A Place Called Peace $1.22

About A Place Called Peace

The newest album of Native American Flute music from award-winning, New Mexico musician Randy Granger features eight original, peaceful songs. Solo instrumental flute numbers like "The Dog Star" and the plaintive "Rio Grande Lullaby" are expressive meditations of pure, clean flute music reminiscent of R. Carlos Nakai or Douglas Spotted Eagle. The ancient spiritual quality of New Mexico and the Southwest is distilled through Granger’s emotive playing style. "Ghost Dancers" and "Ancestor’s Ocean Voyage" feature the Drone Native American flute also called a Double Barrel flute. One flute barrel plays the octave drone like a Bagpipe while the other barrel plays like a regular flute. The sound is rich, haunting and textural. Granger adds percussion instruments like the djembe and ocean drum as well as higher octave flutes for sound is flushed, moving and orchestrated. On "Double-Barrel Train Wreck" he turns the double barrel flute into a percussive, beat-box instrument that imitates a train starting up and moving up to full steam. The end is a surprising bluesy riff that sounds like an electric guitar, flute and locomotive all collided. The YouTube video of this song is one of his most popular. Other tracks like "Apache Tears" blend rattles, Indian Buffalo drums and flutes resulting in music that is almost visual. The Hang drum from Switzerland is again combined with Native flutes on A Place Called Peace. "Chaco Moon Meditation" features the ethereal Hang with the Anasazi Native American flute for what is surely and innovative combination and perfect for yoga or meditating.

The opening track "Za Zee Za Zu Zing" is a delightful World-Pop sing-a-long song with a nonsensical chorus that is already a favorite on Granger’s MySpace page. A Place Called Peace is an exploration of both the peaceful qualities of the Native American flute and the state of peace it inspires. While drums and flute may seem a well-worked and almost cliché approach, every song on this album is fresh and inspired. Granger, a native of New Mexico, is also of Native American and Mestizo ancestry. The very soil and water of the southwest is as much a part of the musician as it is the music.