And Now He Has Wings is sonic poetry embodying life’s most profound triumphs and tragedies through intricate, vivid folk soundscapes.
Soulful folk singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Ram Dass delivers a collection of 5 strikingly emotional tracks on his upcoming EP, And Now He Has Wings, out December 3rd. Dass is in the midst of his return to the commercial music community following the success of his 2014 collaboration, “From Within,” with Nirinjan Kaur and Matthew Schoening which premiered at #1 on the Apple New Age Music charts. And Now He Has Wings is a deeply personal project that captures the raw emotions inherent to life’s most impactful moments of beauty and pain; ultimately, it vulnerably details Dass’ experience processing the grief and recovery following the loss of his newborn son. Dass’ hypnotic, stripped production speaks to the soul of listeners on every track. The artist – with a background primarily as a producer and studio musician – masterfully weaves harmony capturing the emotional intricacies of his experience with a stunning integrity communicating feelings beyond words. He delivers brilliant musical reflections of formative moments from this emotional time in his life, each track embodying different elements of the story.
Credits:
Composed by Ram Dass Khalsa, Bogdan Djukic, Matias Da Viá
Ram Dass Khalsa: Nylon Guitar, Electric Guitar, Vocals, Drum Programming, Clarinet, Producer, Engineer
Bogdan Djukic: Drum programming, Violin, Vocals, Percussion, Electric Guitar
Matías De Via: Vocals
Jared May: Bass
KJ Song: Backing Vocals
Piper Payne: Mastering Engineer
Bogdan Djukic: Drum programming, Violin, Vocals, Percussion
The self-produced and recorded introduction to the EP, “Elegy For A Yellow Bird,” is a delicate instrumental track bearing a heavy-hearted recount of discovering and nursing an injured baby bird back to health shortly after the passing of their child. For Dass, this story represents the deep compassion for those around him that was exemplified by his devastating loss. Ethereal strings mingle with melancholic fingerpicking on “To Be Born,” the second track on the EP that embodies an optimistic message of finding light through suffering, in spite of pain. This track beautifully captures the essence of the EP, which for Dass, represented “his experience of finding beauty and joy within grief.” He learned that “happiness does not preclude having hard feelings, but rather includes them.” Dass concludes the EP with the title track, “And Now He Has Wings,” a stunning composition exploring the experience of death. “I wanted to show this process as a musical painting,” he says, “and tell the story of someone releasing their human form and growing ‘wings’ into another realm.”
Listeners can stream And Now He Has Wings on all major streaming platforms on December 3rd.
More about Ram Dass:
Ram Dass experiences music as spiritually and emotionally restorative. His music opens the heart and stirs the soul. As a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, he inspires a unique potency through collaboration and improvisation that creates art greater than the sum of its parts. His constant dedication to render the beauty of human experience, triumph, tragedy, and beyond, has led him to the world stage. He performed at the 2019 GRAMMY Awards, has played at Carnegie Hall, and continues to perform at venues around the world every year.
Ram Dass is at the forefront of a movement of musicians aiming to bring healing and solace to the world. He produced his last collaboration, From Within, with Nirinjan Kaur and Matthew Schoening, in 2014. It premiered at #1 on the Apple New Age Music charts. In 2021, he is once again drawn to create a series of collaborative musical projects born from his own deeply personal human experience of joy and sorrow.
Born into a family of professional classical musicians, Ram Dass was raised to appreciate all musical genres and find the unique nuances of every song and composition he heard. He developed a near-encyclopedic knowledge of wide swaths of the musical landscape, which he calls upon to create novel and moving approaches to music production and songwriting
Connect with Ram Dass: Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
