‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ is a collaboration with pioneering Brazilian medicine musician Chandra Lacombe, and involves many other musicians and singers.
‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ is the quintessential Buddhist mantra. Some monks spend their entire lives chanting it. In essence a simple homage to the miraculous beauty of the lotus flower, and can be loosely translated as ‘Praise to the Jewel in Heart of the Lotus”. Considered as the nectar of all the spiritual teachings of the Buddha, chanting or singing this mantra is seen as a way of entering fully into the compassionate space of the heart.
The process of recording this opening track for the One Thousand Petals album has been a beautiful, slow, organic, unfolding that mirrors the opening of the lotus flower itself.
The moment when I received the melody for this mantra stands out for me as the moment when the oriental traditions I had been immersed in for many years began to merge with the medicine songs I had channeled during years I spent living in Brazil.
The melody arrived at an unexpected moment back in 2008. At that point I had never sung a Buddhist mantra in a medicine ceremony before. I remember that I turned to a friend sitting by the altar table with me, during a silent moment of the ritual, and I whispered to her “We should sing a mantra – do you know any?”
She whispered back to me “Om Mani Padme Hum”. I asked her if she knew a melody for the mantra and she indicated not, so I closed my eyes, emptied my mind and sat there for a few moments until this melody naturally arose and I found myself singing it. After a few repetitions the whole group were joining in, and then I reached for my guitar and very naturally the chord sequence to accompany the melody emerged.
Over the years since then, it has become one of the most popular and most requested of all the medicine songs and mantras I have received. Admittedly the words themselves are not my words, and in fact these 6 syllables can be said to be some of the most well-known in all the interweaving worlds of Eastern and Western spiritual practice, but the melody does have its own distinct flavour.
When I came to put together the songs for the Thousand Petals album I began to dream into possible musical colours and textures for the arrangement of this track, and many instrumental and vocal layers began to be recorded at different times and in different places. Things really began to fall into place when I was in São Paulo, Brazil in the Autumn of 2019. I spent time at the ashram of Chandra Lacombe in the hills of São Roque, and recording the gently trickling sound of his kalimba, accompanying his lilting, sweet voice, that has sung so many mantras over the years, brought the music into focus. Soon after that I found myself in the studio of Luiz Vanzato in down-town São Paulo with Antonio Arvind (handpan) and Carlos Gomes (guitar), and later the same week I recorded frame drum parts with Adriano Machado. The Brazilian musicians playing on this track, complimented later in the process in Oslo by Txai Fernando playing viola caipira, have brought an expressiveness to the music that contributes to its unique character.
The other musicians featured on this track are the English singer Lua Maria, guitarists Michael Stanton and Ravi Freeman, Italian double bass player Misha Mullov-Abbado, and the 12-piece choir of Glorious Chorus from Devon. The ensemble is completed by renowned Indian tabla player Sanju Sahai, and the sound of my Japanese Zen shakuhachi flute weaves through the musical textures from start to finish.
It speaks something of the 21st century we are living in that this ancient Sanskrit mantra is here presented with a unique combination of sounds from Brazil, Europe, India and Japan – unfolding its musical colours much as the petals of the lotus flower themselves unfold.
The music has a meditative quality at the outset, and gradually becomes more rhythmical as the mantra builds. I hope that listening and singing along with this track will suffuse you with the gentle power of the mantra in an uplifting and liberating way, and that it will evoke something of the journey of the jewel of the lotus flower that continues to manifest its healing power throughout the ages.
Click here to listen on Spotify
Or go to Bandcamp to hear the track, or download the track, in hi-res audio.
Please can you share these links in your social media posts, or send it to friends, and let’s get this out there, with your support!
Much love
Adrian