Heartlanguage's Musical Metamorphosis...

The Evolution of a Dream
The Band is now two-plus years old, and has its own story constantly unfolding, but the journey of Heartlanguage's evolution is a much longer story in time.

To use a butterfly analogy, the "egg" was a song presented by my Muse that I could hear and see, like a vivid dream, performed by a band the size and form of what Heartlanguage is today. That song was God of Love, and that year was 1978. I wrote it in pencil, and sang it, whistled and hummed it, for years. A writer of many forms, primarily poetry, the art of songwriting was not mine then-just one that I admired in many others. In 1996 the egg hatched. In a pivotal year in my life, song after song seemed to pour out of me.

Between February and December of that year, more than 50 songs seemed to write themselves through me, and I began to study the art and craft of songwriting. In the middle of that year, I conceded to my Muse"that expression through music was the Path choosing me, though it wasn't clear where that path was going-only that I had to follow.

It wasn't until 1999 that I first took one of 150-plus works from the pages to the recording studio—a simple song called Singing Waters—and the young "caterpillar" began to feed in the recording studio—growing with the interaction with talented producers Kevin Harris, and then double Emmy winning Tony Saunders. At first, I began singing my own works, but about three works into my studio experience, I chose to let a talented singer, for a planned duet, record the song solo, and discovered the great joy of a song having its own identity aside from my voice, hearing its essence expressed, as purely as it had originally inspired me to write it.

That began my unusual path of musical creation as a songwriter–producer, rather than the singer–songwriter. I believed, and wanted to celebrate, that each song's story could perhaps be told best by the most authentic voice for it I could find.

With human empathy at the core of what compelled my songwriting, I began to cross into many genres. I'd grown up listening to, and appreciating, what Duke Ellington named, simply, "good music" as one of the only two real forms. I simply wanted to write what I believed were good songs to my own subjectivity, and hear them first as their executive producer.

Eight years of recording with multiple voices and genres, culminating with the release of a 6th and 7th CD, I was able to finally define what my artistic goal was, with the tag-line Many Voices/One Heart.

That concept became the "cocoon" for the Band, Heartlanguage. The last two CD's were first released in February, 2007, and the Band to begin playing pieces from those CD's, rehearsed, in its structure shaped by the God of Love dream song mentioned above, in April of 2007. Out of the cocoon, new songs from my repertoire, with new arrangements, and new songs from the joy of collaboration with the many talented band members, continue the unfolding of this "butterfly's" wings.

As an ensemble structure of 15 pieces, not surprisingly, there has been an influx and outflow of personnel—eight original members remaining, several more for more than a year, and a sprinkle of new faces. What remains constant, are shining, talented people who love this Dream, and are making it Real.

What is the "Dream"? To say to the world, "We can make this a better place-together!" and to say it, through Music.

—Steven B.

Music. Change. The World. Speak Heartlanguage

"Music can change the world". That quote, ascribed to Bono, has already proven its truth. Most of us alive today are vividly aware music has changed the world. We are particularly aware of the synchronous call and response from music to cultural change that has helped awaken the Zeitgeist of our times.

Music's best friend reaching out across cultural and geographic divides, in the last, amazing 60 years, has been electronic media conduits. But, it is the Music itself, that we are alive, and attuned to, that has always been the cause of our atoms dancing with Life. Many anthropologists believe man's first communications in "intelligent" sound were through musical expression.

Modern neurology has shown that music communicates to, and affects, the neo, limbic, and both hemispheres of the cerebral cortex, and consequently, our entire nervous system. Even the deaf have measurable response to external music, and, we know from Beethoven and others, many deaf hear music internally.

We can endlessly dissect and describe it, (some objective scientists can only say it's "hallucination" ) in truth, we cannot say what music is, or where it truly comes from, before it is born on a score sheet, played on an instrument, or sung. For all human beings, Music, like Love, is a universal language. As Love is perceived in our spiritual "heart", so perhaps are the rhythms of music most acutely perceived by the rhythms of our physical heart. To communicate with the unity of our spiritual and physical "Heart", is the precept, inspiration, and purpose of Heartlanguage Music.

This project was born in songs heard internally, later performed and recorded in studios, and finally manifested as a 15 piece ensemble whose first rehearsal was April 3, 2007. Heartlanguage's obvious tag-line began as "the band with the face of the human race". Our members have been Red, Black, White, Yellow, and Brown; Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Native Spiritualists, Agnostic, and atheist. Ages from late teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties-and multiple first languages. We are a living example of humans making harmony, when we choose to express ourselves through "heartlanguage"-love and music.

When, on Inauguration Day, 2009, millions of people gathered in Washington, D.C., I could hear the Sound of our Message.

What kind of music is it? We like to believe it's "good music", first of all. Our young drummer calls it RAZZ-rock, R&B, jazz, reaching past old boundaries, reaching for change, reaching for the world.

—Steven B.