Katharine Key Music

Did you miss this presentation when I delivered it at Arlington prayer station or Tiny Planet?  Did you go to one of the previous ones and wish you had brought a certain friend with you?  Well, here's your chance to drag yourself out of bed on a Sunday morning and savor it!  I'll be giving the presentation again, perhaps with some new twists, at the DC Baha'i Center on March 28 at 11 a.m. and at the Houston Baha'i Center on April 4 at 10:30 a.m. Y'all come!

And if you're in a Baha'i community reachable from DC within a 6-hour drive and you're interested in having me give this presentation in your community on a Saturday night or Sunday morning, contact me.  I'll consider traveling farther if your community will provide plane fare and lodging.  I also travel for work, so if you're interested, go ahead and let me know even if you're not nearby, on the off chance I'll be swinging through your town some time this year.

If you've attended one of these presentations previously, I invite you to please post your impressions here in the comments section for the benefit of those considering attending the upcoming program.

I will be playing at a dessert, poetry, and music night at a home in DC.  Thinking about playing some of my new originals!  Contact me for more information.

Please come and join the third quarterly Interfaith Devotional sponsored by the Baha’i Community of the Town of Vienna and the Northern Virginia Family Church on Friday November 20th at 7:30 pm at the Northern Virginia Baha’i Center, 21415 Cardinal Glen Circle, Sterling, Virginia 20164.  The theme for this event is “Gratitude.” 

Representatives from various faiths will share a few words and prayers from their own faiths. There will also be various musicians [including me] who will offer their talents to uplift the spirit of this gathering.

Please come and invite your friends to this spiritual evening and meet new friends from different faiths and traditions.

For more information please email Rhonda Williams at [music art 2 heal [at] aol [dot] com] or contact me through the contact form and I will email you a phone number you can call.

NEW!  Check my Links page for Pandora stations that I have created or subscribe to.

"What is Pandora?" you may ask.  Pandora is the coolest thing in the world.  From a simple perspective, Pandora is an internet radio station that you can customize based on your musical preferences.  To create a station, you tell it one or more songs or artists that you like.  It will play songs with similar musical properties to the songs you have given it, or to songs by the artists you have chosen.  As you listen to the station, you can fine-tune your station by giving the songs that play a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."  It's a great way to get introduced to new music and artists that you haven't heard before.

The awesome thing about Pandora is how it works.  The creator, Tim Westergren, was a computer science student at Stanford and also an indie musician.  Pandora combines principles of artificial intelligence with music theory.  The creators came up with a set of over 200 musical properties, such as vocal style, syncopation, production characteristics, instruments used, etc.  They tested these parameters to come up with the set of parameters that was the most reproducible and worked the best for categorizing music.  Every song in their vast library is given a profile based on this set of musical properties.  They actually have a team of people with music degrees to create a profile for each new song that is added to their library.  So what's unique about Pandora is that the system is actually looking for songs with similar musical properties to the songs that you put in to your station.  

You may be wondering how I know about how Pandora works.  Well, as it turns out I met Tim Westergren at Stanford before he launched Pandora (just once, but I recognized his name later when I was reading about Pandora).  Shortly after Pandora launched, I helped out with a town hall meeting he did for Pandora in DC, and I got to talk with him one on one, and he explained to me the history of Pandora and how it worked.

I should thank Justin Crane for telling me about Pandora in the first place.  A few years ago, I was complaining that I didn't know how to find new music that I liked, and he turned me on to Pandora.  Thanks, Justin!  Through Pandora I have discovered some new artists I really like, such as Jose Gonzalez and Melody Gardot.

On Pandora, I'm currently listening to this.

A friend of mine was looking for mp3s for a Birth of Bahá’u’lláh celebration she is putting together for tonight (click here for information about the celebration tonight in DC) and asked for recommendations for "upbeat, funky, soulful Bahá'í music for everyday enjoyment." I sent her the following response, which I thought it might be a good idea to share more broadly.  


go to http://www.cdbaby.com and search on "bahai." for many of these, you can buy individual mp3s instead of (or in addition to) ordering the physical CD. My top recommendations among these would be:

• Devon Gundry (definitely!)
• Temple of Light (compilation, browse the songs for ones you like)
• Visceral Melee: Lotus in the Mudd (I love the song "Found You")
• Julie Rosser: Beloved (the song "Beloved" is a great one for Birth of Bahá’u’lláh celebrations)
• Maureen Hunter & Niaz McGuire: Higher Vision (one of my favorites!)
• The Workshop for the Arts: Unrestrained as the Wind (diverse compilation; Ruhi Book 2 quotes set to music by various artists, executive produced by moi - also available at http://www.earbuzz.com/workshopforthearts where Workshop for the Arts gets a higher percentage of what you pay)
• Best of RadioNur 2003 (some gems on here--I love "Tender Plant")
• SKY (female a cappella; some new age, some jazzy - great for devotions)

This doesn't come up under the "bahai" search on CDBaby, but it's quite good, and all based on the Bahá'í Writings:
http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/GustaffBesunguPamHillandAliYou

Also, there's a Bahá'í mp3 site: http://www.divinenotes.com. If you haven't heard Leonor Dely, you must. It's all in Spanish, with rocking South American rhythms. 

Lest I forget my favorite Bahá'í hip-hop group:

Nabil & Karim

• on Facebook
• to buy CD
• to buy mp3s

and if you don't have my album, CD & mp3s are available here (I would recommend "Witness" for Birth of Bahá’u’lláh celebrations)

I will be performing at the Arlington Prayer Station, 7:30 p.m. on October 12 in a private home.  Contact me for more details or email mitko(at)befriendedstranger(dot)com.

My performance will consist of a musical introduction to grassroots service activities conducted by Baha'is around the world for the spiritual enrichment of their local communities.  I will be playing a mostly acoustic set of my own compositions and a few covers related to study circles, devotional gatherings, children's classes, and junior youth groups.

"Thousands upon thousands, embracing the diversity of the entire human family, are engaged in systematic study of the Creative Word in an environment that is at once serious and uplifting. ... Responding to the inmost longing of every heart to commune with its Maker, they carry out acts of collective worship in diverse settings, uniting with others in prayer, awakening spiritual susceptibilities, and shaping a pattern of life distinguished for its devotional character. ... Aware of the aspirations of the children of the world and their need for spiritual education, they extend their efforts widely to involve ever-growing contingents of participants in classes that become centres of attraction for the young... They assist junior youth to navigate through a crucial stage of their lives and to become empowered to direct their energies toward the advancement of civilization. And with the advantage of a greater abundance of human resources, an increasing number of them are able to express their faith through a rising tide of endeavours that address the needs of humanity in both their spiritual and material dimensions." 

--The Universal House of Justice, April 2008

So it turns out that 'What the Fire Is' is difficult to record.  Ideally when recording, you record each track separately, to what is called a click track, which is basically a beat.  Recording the tracks separately makes them easier to edit, and having the click track makes it easier to add other parts, either live or programmed.  This approach to recording is not straightforward with 'Fire,' as the tempo is very free-flowing, so it doesn't work with a click, and it's difficult to record the piano and vocals separately.  The recording this weekend didn't come out well, so I'm going to need to come up with a different strategy for recording...