The Reiki Concert

Sergio Taza’s wonderful piano-playing comes to the fore in this album. A review by Punya.

A few years ago there were no music albums, except for maybe Chinmaya Dunster’s Feng Shui and Yoga Lounge, that were dedicated to any other therapy method that was not Reiki. We, of course, know the ones by Deuter (of which there are four by now: Hands of Light and Hands of Love, Reiki Healing and Koyasan) but the list appears endless. (There are also tracks for the attunement ritual that have again another purpose.)

Of course one can give a Reiki session with any music that relaxes, and there were very good ones at the time Amiten and I were teaching Reiki in Scotland, all composed by my friends (and no copies were allowed to be made!), but I often asked myself what brings musicians to dedicate a whole hour of music to this healing method. And it does not seem that they are composing the music just as a background to a session. My guess is that, as it happens with painters, poets and dancers, one is allured by the challenge of describing and calling forth the undescribable. In Reiki it is the subtle energy that enters our body through the crown chakra, goes through the hands into the body of the client, or of one’s own, finally permeating the whole space around.

I was given the chance to listen to Taza’s The Reiki Concert and being accompanied by it while giving myself a Reiki session (that’s one of the perks of Reiki; one can give a session to oneself!). The album consists of 14 tracks of 3,5 to 5 minutes each. When a track ends it’s a gentle nudge that maybe it’s time to move to the next position. The individual tracks are marked for 14 positions, but in my download they were not in the correct order which I take as a hint that one does not have to take the sequence too seriously, as long as I start from the head and go down the body.

The production (the album is from 2000) is very simple and suited to the purpose. It also shows that with limited means something good can be done. We have a low drone with the sound of the piano, or a very high background pad (or vice versa) with the melody played on what could be glass bells or vibraphone. The melodies are repetitive to give us the feeling of being on secure ground but then they suddenly take an unexpected turn to bring us back to the present in case we have drifted off into outer spheres…

Just now, while writing this and going through the tracks to check their length, the few notes that come over bring me back into the magic field of Reiki, as when listening to the Kundalini music we are immediately brought into the space of that meditation. I feel the pull, that longing to dive back into that magical world of Reiki. My heart is touched.

Review by Punya

Available at amazon.com – reverbnation.com

Brazilian-born Anand Taza (aka Sergio Taza) lives in São Paulo, Brazil, where he also took sannyas in 1982. Already at age 4 it was discovered that he has absolute hearing and at age 7 had his first public performance on the piano. Nowadays he calls himself a musician, composer, supposedly a professor of piano and a psychologist. He loves recording and has produced more than 37,000 hours of music so far. He has about 1,100 music videos on YouTube and says, “although they are not professional, I still love them!”  youtube.com – facebook.com/anandtaza – soundcloud.com/radiotaza