group existed for 10 years. The beat is interlocking, everything you play is part of that whole, it’s about timing and dynamics, it’s about togetherness.

This has become known as ‘ubuntu’, you become a person through other people – a very deep African philosophy. I have also come to realise that rhythm is not only a series of beats, but is equally a series of spaces between the beats, so the gaps are as important as the hits. What you leave out is as essential as what you include: music must be able to breathe.

Yes I see myself as a spiritual person, but I don’t like religion, because I don’t like uniforms, I don’t like dogmas, because I don’t like censorship. We are all part of a whole, everything is interconnected, we are all family. There is clearly energy and all living things part of it. To my mind, that energy is eternal – it is outside of time. We are all spirits and each cosmic spark goes on forever. And music also seems never-ending, it is a healing force that is both liberating and comforting. I count my blessings every day.

In 1987 I started my own record label, SWP Records, which releases 1. my own music, 2. music from central, eastern, southern Africa, and 3. anything else that is forgotten and beautiful. It’s a lot of work, but at least I don’t have some halfwit producer constantly looking over my shoulder saying ‘Michael, if we change some things we’ll make more money’.

As far as my own music goes, in all humility, I hope you like it. I try to create what I hear, I try to be original and production-wise I want it to sound really good. Each new project is different, I try to avoid repeating myself. And over the years I have made many field recording trips in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho: if I know about some beautiful music, that is otherwise unknown, then I want to share it with you – even if that means going out and recording it myself.

About my new album ‘Resonance Vibration Frequencies’: performed with touché and intuition, I play metal instruments and objects, recorded using a special microphone technique capturing every last vibration. So yes, this is metal music, not ‘Heavy Metal’ but more like ‘Light Metal’! Perhaps more than ever before, my point of departure was my old axiom ‘first silence, then music’.

This certainly is not fast music, and when you slow down your pace of life, introspection tends to increase – generally a good thing. The sounds are pure, Tibet is never far away, and you will hear thumb-pianos in a brand new setting. This album is meditative music, but the nine tracks also form a suite that tells a story. All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating.

Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating, oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion, characterised by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is just vibration of various underlying fields.

An interesting phenomenon occurs when different vibrating things/processes come into proximity: they will often start, after a little time, to vibrate together at the same frequency. They ‘sync up’, sometimes in ways that can seem mysterious. Examining this phenomenon leads to potentially deep insights about the nature of consciousness and about the universe more generally.

All things resonate at certain frequencies. It’s all about vibrations. Let yourself become enveloped…

My early childhood was spent on the outskirts of a small Suffolk town playing ‘famous five’ with my 2 elder brothers and losing myself in the small scrubby copse of trees opposite our house. I was a quick learner so aged 8, my parents sent me to an academic girls’ school in Cambridge, 30 miles away from my home. I remember feeling like a wild animal taken into captivity for the first time; looking around for a kindred scruffy child in the sea of girls with long plaits, white socks and neat pinafore dresses. I was a complete misfit and in the 8 years of being there, I never overcame this feeling.

I was an early developer and was thrown into an adult world aged 11 after being sought out by an elder teenager who left me with a deep wound and a secret to hold that estranged me even more from my peers. School became an oppressive endurance test and I was sent many times to the headteacher often for reasons unknown to me. I became a ‘problem’ pupil for my difference and the girls around me started to whisper. I had a choice of denying or living up to my reputation so I went with the latter and threw myself into edgy situations; jumping trains to London, shoplifting as a habit and seeking out people living outside society’s norms; the goths and park-bench dwellers of early 90’s Cambridge.

My parents separated, school eventually finished and then out of the blue, I received a cheque in the post; a gift from a deceased relative. 19 years old, I bought a ticket to India and emerged from Calcutta airport to the heat, the smells of spice and rubbish, the traffic mayhem and was enraptured. After 3 weeks of walking the city, I booked myself into a Vipassana retreat in Bodhgaya. Having felt alienated in the ‘human’ world I had grown up in, my longing for spirit and the spiritual life was burning in me. I emerged after 10 days of silence, shaved my head and soft as a baby, I travelled to Varanasi, threw myself into yoga and bought a guitar.

I met a beautiful singer, Katya Moslehner, who was studying classical Indian music in Varanasi and together we travelled to an uninhabited Andaman Island and spent our days bathing in the ocean, gazing at the milky way and singing with her shruti box. It was the first time I had explored my voice or come to know singing as meditation. We parted ways and I found myself alone again travelling to North India. Having been so saturated in the heat and headiness of the India I had come to love, this last part of my journey brought up some deep and familiar feelings of loneliness. My guitar became my loyal companion in this time. I’d hide myself away in concrete guesthouse rooms and tentatively pick out the chords and (quietly quietly) sing.

After 6 months in India, I returned to the UK to study philosophy and literature but was itching to continue travelling. At every opportunity I took off and one summer break I found a tipi community in the mountains in Spain. I deferred my degree studies and spent 2 years immersed in the simple life; growing food, walking barefoot on the earth, bathing in spring pools and singing round the big lodge fire. I learnt many things in this time – how to live in deep connection with the earth, how to find sacredness in simplicity – but I still found it hard to trust people and feel a sense of belonging. One warm spring day whilst walking by a shrubby hedge of hawthorn and brambles, I felt a rekindling of love of my homeland and a desire to return there and pick up the broken pieces of the self I’d left behind.

That time came around after hearing about such a thing as plant medicine ceremonies. I returned to the UK and, armed with my guitar and a small bag of clothes, I took a train from Cambridge down to Penzance and stepped into a whole new chapter of my life. The plants showed me a path on which I could gather up the many fragmented parts of my youth and become whole. I followed the medicine path to Japan, Spain, Italy, Austria, and with my new husband, to South America to deepen our study of the plants and the healing power of song. Together, we crewed on a four-man sailing boat across the Atlantic and it was under the wide starry skies that I began to hear my own songs.

I returned to my community in the UK with the beginnings of my first collection of songs, tied together in a little book called ‘Song of the Earth’. The songs were warmly received and went on to travel far and wide through the network of medicine ceremonies. I took my music out into the wider world for the first time, performing a series of concerts with the Anjali Orchestra – a band of 8 musicians of sacred music. As this period of intense ceremonial work came to an end in 2010, my husband and I returned to India to find our way home within ourselves again and continue the study I had discovered through my friend many years before; Naad yoga.

This trip was a profound time of rebirth for me and I returned in 2011 to begin a new life in West Wales and become a mother for the first time. It is impossible to convey the depth and scale of the changes that parenting brings but the subsequent 12 years of raising 2 children and establishing a home have been an intense process of unmaking and remaking my relationship with music and its mysterious source. Having landed back where we started, in South Devon where we remain today, I have finally entered into a period of more time and space in which I can start recording my music.

“Of Grief and Gratitude”, my 3-song debut EP was released in the spring of 2022. Inspired by the death of a young friend, it is an intimate, heartfelt musical and videographic journey through grief, confusion, hope and the promise of coming home to who we truly are.

The process of recording these songs was wonderful in many ways and a steep learning curve in the sonic arts. Realising that I do know exactly what I want is one thing, but learning how to articulate that in musical language was another. Producer Misha Mullov-Abbado was a great support - translating my slightly cryptic language into musical forms in which my songs could fully come to life.

It was a delight to discover that on the other hand, I felt entirely at home in the world of visual art and videography. I received a vision for my film ‘Across the Veil’, whilst lying awake one night. Knowing it would be quite a videographic feat I sought out the filmmaker Kai Ohio and worked closely with him on the shoot and through the edit to completion. My heart was full to bursting when it received 20k views on Facebook in the first few days of its release and it has steadily built on YouTube since. I have been deeply touched by the messages I have received from all around the world from people that have lost loved ones, thanking me for the healing they’ve received through this song.

Since then I have released various self-made videos including one for my song “All is Love” using rough footage taken by my husband on our ocean crossing and through Brazil. I am now working with various other artists as a creative director on their music videos – not something I planned but it’s work I love!

I am also now co-producing and recording a full-length album of songs. The songs articulate my journey as a spiritual being born into the madness and chaos of this modern world. Inevitably, at the heart of that are my feelings as a mother looking forward into this uncertain future, loving beyond measure my children and having to hold a place of faith for them despite the overwhelming despair that I feel when I witness the demise of our natural world.

My songs provide me with compass for living - lyrically and melodically guiding me forwards and keep the torch of belief alight. They tell me; keep singing, keep praying and keep loving this incredible earth that we live upon. If others can also receive this wisdom through my musical legacy, then I’ll die having completed what I came here for!

I plan to release this first album in the spring of 2024 and will be launching a crowd-funding campaign in the Autumn 2023 to fund its creation. Crowdfunding is one of the unexpected gifts emerging from the technological change affecting musicians. In contrast to the digital distribution giants (Spotify, Tunecore etc.) it’s very real way for people who love music to support its creation and offer something to the artists who inspire them.

If you’d like to see my work and follow my journey, find me on the links below.

It’s clear now that my journey with music and spirituality began as a teenager perceiving profundity in the lyrics of my then favourite artists … with my readily pedestalling them as great seers imparting some sort of transcendent knowledge and wisdom via their songs. To my friends, I used say ‘the answer’s in the music’. The challenge for us mortals was to get beyond the layers of lyrical ambiguity … for then we would surely access all those deeper meanings. Growing up in Somerset in the mid-70s, I had my head in the clouds. But the seed of an idea had taken root.

While still at school I formed a band with class mates. ‘Early Daze’ - a nod to a Jimi Hendrix song - we called it. We practiced and played cover-songs, interspersed with a few of our own compositions, and later performed to meagre audiences in local pubs and village halls, and of course dreamt of making it. In writing those early songs, I discovered I instinctively knew how to work my melodies and chord sequences. I’d had no musical training, but somehow it all seemed to make complete sense from the outset. The music was flowing, the songs where coming … then I took a bit of a left turn.

My brother Cliff had come home with a LP and a book. Some guy on the street in Minehead had sold it to him saying something about helping people for something or other. Not sure what. The book ‘The Science of Self Realisation’ waited on a shelf in our bedroom for a year or so, then it pounced.

Long and short, the book was a collection of lecture-transcripts and interviews with the founder of the Hare Krishna movement – the Guru, who I later found out had passed away several years previously. The subject matter was alien to me, but I felt intrigued enough to take a bus trip to London with my sister Dawn, to visit their new temple on Soho Street.

I can only describe my then experience of chanting the Hare Krishna mantra for the first time as an uncovering of something deeply familiar. It was like a resurfacing of a long-buried memory. A coming home. An awakening. I immediately knew this is for me, and within a year I had become a vegetarian, handed in notice to my West Somerset District Council job, given away my guitars and amplifier, shaved my head and joined the movement. I was twenty-one. I found myself living in an old Hertfordshire mock-Tudor mansion-come-temple in the village of Letchmore Heath. The one that George Harrison had donated a few years prior. It was the beginning of a great, often varied, sometimes troubled, adventure that absorbed my enthusiasm for the next fifteen years.

During those years my musical interest was expressed through playing traditional Indian instruments. The clay mridanga drum, the kartal hand cymbals, the harmonium reed organ, and a little dabbling on the sitar. During one kirtan (group mantra chanting) a friend leaned over and said ‘you nitch an mean ivory’ to my slightly inappropriate rasābhāsa rock-n-roll chord progressions on the harmonium. A sign that change was afoot perhaps?

After eight years as a celibate novice (seriously), I got married (yes, that was allowed), and along with children naturally came the need to make a living. So I moved outside the temple, and around this time guitars re-entered my life and I soon resumed song-writing and home-recording. Was I falling away from the pure path? Maybe some judged that I was. I didn’t feel so. Indeed, my fascination with eastern philosophy, and especially the Bhagavad-gita not only remained, but broadened and continued to grow.

Over the coming years I gradually developed a more personalised brand of spirituality, with differences in areas of focus and emphasis to those front-stage in Hare Krishna movement. For example, whereas the movement might characterise this world as primarily a place of misery wherein fallen souls are trapped by karma into a cycle of repeated birth and death, I increasingly preferred to see it as a place where divinity is being expressed and explored by everyone in ways of their own choosing, and I imagined that in so doing we all contribute and serve the completeness of the divine. Even in the dark stuff. Somehow.

Fast forward to the 2020s and my song-writing has gathered momentum to the point of 50+ songs annually. And though my do-it-yourself recordings lack a certain professional sheen, they are intimate, and 99% centred on spiritual subject matters. Sometimes in the form of imagined dialogue with God; sometimes about my striving to celebrate the divinity in all life beyond cultural, political, religious, and species divides; sometime asking hard ‘why’ questions, facing doubt, or pondering apparent philosophical tensions, for example as in karma vs self-divinity, or fallen soul vs sacred collaboration. I routinely rise by 5am and do an awe-ful lot of thinking before the day begins. This means there’s never any shortage of material for my lyrics. For me there exists always the chance for a perfect marriage between soul and mind wherever self-expression is genuine and uncontrived, and this is my endeavour. To my mind that’s the potential beauty of the singer-songwriter genre. Its less about entertainment and more about connection, conversation and relationship with a listener. Some say it has a certain type of purity to it.

Having grown up in the 70s, and with one foot always firmly in the 60s, my musical influences are primarily of that era. Mine is thus a mixture of soft-rock, mellow, acoustic, Beatle-esque, with an occasional smattering of rock-n-roll angst. In spite of this my hope is that through my songs I can connect with people who find something spiritually positive in my offerings. Perhaps something that mirrors existing values and/or outlook, or even something that inspires a listener in their own spiritual journey, or provokes a new positive way of looking at our place in the bigger scheme of things. Or perhaps something that simply helps a spiritual person feel they are less alone in a material world.

HEAR DAVID'S TRACKS

Reflecting on my experience of inexplicable familiarity upon contact with mantra chanting, and my never-learned yet ready-knowledge of melody and chords, I now see all such things as simple resumption of past life cultivations. To me reincarnation persuasively explains many things. All it takes is a timely trigger to bring past passions rushing back to the surface of conscious awareness. To resume, so to speak, from where one last left off. Of course, I’m not saying it’s proven … just it makes sense to me personally.

Has the seed of my teenage wishful thinking now born fruit? Did I become one of those imagined musical seers of my youth? Probably not. After all I’m just a fallible person with a fleeting point of view, looking at something very big and perhaps from time to time some appreciating a very small aspect, as seen from where I presently stand.

Perhaps my music is your cup of tea? I hope so.

All the best
David