Music Business…
I feel business sucks the soul out of the world regardless of what it is applied to. When business becomes a part of any equation, it spreads through it like a virus until what used to govern the equation loses its power to the governance and mechanization of business. – @Elihakai
Live Interview
Episode #345 : A.V.A Live Radio Behind The Music with Jacqueline Jax : http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avaliveradio/2016/08/02/episode-345-ava-live-radio-behind-the-music-with-jacqueline-jax
GETTING TO KNOW ELIHA KAI ORAH
by Jacqueline Jax host of A.V.A Live Radio
Eliha Kai Orah
Music Business…
I feel business sucks the soul out of the world regardless of what it is applied to. When business becomes a part of any equation, it spreads through it like a virus until what used to govern the equation loses its power to the governance and mechanization of business.
Pros…
I have tapped into a source that has the ability to recreate creation. It does not mimic, it invents and it replaces old forms of thought into new models of existence.
Cons…
It is like power. It will only be understood by a small minority of the world until that small minority learn to harness it and control the majority with it. This will occur once my body has expired its use for centuries, I believe.
There is only one way to overcome obstacles…
and that is to go through them. I would rather meditate using my music with the aim of reducing my capacity to want rather than force my music to be like everyone else’s, just to expand that very same capacity. As Mr. Carmack said – Money is for the rent not the soul.
I am more of an album person…
because I hate being teased but I love consistency. My marketing strategy requires patience. It is continuing to produce more vibrations, knowing and accepting that the fruit of that production might not materialise even during my grandchildrens’ time. For now, it is exhibiting the ability to manipulate sound as though it were a living artwork in an gallery space.
I use social media because I need to…
but I ultimately don’t care much for it. What matters most is the people behind it, people who I wish to connect with on a more deeper, personal level than any device can offer. I understand its importance to gain numbers, but it has a greater propensity for pretence.
I love many artists but I would have to meet Portishead…
Their music speaks the language of the universe. They make my soul vibrate. I cannot say for sure who more of Beth Gibbons, Adrian Utley or Geoff Barrow I would like to meet. Let’s put them all in one body called Portishead and let’s meet It? They are masters of the ineffable although Beth guides us successfully through the enigmas they create with her eerie, often symptomatic voice.
I believe if you play anything long enough…
people will sooner or later call it music. Following trends would be selfish. It would affect the music you make ultimately and will most probably give it the trend’s life cycle; so if the trend only lasts two hours, so will your music and its effect.
Favorite quote:
For I consider that music is…
by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc…. Expression has never been an inherent property of music… It is simply an additional attribute which, by tacit and inveterate agreement, we have lent it, thrust upon it, as a label, a convention – in short, an aspect unconsciously or by force of habit, we have come to confuse with its essential being.” – Stravinsky
To clarify the above quote, another quote from Stravinsky on the same subject.
“The over-publicised bit about expression (or non-expression) was simply a way of saying that music is supra-personal and super-real and as such beyond verbal meanings and verbal descriptions. It was aimed against the notion that a piece of music is in reality a transcendental idea “expressed in terms of” music, with the reductio ad absurdum implication that exact sets of correlatives must exist between a composer’s feelings and his notation. It was offhand and annoyingly incomplete, but even the stupider critics could have seen that it did not deny musical expressivity, but only the validity of a type of verbal statement about musical expressivity. I stand by the remark, incidentally, though today I would put it the other way around: music expresses itself.”
I went to an art school called The National School of the Arts for five years…
– grade 8 to 12. I was enrolled in visual arts so I would paint, draw, sculpt and so forth. There was however a grand piano in the school hall which no one was allowed to play. That’s where I spent most of my breaks for those five years. There were music students around but musicians, I found, are selfish with their skills so I had to teach myself everything I now know.
In short, I started out as a wannabe pianist playing by ear, then taught myself some jazz around grade 9. In grade 10, I picked up production using Fruity Loops. I’ve recently moved onto Ableton live 9. Now I’m here answering your questions. 🙂
The inspiration was ineffable and still is. I’m just that kind of an instrument. I deliver messages of the universe through vibrations that can heal, arouse, frighten and enlighten the fragile human body by awakening the soul within it.
“0” : https://m.soundcloud.com/eliha-kai-orah/0a-1
It is the first entry of six songs I made in the space of six hours. The album is entitled …to God and is dedicated to my coming child whom I was intending on naming God. I know that we come from the infinite source, what most people call God, a power that determines our consciousness, a power that we gradually lose the more we experience the physical realm. I hoped her name would continue to remind her of her true identity, even though we are not our names, even though indoctrination threatens our true selves with conformity. “0” resembles an entity’s birth, equivalent to Nothing which does not imply the lack of but the closest linguistic approximation to the ineffable expression of creation.
Support the artist: http://elihakaiorah.bandcamp.com/album/life
I create my music impromptu…
For this one (and with the other tracks on the album less 2.), I did not use the metronome. I simply started with deep basses to sink my fingers properly into the soul. There was a girl sitting next to me whose emotions suffered my control while I was creating it. By the end of the song, she had cried, ejaculated and eventually blacked out, as if the aforementioned soul was her own. Unfortunately to give it to the public requires some kind of reduction, from my soul, to the instrument, to the program, to wav. format then to mp3. The reduction goes through so many steps, it dilutes the experience significantly. That is why I choose to create in the moment and that is how I perform my music – impromptu. All that’s required is a touch.
The universe is made up of vibrations…
Some vibrate at a low frequency, some at high frequencies. There is a base vibration that is the equivalent of silence approximately – Om. This is the most important note in music. I do not make music to entertain but to cleanse, meditate and focus consciousness into the within by calibrating it with the without. That consciousness and matter are the same thing, one looking within while the other looks without, is not a mistake. Reality is about learning about oneself through a limited perspective until oneself and reality are indistinguishable. My music is but one perspective from a collective, a single eye on a face with an infinite amount of observation points.
I aim to make vibrations that remind the soul than the body, vibrations that work on spiritual memory rather than physical memory, that enlightens the soul rather than promoting the numbing of it.
I used to live in Maboneng…
which is one of the main creative hubs in Johannesburg. The streets of Maboneng do not work one sense alone. All senses come together to form the entire experience. The musical scene is alive and vibrant. Musicians are making waves. Real music is confined however. Redundant, unoriginal music is openly available since the Western attempt to control the African origin presupposes mimicry, by the latter, of the former. If you want real music, you will have to look for it. If you want a regurgitated product, keep walking and find a club. Real music will be found in at least one apartment there so make friends. Secular music can be found everywhere including: Lenin’s, Maverick Corner, Living room, Poolside and so forth.
Social Media:
Facebook : https://m.facebook.com/elihakai/
Soundcloud : https://m.soundcloud.com/eliha-kai-orah
Reverbnation : https://www.reverbnation.com/elihakaiorah
Bandcamp : http://elihakaiorah.bandcamp.com/album/life
Twitter : @Elihakai
Blog : www.Nnerdo.wordpress.com (For Kai’s writing, poetry and art)