by Joe Viglione
Jonathan Goldman founded Spirit Music in the 1970s (not to be confused with the band Spirit), and was lead guitarist of the Boston-based group Tennie Komar & the Silencers. He purchased a home owned by Stephen Stills in Boulder, CO, and moved the operation out west. An acclaimed lecturer, this album won two Visionary awards in 1999, Best Album of the Year and Best Meditation Healing Album. The sounds are soothing and spread across 62 minutes-plus on this CD. There is a 20-page booklet which explains how to use Chakra Chants as a "self-healing meditation tool," as a "sonic environment for creating balance and alignment" -- which, in lay terms, probably means as background sound -- as "a tool...to actively create sound with and...resonate your own Chakras," and as listening music. It is an impressive work jam-packed with spiritual information, including the value of the cover art as an "energy balancing tool." If this sounds like emperor's new clothes stuff to the unenlightened, well, those involved in this spiritual quest take their work, and their art, very seriously. The material is put together with love and devotion, and simply reading the information that comes with the disc is as unique an experience as listening to the sounds Goldman and his associates have manifested, to use their term. For the listener who doesn't believe sound can heal, it is still a soothing listening experience and worth a visit.