Being of the Sun – its history and reader comments

Posted on December 10, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Art by Alicia Bay Laurel, Audio/Video, Being of the Sun book, Blog, Friends and Mentors, Illustration commissions and licenses, Interviews with Alicia, Shop, Songs from Being of the Sun - music album.

*Cover image of Sun and Earth kissing in a cosmic rainbow dance.*

*Book trailer for the new English language edition, published in October 2021:*

I made this video in collaboration with digital designer Karen Tsugawa, displaying many illustrated pages from the book. The sound track is a recording made in 1973 by Ramón, of us performing together an improvised piece titled “Everything is Flowing,” track 9 from our album, Songs from Being of the Sun. Ramón is playing his signature pentatonically tuned zither, and I am playing an open-tuned guitar. I suggest watching it at full screen with headphones!

You can obtain a new copy of Being of the Sun here!

In the above photo, taken in 2004, I visited Ramon Sender Barayon and his wife, Judith Levy Sender, in Noe Valley, San Francisco. Ramón and I each signed each of our remaining copies of our book, Being of the Sun, saved over countless moves since 1973, when it was published by Harper & Row, Publishers.

Interview of Alicia Bay Laurel on “Natural Born Alchemist” podcast about Being of the Sun:
https://www.naturalbornalchemist.com/episodes/2021/11/29/episode-297-being-of-the-sun

October 1, 2021 – the first new English edition of Being of the Sun since its first edition was published in 1973 by Harper & Row, published by Echo Point Books & Media, is released, at last!

On May 1, 2020 Ramón Sender Barayón and I signed a contract for the first English edition since 1973 of our book, Being of the Sun, with Echo Point Books & Media, a small publisher based in Brattleboro, Vermont.

On December 31, 2018: El Mundo, one of the most esteemed journals in Spain, published an article about Ramón Sender Barayon, and the documentary film about his life and work written and directed by Luis Olano.

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In the early ‘70’s, while living in on a mountain farm near Popayán, Colombia, Ramon and I wrote Being of the Sun, released as a companion volume to Living on the Earth. The book’s central premise is that each person can find his or her own to way to a dialogue with the Divine, without middlemen, hierarchy, or externally imposed rules of living, while borrowing practices from many traditions to enhance this dialogue. We then offered, as an example, various practices that we found useful, especially practices honoring nature and its cycles, the vibrations of music, and the life-giving light of the sun.

buy Being of the Sun

Ramon’s unique contributions stem from his practices of meditation on sunlight and his background as an avant-garde composer and musician. He was, along with Mort Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley, one of the composers who formed the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early 1960’s, and collaborated with audio engineer Don Buchla and Mort Subotnick in the invention of first synthesizer built on the West Coast, the Buchla Box (which was contemporary with the Moog, built on the East Coast).

My illustrations in Being of the Sun are far more lush, imaginative and colorful than those in Living on the Earth, and I bravely offered a drawing of a beautiful young woman defecating into a hole in the earth.

Twenty-seven years after its publication, I recorded three of the songs from Being of the Sun on my first CD, Music From Living on the Earth. In 2013, Ramón and I released Songs from Being of the Sun, a CD remastered from Ramón’s 1973 reel-to-reel tape of the two of us performing songs, chants and improvisations from our book, just before it was published. In 2015, I recorded three more of my songs first published in Being of the Sun on my seventh CD, More Songs From Living on the Earth, and, in 2018, on my eighth CD, Alicia Bay Laurel: Live In Japan, I perform a medley of the four chants for the solstices and equinoxes. I also performed this medley in the film I made in collaboration with filmmaker Luis Olano, of my live one-woman two-act storytelling and musical stage performance, Living on the Earth – The Musical.

If you scroll down, you’ll find a chart I made for the new edition of Being of the Sun, showing the pages on which the songs, chants and improvisations appear, and the locations of existing recordings of them.

Being of the Sun was initially not well received; in 1973, Rolling Stone declared it “the worst gift book of the year.” However, in the intervening years, it became a cult classic, often referenced on Pagan/Wiccan websites, the illustrations pirated into various alternative journals. People spiritually attuned to nature, for example, practitioners of Shinto, love this book. The Japanese translation of this book has been in print from 1974 to 1980, and from 2007 to the present. And some visionaries, like author/journalist/professor of design Alastair Gordon, saw the magic in it right away: “I still cherish the original editions I have of these magical works… Being of the Sun should be required reading for all earthlings. I truly love your spirit and vision…”

Aya Noguchi clothes with BOTS drawings 2015

Since then, I’ve been licensing the illustrations to fashion designers in Japan. The Hayashi Sisters did a write-up in Japan Vogue Online, published May 25, 2015, about the Salon de Balcony summer fashion line (photo above), which includes clothing and accessories printed with illustrations from Being of the Sun.

Here is the synopsis/review on Amazon dot com:

“A do-it-yourself spirituality and music book, Being of the Sun (Harper and Row, 1973), is the sequel to Alicia Bay Laurel’s classic, best-selling guide, Living on the Earth (Random House 1971 and 2000.) Co-written with author, avant-garde composer and solar yogi Ramón Sender Barayón, Being of the Sun provides a guide to creating one’s own religion, and also offers a compendium of spiritual practices the authors found valuable. Similar to Living On The Earth, Being of the Sun is entirely handwritten in Alicia’s flowing cursive script and illustrated on every page with her line drawings, a shining example of her immensely influential original book design. However, unlike the simple brown lines and cover of Alicia’s first book, Being of the Sun’s design features purple ink throughout, a colorful cover, plus eight full color illustrations within. Ramón created sheet music of the original spiritual songs and chants he and Alicia wrote for the book. Being of the Sun offers a window on hippie life in the early 70’s, and remains a cult classic among nature-worshippers to this day.”
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Here is the cover for the still unpublished Spanish edition. Still hoping to release it!
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In 2013, Indigo With Stars, Inc. released “Songs from Being of the Sun,” a remastered version on CD of an archival reel-to-reel recording made by Ramón Sender Barayon in 1973, of me and Ramón performing some of the sacred nature chants we created for Being of the Sun, just before it was published. It’s available as a physical CD here.

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5 star review on CD Baby of “Songs from Being of the Sun” by Gordon Kennedy, author of Children of the Sun, an astonishing book that reveals the 19th century European roots of the hippie movement in the USA:

“In The Sunshine Of Your Love”

“Being of the Sun is an enchanted Solar Mass of relaxing, charming, seductive sounds. If I could pop into the book version like a superflex Gumby, this musical soundtrack would rejuvenate me – and I can’t wait to meet all of the colorful sun children. I visualized Gods-dog and even she sports a nice tan.

“Inside my sauna, the harmonies feed my inner sweat glands with radiant waves of helio-therapy. I surrender.”

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Here are some reviews the book, Being of the Sun, from Amazon.com, as of February 2014:

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Gregory Sams sungazing behind his copy of BOTS 2017

Our friend, organic food product pioneer and philosopher Gregory Sams, author of a wonderful solar praise and scientific information book called Sun of gOd, received a copy in April 2017, and posted:

“Being of the Sun” was written 25 years before Sun of gOd. This beautiful book by Alicia Bay Laurel and Ramon Sender taps into the same spirit. Inspirational! All lovingly hand-written and illustrated.

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Here is a quilted fan letter from fiber artist Tomoko Yamada, which she sent to me in 2008:

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Tigger Wheel was a child living at Wheeler Ranch commune while I was writing Living on the Earth. We’ve stayed in touch all these years; now she and her husband are retired special education teachers in Texas. She sent me this a few years back:

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Another letter to me and to Ramon Sender Barayon from deLIGHTful Gregory Sams:

“After an initial delightful rush into it, I have now finally got to the end of your incredible testament, Being of the Sun. Sorry it took so long, but maybe I was waiting for the Summer to kick in. I’m just amazed at how tuned in you two lovers were, and to what a depth, all those years ago! Thinking that perhaps those sacraments and the light of our Sun gave a helpful and loving hand. It is at once a beautiful spiritual work of art and a practical guide to living a good life – a fitting accolade to the true light of all our lives.

“I was thinking, going through it, that there were so many pages I wanted to post-it note that it would be silly to do so. And then I see the hand-written index at the back. Astounding! The book covers so very much, even how to hand-make your own musical instruments and wind chimes. Got me wondering if you ever assembled that drone orchestra. Loved your words on food and your expression of the consciousness that pervades all. You both really deserved to retire on that book but hey, you’re happy and Sun still blesses us. I’m really happy to know that a copy of my book is in your hands. They are so different in approach, yet complement each other so well.”

Gregory Sams
Cultural Change Agent, Organic Food Pioneer
Author of Sun of gOd
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VIVIENDO EN LA TIERRA & SER DEL SOL

“Living On The Earth” (Viviendo en la Tierra) es una guía o manual para la vida sostenible, comunal y alternativa creada por Alicia Bay Laurel en el rancho-comuna Wheeler, en el norte de California, a finales de los años sesenta. Fue un éxito de ventas a principios de la década siguiente, y sin ser un libro de cocina, fue incluido en un prestigioso recopilatorio como uno de los 100 libros de cocina más influyentes de la historia de los EEUU. Está traducido al japonés y desde que el año pasado Kachina Ediciones se lanzara a editarlo en español, manteniendo los dibujos originales, podemos tener esta verdadera obra de arte en nuestra biblioteca. Pocos años después de su publicación, Alicia viajó con Ramon Sender a Colombia para investigar a fondo los cultos solares y en 1973 publicaron juntos otra maravilla: “Being Of The Sun” (Ser del Sol), una especie de manual para crear tu propia religión y vivir de una forma más consciente con la naturaleza. Está construido como un diario, e incluye las partituras y los cánticos asociados a diferentes rituales. No tuvo el mismo éxito que su predecesor, y la revista Rolling Stone llegó a catalogarlo como “el peor regalo que puedes hacer estas navidades”. A nosotros nos parece sin embargo, además de una obra de arte, un documento histórico de gran valor. Muy recientemente hemos conocido la fantástica noticia de que Kachina Ediciones se va a encargar de su edición en español para el próximo verano.

Luis Olano
Writer and Director of the documentary, “Sender Barayon: A Trip into the Light”
December 2018
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その黄色の本は(たぶんボロボロになった)今見つからない。その次にでた「太陽とともに生きる」だけ今、手元ある。
ローレルの葉っぱが好きでこの名前をつけたことも書いてあった。

真理をいつもとなりでささやいてくれた本だった。

一緒に行かないかしら✨

That Yellow book [“living on the earth”’] I can’t find it now.
The next, “being with the sun” is now on hand.
I liked Laurel’s leaf, and it was written that I put this name on it.

It was a book that was always whispered and whispered to the truth.

I wonder if I’m going to go with you ✨

Ai Kaga

friend I met in Totsuka, listening to the sea

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Singer-songwriter Keiko Ao Aqua Jimbo and her best friend, Sen, love Being of the Sun!

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Certain books influenced me profoundly as a young teenager. I remember pouring over The Last Whole Earth Catalog and planning a theoretical venture into the wilderness. When I was thirteen, my brother gave me a book called “Being of the Sun”. I studied that book for months and began a process of developing my own traditions as a result. I don’t know what happened to my original copy, but a few years ago, I found a new one. Here are a couple of pages:

Suzie Hall Rosse
Alliance For Sustainable Communities – Lehigh Valley and Morning Star Center
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
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That book was my bible as a teenager!
I colored in it and hung out with it in a sacred space I set up in my room to do my yoga…oh, that’s right! That’s where I learned many yoga poses too!

At the time, I didn’t really know anyone who shared that world with me…it was a window into my dreams for my life and really stimulated my imagination and added magic and warmth, color and joy to my days and nights….

Surma Karen Ollice
Paia, Maui, Hawaii

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I will introduce you to the book that touched the heart.
This is my forever Bible.

In the light of the sun that lives us,
Feeling the wind and nature
To live comfortably and live,
For us now
That’s exactly what I need.

The author of this book
Live by Alicia Bay Laurel
How to live primitive
Yoga, mantra and breathing
It’s new when you look at it!
It is also the magic of the scales from the eyes,
It is also my life of the past.

Alicia Bay Laurel 💛
I felt you’re really magical of using all of nature 🌈🌲💖!

One words about ‘’Mekarauroko’’ ,
the scale from the eye is a Japanese Proverb,

To see the light ,
to be awakened to the truth,
to have the scales fall from one’s eyes
are the meetings .

Thank you for blowing your wonderful wind into my life!

Ako Usugi
Yoga Instructor
Owner of Natural Style Yoga salon ナチュラルスタイルヨガサロン
Kaga, Japan
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The peacenik holy book.

Nancy Taylor
Holistic chiropractor
Charlottesville, Virginia
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I read your book, Being of the Sun, and I got inspired by the life you wrote about in this book. These days, I spend more time in nature, and it brings me much calm and peace in my mind.

Lei Aloha
Smile Communicator
Izumo, Shimane, Japan
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I have my old copy. It has been such a beautiful influence in my life. Alicia Bay Laurel, I am truly beholden to you for your countless gifts, books that changed my life, set me on my path, and were friends to me when no one else understood. Treasured with all my heart.

Thank you.

Beth Owls Daughter
Teacher, Writer, Seer, and Dream-whisperer
https://www.owlsdaughter.com

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Alicia Bay Laurel: So thrilled to see the harvest goddess smiling in your winter solstice altar, dear Hecate Doe!

Hecate Doe: Alicia Bay Laurel, you already know I love me some toilet paper roll Goddesses! You should have seen my Mabon one dancing on my altar, and my Imbolc one was quite cheeky ! I’ve made various Yule ones for 50 years (ack) but this is the first year I’m diligently making one for each Sabbat. Although I design and change up the skirt and blouse on each one over the years, the original inspiration came from your beautiful book.

Alicia Bay Laurel: Wow, I am very honored that a page from Being of the Sun has become so deeply woven into your spiritual life, dear Hecate Doe!

Hecate Doe: Alicia Bay Laurel… and then some. Because it was before scanners, my books are all cut up, the pieces carefully guarded. My 50-year-old son was thrilled to hear that I’ve “met” you; he still remembers the words to [the song] “Receiver Believer” and can play Winter Solstice chant on the old recorder. For the last 50 years, we’ve always sung and played “Receiver Believer” every Yule!

hecate-does-solstice-advent-altar-90-dpi

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Here are the two pages from the new edition of Being of the Sun that give the locations of the existing recordings of the music in the book. All of these recordings are available from our online shop (there’s a link in the horizontal menu bar at the top of each page of this website).

Ramón Sender Barayón and Alicia Bay Laurel perform together on November 13, 2016 at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, California, as part of Alicia’s song and story show, Living on the Earth: The Musical. Alicia’s clothing is printed with the pages of her book.

*Alicia Bay Laurel and Ramón Sender Barayón making music together in 1973.*

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Dear Alicia,

Just thinking about you this morning as I was going through an old box of books I used for research on SPACED OUT and came across these two beauties…I’d completely forgotten about them!

Your work still inspires and brings joyto so many… (moi meme)

Much Love, Health and Beatitude for 2021

Alastair Gordon
Author, Architecture Critic, Visiting Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Design
New York, New York

Dear Alastair,

Thank you for this loving message, which brings me joy. And beatitude!

I have great respect for you and your work, and am thrilled to have had my work be part of it.

Last year, I finished the layout for the first new English language edition of Being of the Sun since 1973. I thought of you while I was restoring the color drawing that you used in your great book, Spaced Out.

Wishing you and Barbara every blessing,

Alicia
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Being of the Sun was so amazingly influential for me. I saw a copy in the Lafayette CA library when I was 14 in the ’80s, checked it out and based a large part of my life on it. My approach to spirituality was influenced by your book.

Neil R. Rasmussen
Los Angeles, California

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Beautiful Extraordinary Book!

Brigitte Mars
Herbalist, Professor, Author, Plant Expert, Natural Food Chef
https://brigittemars.com/

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Intended to be a companion volume to Living on the Earth, this book goes deep into a communal way of life in 1973.

Alicia Bay Laurel and Ramon Sender share their vision of yoga, healing, sun songs, moon songs, meditation, ceremonies, communes, solitudes, and more in a how-to format connecting us back to our inner child, naked & free!

May the holy words found in this book heal the world at a time when we need them most!

Tracy Conti and Stephen McCarty
Solar Return Shop
Echo Park, Los Angeles, California

*Front cover and two interior color illustrations from the 2021 Echo Point Books edition of Being of* *the Sun.*

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Hecate Doe’s lively Winter Solstice altar, including one of her Being of the Sun paper dolls. Here is the gorgeous prayer she wrote for the occasion:

Spirits of the Center, I come to you on this magickal HolyDay as I light this candle, reaching out, opening to, absorbing the blending of the joy, inspiration, and harmony of the East, the life force, passion, and healing transformation of the South, the intuitive wisdom, magick, and peace of the West, and the grounding, fertility, and nurturance of the North, as I release my suffering, my bonds, my regrets, and my fears to bring me into deep connection with the primal Truth and Divinity of my Higher Self in the year to come and always. Blessed Be, so mote it be.

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I finished reading Being of the Sun, and I loved it.
It’s beautiful, and I can’t wait to see my dad read it to my [future] children one day.
It will be a lovely bed time book.

Bianca Scott
Herbalist and Writer
Tigard, Oregon
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*Natural foods pioneer and author Gregory Sam’s foreword to the 2021 English language edition of Being of the Sun.*

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Meg Henschel colored some of the drawings in Being of the Sun.
She posted these on Facebook in 2016.

*Illustrations from Being of the Sun colored by Meg Henschel.*

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We don’t own or keep much in our lives, but this is one of the most treasured. This book came into our lives and gave us such joy. Wonderful images and genuine words of love and care for the planet and each other. Gratitude each day for the arrival of the Morning Star, bringer of life and joy to each and every living being on this planet.

Neil and Ness
Getting high on nature

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Dear Alicia,

My name is Alix, from Amsterdam. Currently I am on the island of Ibiza, in Spain.

Yesterday, I had the most perfect, aligned, beautiful ceremony with the mushroom. It told me to step in to the light, for I am a light being. It told me to always search for the Sun.

Then this morning I stumbled upon a vendor with retro books. The first one I was drawn to was your book Being of the Sun. I hope that you feel, as much as I do, how your time capsule found the right place at exactly the right time.

Thank you for your wisdom, for I will hand it over to my unborn children.

With love and sunshine, also to Ramón

Alix

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Being of the Sun found me at my local used book store the other day. It was the first book I noticed, and grabbed it . Being of the Sun speaks to my soul! I’m so grateful it found me. I want to thank you personally from my soul to yours.

It is almost everything I already believe in, and soo much more. I didn’t realize that it was the sequel to Living on the Earth, which I actually just went in search for and ordered along with the new edition of Being of the Sun, because I want to be able to color it, but didn’t want to ruin the original. I’m so happy that your book had found me, and grateful for being, and to get the chance to thank you for inspiring me and soo many others.

Its like you said in your book, the human race is awakening, and the universe listens to everything that we say feel or think. I’ve recently been awakening over the past few years, which has been a blessing, yet difficult at the same time, just because of the world we live in. I find soo much comfort in your books and I’m soo happy that you decided to write and publish them.

I hope that your books continue to find their way to more beautiful souls in search of their own spirituality, just like me

Stephanie Rose Gracon
Avon Lake, Ohio

*Stephanie Rose Gracon with her 1973 first edition of Being of the Sun*

*Dedication page from Being of the Sun, photo by Stephanie Rose Gracon*

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How lovely it was to live largely outdoors in nature back then. It didn’t rain all summer (1973)while I built my [stained glass] dome to live in. The only bugs I encountered were yellow jackets. I wonder how many people have made stained glass panels on a table under the sun, naked but not too hot. That’s when your book “Being of the Sun” was so illuminating.

This is the “Breathing Cloud” It has lots of openings for air and there are prisms to breathe rainbow colored light.

Caroling Wholeo Geary
Artist and creator of the Wholeo Dome

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I am loving experimenting “modes/scales” from Being of the Sun currently ( got Japanese one from second hand book store, very lucky!) Will get living on earth in Japanese soon too.

Thank you for your beautiful creation and being you.

Momo Hamada
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

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Portia F, of Todmorden, Yorkshire, UK, sent me her copy of Being of the Sun with her wonderful colorations of many of my line drawings, along with a note:

“I have cherished the lightness of touch of Being of the Sun for many years. I live near this lovely landscape [the Yorkshire Dales] in the UK and was definitely a hippie in the ’70s/’80s. Many thanks for your continuing creativity and positivity!”

Above is Portia’s coloration of page one of Being of the Sun. The heat of the sun is palpable!

Portia’s color interpretation of page 7 gave me the feeling of a divinely enlightened mime.

On the reverse of page 7, on page 8, is a miraculous serendipity of design from the ink coming through the paper from page 7. I feel the intense light and shadow of the rainforest in this one.

Thank you for sending these, dear Portia!

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https://soundcloud.com/alicia-bay-laurel/summer-solstice

Happy Solstice! I’m delighted to share this short and sweet offering by a true master, Alicia Bay Laurel. Her first book, Living on the Earth has been inspiring me for nearly five decades. Imagine my surprise when I found her companion book, Being of the Sun just last year. Please support this amazing artist and wisdom keeper!

E Georges Grinnell
Human Being at Here & Now

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A Facebook post from February 29, 2016 about Being of the Sun:

I received today a request from a postgraduate literature student at a university in London who is writing a thesis on spirituality in books from the 1960s to the present, and wondered if I would send her a summation of Ramon Sender‘s and my spiritual book, Being of the Sun, which was published by Harper & Row in 1973, and which is still published by Soshisha, Ltd. in Tokyo. I told her I was honored by her request, and scanned the opening chapter, which sums up the book and its intentions. In case any of you would like to read it, or just look at the pictures, I am posting those pages here.

Note from 2024:

Eight years ago I did not know I would be publishing a new edition in English of Being of the Sun in 2021. The pandemic offered an opportunity to step back from concert, art and book touring, and create new editions of both Living on the Earth and Being of the Sun.

I was thrilled to do the page layouts digitally – for the first time – with digital designer Karen Tsugawa coaching me over Zoom. Unlike the editions published in the 1970s, the colors of these illustrations are true to those of the drawings I made in 1972, because I made the scans myself and had hands-on control of the layout.

The result of this collaboration is available here.

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Oh, how I love my new copy of Being Of The Sun!
The inscription meant so much to me! Thank you!

If I would have known in my 20 year old self that one day we would be friends, I would not have believed it!

Peace and Joy to you always with deep love,
Mammamoon

Elizabeth Lunt
Little Farm School
Limerick, Maine

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Being of the Sun is Alicia Bay Laurel’s second book for the ages. Following on the acclaim for her consummate natural lifestyle guide, Living on the Earth, and partnering with the renowned avant garde composer and yogi Ramón Sender, Being of the Sun explores the ways in which a person can strip away the trappings of Western culture and “be here now” in a more natural and spiritual manner through daily practice, meditation, song, dance, and celebration of community.

The guidance and inspiration is presented in muted color with Alicia Bay Laurel’s flowing line drawings and script, along with 8 pages of original full-color illustrations. The information ranges from the quirky (such as how to make bagpipes) to the practical (how to make a sauna and tell time from the position of the sun) to the spiritual (with tips on breathing, mantras, and positions) to maintaining a supportive community.

Throughout this compendium are scores and songs written by Ramón Sender, with explanations of suitable instruments and occasions. The influence of the seasons of the year and astrological signs is also noted. This unique work is an invaluable resource to read cover-to-cover and fascinating to open to any page.

Amazon’s review of the 2021 English language edition of Being of the Sun

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This is my coloring from one of Alicia Bay Laurel’s beautiful books, Being of the Sun.
It’s not a coloring book. It’s about living life, but many illustrations give the opportunity to color.
I had so much fun doing it, too. I colored much of the book.
It was during my long convalesence from a crushed ankle. It was a godsend.

Sheri Bender
Yucaipa, California
“Playing music keeps the passion flowing, which keeps life flowing. I believe in love. I am a Gypsy Indian. I will always be a free spirit, till the day I die.”

This drawing depicts a Sunday potluck and music jam at Wheelers Ranch commune, circa 1970.
I love the way you colored it, dear Sheri!!

Alicia Bay Laurel

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Alicia, I would love for you to inscribe the book, Being of the Sun.
It is for my dearest friend, Talulah, on her 24th birthday.
I’m a big fan of your books!

Thank you,
Nina Tavan
Melbourne, Australia

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Your book has given me so much wisdom and joy in life!!!
I love your book soooo much!
Thank you for writing such a great book

Maya Ikeda
Nara, Japan

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Being of the Sun is clearly a book with a long standing legacy, touching lives and holding its own place in literary and spiritual history. The quality of the printing, design, and illustration speaks to the care and commitment you’ve invested, and it’s easy to see why it has become a beloved classic.

I want to express my genuine admiration for your artistry and the way you’ve continued to share it with the world over the decades.

Sandra K. May
Community Manager, Winning Waves
Bookniche Reedsy
Canisteo, New York

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Taxi Road Rally 2006, Day Four

Posted on November 26, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Friends and Mentors.

The first two people in line for the Saturday Mentoring Luncheon were me and Vivi Chu, a feisty schoolteacher from Minnesota who plays an ancient Chinese instrument called the guzheng, from which the Japanese koto evolved. She recently released a CD of twelve original compositions with one thousand year old Chinese lyrics. “Why do performers care so much how about how they look?” she wondered aloud, “They are only there to make sound.” I thought about it and said, “Some listeners don’t really listen. They only know what they see.”

The mentoring luncheon: nine music biz aspirants and one rotating mentor per table. Maybe twenty tables in the banquet hall? It was vast. We had five mentors in total during our hour and half at the table, including Jai Josefs, Jason Blume, Liz Redwing, and Dan Kimpel. Our mentor in this photo is Ronan Chris Murphy (standing next to me).

After lunch I attended Bobby Borg’s talk “How to Market Your CD and Create a Buzz on a Limited Dollar Budget,” a standing room only event. I discovered that even note-taking has gone digital. It seemed like a good idea until I considered that I would probably make readable notes at home when I watched the class again, so why not just do it the first time?

I got to hang out and play some of my music with Jai Josefs later in the day. Turns out he produced a record of my friend Sophia Songhealer some years back, and he knows film composer, Ron Grant, who co-produced my CD What Living’s All About.

The 2006 Taxi Road Rally came to an end. I bid my new friends a fond farewell, got in my car, and flowed out onto Hollywood Boulevard, becoming one with the glowing Hollywood night.

Taxi Road Rally 2006, Day Two

Posted on November 23, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Activism, Blog, Friends and Mentors.

I decided that the best use my time at the TAXI Road Rally would be taking “Driver’s Ed” classes on marketing songs and performances. It was a good choice; I came away with dozens of new options to explore.

My first class was “Indie Artist Marketing, Touring and Promotion,” with Gilli Moon, an Australian singer/songwriter with a lovely voice. She had just returned from a tour with John Cleese of Monty Python fame. “Think about what makes you and your act unique,” she advised. “For me, initially, it was my accent.”

When she said that she often has to reassure students who tell her that they are too old to go on the road as singer/songwriters at, say, 43, I raised my hand and said, “I’m 57 years old, and I just came back from touring a month in Japan.” The whole room erupted in applause. For the rest of the conference, people came up to me and said “I was there when you said…”

I met the adorable Pam Passmore, a singer/songwriter whose bread-and-butter job is entertaining at children’s parties.

My 15 minute individual mentoring session with Fuzzbee Morse (“Composer/Producer/Songwriter/Multi-instrumentalist who has played with Bono, Frank Zappa, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed, Aaron Neville, and many more. Has had songs and scores in many films and TV shows with Paramount, ABC 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central and on labels such as A&M, Universal, Epic, Geffen and Warner Brothers”) consisted partly in his listening to Floozy Tune and America the Blues, and mostly in remembering our late, great friend in common, Steve Gursky, who was a famous recording engineer in the ‘70’s (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were among his clients) and who designed my first tour website in 2000.

I didn’t sign up to pitch my music to industry professionals, but lots of other people did. I’m content with self-producing and independently releasing my CDs and am not looking for a record deal. One thing I hear over and over again at this conference is that digital downloading is obsoleting the big record company/big record store/big hit record paradigm, and now what’s happening is that consumers are buying individual cuts over the internet and uploading them on their iPods, the more diverse in style, the better. That works for me.

Goodbye Wonderful Japan

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.

Koki and Ayako with me at our farewell dinner
After our pottery district walk, Yoko and Tetsuya drove me and Koki to pick up our bags and catch our plane back to Tokyo. Kawashi and Hiromi came to see us off as well. Sachiho could not, and who could, after the marathon of festivals, performances and parties that she had just created? I could only imagine she was doing what I would have been doing: lying still and breathing.

A couple of days later, Koki took me to downtown Kamakura’s shopping district, where we paid our respects to Ayako’s grandmother in the cemetery of the gorgeous old Buddhist temple where she is interred, and bought the ingredients for a farewell dinner I would prepare for Koki and Ayako, Morio and his wife and daughter, for Miura-san and for Mayumi Hirai, who I hadn’t seen since we sailed back from Ohshima.

Miura-san, me, and Mayumi Hirai
I decided a Mediterranean menu would best suit the occasion, since it represents my heritage, and would consist of dishes my friends rarely were served. In the wok, I made a rich ratatouille, and I marinated chicken breasts overnight in a garlic vinaigrette to grill on the hibachi. I made a green salad with halved cherry tomatoes, chopped scallions, black olives, avocado, watercress and romaine, dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Koki barbequed the chicken while I labored over the ratatouille. Of all the ingredients, the most exotic and intriguing to the Japanese palate is balsamic vinegar. Ayako was amazed to discover she could buy it at her corner grocery store.

Morio, his wife and daughter, and me
Japanese people do not heap large helpings of food on big plates as we do in the USA. They serve very modest portions on a cluster of small plates and bowls. So, even though I served the Mediterranean dinner “family style” in the wok and large bowls at the floor table in Koki and Ayako’s main room, the meal ended up looking Japanese, portioned into their beautiful dishes. And, in typical Japanese style, lots of small gifts were exchanged. But, in California style, which evidently had invaded Japan since I last visited in 1974, lots of hugs were exchanged, too.

The next day Koki and Ayako drove me to Narita Airport, an astonishing place when I think about every other airport I’ve traversed. Friendly airline employees actually HELP YOU move your luggage. And it includes restaurants you’d actually patronize even if they weren’t at an airport (sorry, Wolfgang Puck). After I checked in my bags, we had some excellent sushi at one of these establishments, another one with a conveyor belt from which you could choose, or you could call out to the sushi chef for a custom order (which Koki did on our behalf).

After lunch, we hugged goodbye for a good ten minutes and then I proceeded through the security check, and even THAT was friendly. As I was about to go down the escalator to immigration, I saw Koki and Ayako on the other side of the glass wall, waving goodbye. I kissed them goodbye through the glass, we all laughed, and then I was on my way back to Los Angeles.

The Pottery District of Naha City

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.

Yoko and Tetsuya Nema took us (me, Koki and Hiromi) on a walking tour of Naha City’s pottery district, which lies adjacent to the Peace Street Market. We were joined by Tetsuya’s cousin, Keiko, who works in a ceramics studio, and her friend, a photographer.

Nearly every Okinawan house has a pair of shisa figurines attached to it as protectors against evil spirits. The shisa is neither dragon nor dog, but has the features of both. In each pair, one has an open mouth and one a closed mouth . Some shisa look intimidating, but many are comical, even cartoon-like. Since both residents and tourists buy shisa, the pottery district of Naha City fairly bulges with wide-eyed, toothy specimens.

We visited a factory where shisa are formed in ceramic molds and the details carved by hand.

We discovered that the feline residents of the pottery district are not the slightest bit intimidated by the shisa, and maybe even a little bored with them.

One of Yoko’s friends owns and runs this lovely shop without shisa, just elegant ceramics and textiles. I bought four unique placemats batiked with floral designs on natural indigo by a reknown Okinawan artist. I gave them to my mother, who liked them so much she has decided to frame them.

We stopped for tea at a pottery school with a ceramic dragon set into an exterior wall.

The teacher at the pottery school expertly turned out one perfect cup after another on the potter’s wheel.

We walked past a very old traditional Okinawan house whose roof is secured with fishnet against the ravages of typhoons. The house is not liveable, nor can it be restored without destroying it, but it’s a historic site, so it is not disturbed.

The street entrance to the compound of which the very old traditional Okinawan house is part.

Across the road from the old house stands an intriguing curved wall, set with scale-shaped ceramic tiles, reminding me of the snakeskin sanshin and the sea snake remedies.

I almost got run over by a bicycle photographing the Naha City man hole cover design to add to my collection. Who said blogging is for couch potatoes?

Halloween on Peace Street

Posted on November 19, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors, Swag.

Koki and I checked out of our hotel rooms (but left our baggage with the front desk) and set off on the municipal railway to downtown Naha City and the immense, old, indoor southeast Asian style marketplace where we could visit Yoko Nema’s shop, Tata Bazaar. Over one of the market’s many entrances, a sign bearing the market’s name, Hewa Dori, which translates to “Peace Street.”

Illuminated by skylights, a labyrinth of hallways lined with shops goes on for several city blocks.

It’s Halloween, and wee Okinawan goblins campaign for candy from the shopkeepers and line up for group pictures in the hallways of the marketplace.

The meat market has a huge mask hanging even when it’s not Halloween. Up the escalator is a food court offering many Okinawan and Japanese dishes. It was there I first ate ika sumi soup (squid ink soup) and a rich tofu made from peanut milk.

Rainbow-colored parrotfish abound on Okinawa, a coral island. The parrotfish has a powerful jaw made for scraping algae and other small creatures off of coral, and possesses the ability to change gender. When the alpha male fish of a harem dies, the alpha female fish will become male and lead the school.

One of the pickle merchants kept plying us with samples, not only until we bought from her, but afterward as well. I tasted one I really liked and bought a small container of it. Later on, Koki asked me if I knew what it was made from. I did not. Koki told me it was made from jellyfish and pig’s ear. Okinawans particularly enjoy pig’s face, and many were displayed for sale in the meat market.

Next we stopped by a shop selling medicinal supplies. Black coils of dried sea snake, reputed to be excellent for healing problems with the eyes, hang above the packaged goods on the right.

A row of sanshin, the three-stringed Okinawan banjo, a descendant of the Chinese three-stringed lute, the sanxian. Like the sanxian, the sanchin has a snake skin covered resonator, in contrast with their larger Japanese descendant, the shamisen, which is traditionally covered with the skin of a cat or dog. All three instruments have three strings – and the names of all three instruments mean “three strings.”

Tata Bazaar’s colorful sign and merchandise welcome the passer-by. Yoko buys all of the merchandise herself, frequently traveling all over Southeast Asia and India. Some of it she designs and has manufactured by artisans in the countries she visits. This is definitely my kind of candy store!

Yoko and Tatsuya Nema welcome me and Koki Aso to their store. I had just gotten paid the night before for my festival gigs, and could hardly wait to spend some of my yen in their store, but that didn’t stop them from showering me with gifts!

Yoko drew a whole line of postcards featuring goya (bitter melons), the favorite vegetable of Okinawa. In this drawing, a trio of goya plays traditional Okinawan instruments (including a shansin), and a troupe of goya perform an Okinawan folk dance.

I am honored to report that at Tata Bazaar in Naha City, Okinawa, you can buy the Japanese edition of Living on the Earth, the Japanese releases of Music from Living on the Earth and Living in Hawaii Style, and my own release of What Living’s All About. And, as soon as Yoko can get the size XL organic cotton Living on the Earth t-shirts resized to more popular Asian sizes (like S, M and L), she’ll have some of them on the shelf, too. Now Hawaii, there’s a place you can sell t-shirts in size XXXL, but probably not with a naked lady on them.

(Three weeks later) Wow, Yoko just emailed me this photo. She made a scaled down t-shirt! And she models it gorgeously.

Goodbye Donto-in

Posted on November 19, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.

The next day after the Soul of Donto concert, Sachiho threw an informal goodbye party at Donto-in for the musicians who came from Tokyo (and Aso Mountain in Kiushu) to play in the show (and who had played in a much larger Soul of Donto concert in Tokyo last summer). She began by arranging flowers for the altar, unwrapping all the packages of cookies and candy that had been amassing as house gifts on the altar and placing them on plates, and then arranging drinks and plates of sashimi and vegetable dishes on the dining table.

She lighted the sconces and unveiled the White Tara thanka.

At sunset, people gathered on the front porch, at the dining table, and in the altar room and passed around the various bottles and plates of food. Nonoa and Song Matsui played a singing and hand slapping game with some of the adults. Auta Matsui and Nala Kudomi hung out together and laughed a lot.

Considering that I don’t speak Japanese (YET!), I had a wonderful time with these new friends. I helped Kameya Matsui (next to me) with her English homework (Koki said not to tell her the answers so she’d have to figure them out, but I couldn’t help it). Toward the end of the evening, Kawashi drove Koki and me up to Naha City, where we each had a free hotel room that came with our round trip tickets from Tokyo, and, since we planned to sightsee in Naha City the next day until our evening flight back to Tokyo, this proved to be very convenient. On the top floor of this brand new hotel were bathhouses for men and for women, so, as soon as I got my luggage into my room, I threw on a robe and went up in the elevator to have a long, hot soak. The next morning, I soaked again. My inner monkey was happy.

Soul of Donto Festival in Okinawa City

Posted on November 18, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.

Having just coordinated, performed at numerous times, and taught hula at a two-day music festival, the amazing Sachiho is ready to rehearse, perform and be the spiritual center of a rock concert honoring her late husband Donto at a large theatre in Okinawa City. It’s an all-star cast backstage in the women’s dressing room before our rehearsal: First row, Sachiho Kojima, me, Sandii Manumele (hula teacher to 600 students in Tokyo, choreographer of the hula to Donto’s “Nami,” and singer of pop and Hawaiian music who can’t even remember how many CDs she’s recorded). Second row, Kuri (Sandii’s assistant, a fabulous hula dancer), Yoko Nema, Misako Koja (legendary Okinawan singer, who has also released some huge number of recordings, three of which she gave me. They are lovely!), Hiromi Kondo, and punk/rock/ska singer Yoko Utsumi. Sandii invited me to visit her, and we traded CDs, too.

We rehearsed the entire show. My five minutes of fame came somewhere in the middle of the show, when the huge booming sounds of the rock bass, drums, electric guitar and screaming vocals stopped, and the only sound was me playing Hau’oli La Hanau on a four-string soprano ukulele and gently singing. On the second verse, Sachiho, Yoko and Hiromi’s trio, Amana, joined me vocally and instrumentally. I came out again for the grand finale, inwhich international pop star Miya (in sunglasses and white t-shirt; he’s got mega-hits in Latin America and southeast Asia, and pipes like an opera tenor) sang an Okinawan song in duet with Misako Koja, while all of us other women in the first photo sang backup, laughed and danced around. In this rehearsal shot, I’m the fifth one from the right, looking right at the camera. Donto’s original band, piano, bass and drum, performed, along with Donto’s son Lakita on electric guitar, Donto’s singer/rhythm guitarist/drummer friend Roku Matsui, and a couple more guys on accordion and washboard, and a famous rock lead guitarist from Tokyo.

Yes, OF COURSE there was a shrine at the theatre. Sachiho set it up backstage, with two photos of Donto, one in full Okinawan garb with sanshin (three stringed Okinawan banjo), and one as he looked in Hawaii just before being cremated at age 37. Donto was not Okinawan, but when he moved the family to Okinawa, he embraced it with the same enthusiasm with which he did everything else.

Other than my two moments on stage, I sat with Misako, her daughter and grandson, and watched the show from a tunnel to the left of the first rows. The show opened with Sandii chanting to Pele while Kuri danced hula kahiko. Later in the program, Sandii danced an ‘auana hula in her holoku. I loved the moment when Miya lifted up Lakita on his shoulders, football victory style, and Lakita laughed and continued to play his electric guitar. Donto would have done that. How do I know? Because, before the concert, we were treated to a documentary of Donto’s performances from the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. He dressed in super-creative semi-drag and danced like mad, whipping the crowds into a frenzy. He wrote his songs, he designed his costumes, he sang and played lead guitar. He was a rock god by anyone’s estimation. Sachiho met him when she interviewed him on her radio show, back in the days when she was leading Japan’s first all-girl punk band, Zelda. After they had two sons, they got into a more natural and spiritual bag, and moved to Okinawa.

Even seven years after his death, the soul of Donto brought the audience to its feet, waving their arms and singing along to his wonderful songs. Some of his tunes had English lyrics mixed in with Japanese, for example, his love song to Sachiho, “So precious, you are so precious, so precious…” And, as you would expect, the singers onstage pointed their mics to the audience to capture their singing for a couple of lines, the lighting guys then lit up the audience, and that’s how I got this photo without a flash.

After the show, everyone who had been on stage gathered backstage for a toast. The kewl dude with the hand jive and the tie-dyed Grateful Dead dancing bear shirt was Donto’s bass player. Under his arm he carries the fake leopard skin cowboy hat he wore on stage. I am clueless as to why he is wearing a huge star of David, but he’s not the only hip Japanese person I’ve seen wearing one. I read that it is one of the magical symbols used in Japanese anime movies. The other guy is Roku Matsui, and I think the girl in the hat is his daughter, Kameya Matsui.

Amana’s manager, known by her surname, Kawashima, who had single-handedly produced the show, took all of us, performers and stage hands, out to dinner at a traditional Okinawan restaurant in Naha City that same evening. The English-speaking stage manager made me get my Pro Series Traveler Guitar out of Hiromi’s van and show it to all the stagehands, who loved it.

Happy Flower Beach Party, Day Two

Posted on November 17, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.

What is the first thing I thought when I woke up at Heaven Beach? You’re right if you guessed “Get in the ocean!” The warm, clear, blue water buoyed me as I glided along, feeling, “Yes. Yes. Yes. This is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. I love this. I really, really love this.”

Sachiho taught a group of people to hula to Donto’s famous song “Nami.” The cool-looking red and white building in the back is the beachfront bar, Heaven.

Later, I discovered that sumo wrestling is not just for obese persons. Skinny hippies like to wrestle, too. I even saw one round of girls wrestling.

For less athletically-inclined festival goers, there was plenty of shopping, too.

And those who had drummed and danced ‘til dawn the night before could always snooze away the afternoon on the hammock porch.

A couple of very creative young DJs at one of the picnic tables created electronic collages thoughout the afternoon, and their friends danced with poi balls, especially enchanting one very small boy.

Yoko Nema told me she’d wanted to talk with me so much when she came to Hawaii in 2002 that she’d been studying English since the last time we met. I was blown away; the wall between our two languages is formidable, and I’ve been intimidated by it for many years. I begged her to interpret for me during my performance that evening, and she very graciously obliged me.

One of the first acts of the afternoon: an all-girl rock band from Osaka.

Yu Soda, an amazing young musician from Tokyo, performed an entirely improvised set, masterfully playing an enormous variety of wind and percussion instruments against a recording of the sound of the wind.

At sunset, I played a set combining songs from all three of my CDs.

Next Amana played. Their sound joins Hiromi’s African rhythms and exotic instruments with Yoko’s harmonium and bhajans (holy chants in Sanskrit), and Sachiho’s lively bass guitar (she was the leader/bass player of Zelda, a famous all-girl punk band in Tokyo in the ‘80’s) and Steiner harp (a lap-held woodframe harp invented by Rudoph Steiner). Sometimes all three women play djembe (hand drums). They all sing, and they write and arrange songs together.

Sachiho called me up to play Hau’oli La Hanau, the opening song from my Hawaiian CD, Living in Hawaii Style, with Amana. We dedicated the song to Donto.

A ska band got the crowd dancing…

…and an even bigger ska band got them dancing even more.

The Matsui family rocked out, with Roku singing and playing guitar, and Kameya, age 15, playing bass guitar. They played some of Donto’s songs in his honor. Roku has been teaching his kids to play musical instruments from the time they are quite young. He also told me that all five were born at home, delivered using the directions from the birth page of Living on the Earth (!!!)

Auta Matsui, at age 12, played rock and roll trap drums better than lots of adult pros I’ve heard. Nala, Sachiho’s 12 year old son, blew away the crowd singing one of Donto’s songs with the Matsuis, but, alas, I missed the photo-op. As you can well imagine, the two boys are best friends.

The next morning, the tents and vans slowly disappeared, and the tipis came down. The organizers of the festival carried the altar objects from the tipi to the dragon rock at the end of the beach for a closing ceremony.

After the ceremony, Yu Soda carried the bamboo branches from the altar to the ocean and released them. Afterwards, he and his partner Saori walked with me up the beach for a while, and we vowed to meet again next year.

Happy Flower Beach Party, Day One

Posted on November 16, 2006 by Alicia Bay Laurel in Blog, Concert Tours, Friends and Mentors.

The next day Hiromi drove us up to Nago, in the northern part of Okinawa, to camp and make music at the Happy Flower Beach Party music festival, right on a white sand beach on a huge, very calm bay. Clouds gathered, but no rain fell on the freaks camped in tents, hammocks and vans all around a distinctly boho beachfront bar called Heaven. The encampment included a communal kitchen, and it’s even got a co-ed bathhouse.

We arrived just in time to see a tipi-raising, that is, a tipi on bamboo poles that had been hand-sewn by Tako Matsui, the mom of the five musical children with whom we’d been bunking at Donto-in.

And yes, of course there is a shrine at Happy Flower Beach Party. It’s inside one of Tako’s tipis.

Tako and Roku Matsui’s eldest child, Kameya (in pink), who plays electric bass guitar, was selling tickets, souvenirs, and CDs at the gate of the festival. Instead of stamping ink on your hand to prove right of entry, Kameya presented each celebrant with a necklace comprised of a Heaven Beach seashell strung on a piece of yarn made from recycled saris. It’s the yarn of choice for hipsters everywhere.

Down the beach from Heaven I saw a couple of divinely funky beach shacks made from shipping containers. Yes, I thought. I could get used to this.

Actually, I stayed both nights in a shabby chic little beach shack, which Sachiho rented for me as a gift.

Just like the parking lot vendors at Grateful Dead concerts, I thought when I saw cafes and craft shops opening under tents all over the beach, one offering o-den (a bliss-inducing Japanese soup), another offering Nepalese curry, another macrobiotic foods, and another an Okinawan stew. I had a fish taco the second night, and the vendors made the tortilla by hand while I watched.

At sundown, Rie and her husband opened the show with sweet spiritual songs.

The children of the Amana band have their own band. They all sing; Sachiho’s son Lakita at age 16 already has the makings of a rock star. Yoko’s daughter Seina has loads of style, wit and charisma. And Hiromi’s daughter Tapiwa is breathtakingly gorgeous, blending the grace and beauty of Japan and Zimbabwe in one form.

Hiromi’s African band, Dinkadunk, played a wild set that got everybody dancing. Toshi Arayama sang, yelped, played flute, and kept a spirited patter going; Masaha Tahara provided the texture with African electric guitar riffs, and Hiromi Kondo kept the whole thing perculating with hand drums, electrically amplified mbira and a mournful keyboard wind instrument called a pianica. With so many other instruments going, Hiromi had to get another woman to play the balaphone. Sachiho joined them on bass and I think they had a trap drummer, too. The band is in its fourteenth year, and just released the loveliest meditative music CD imaginable, called Dinkadunk 2.

The Beach Party really got happy dancing to Dinkadunk.

How do you follow an act like that? When punker Yoko Utsumi took the stage as a solo following Dinkadunk, I found out. You sing with a voice that shakes the heavens and bring the crowd to its knees.

Yoko will be singing with the late legendary rock star Donto’s former bandmates at the big Soul of Donto rock concert the night after tomorrow at a theatre in Okinawa City. We got a little taste of that, too, with Donto’s pianist and drummer, plus Donto’s wife Sachiho on bass, Donto’s son Lakita on lead guitar, and Donto’s buddy Roku Matsui singing with Yoko, Donto’s greatest hits. Donto and Sachiho created the first Happy Flower Beach Party ten years ago, and Sachiho has continued to coordinate them since his death in 2001.

After the show, happy people drummed and danced on the beach into the wee hours.

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