{"id":863,"date":"2011-05-17T15:02:09","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T15:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/projectconversion.com\/?p=863"},"modified":"2011-05-17T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T15:02:09","slug":"dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html","title":{"rendered":"Dharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know, I know, “Culture and Arts Week” was last week, but this is Buddhism and we don’t get attached to forms and rituals nowadays, do we?<\/p>\n

Dharma-skippy we don’t.<\/p>\n

And, once you meet today’s artist, you’ll be glad we threw tradition to the wind.<\/p>\n

Meet the lovely and talented Ms. Ravenna Michalsen.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Andrew:<\/span> So Ravenna, tell us a little about yourself.<\/p>\n

Ravenna:<\/span>\u00a0In 2002 I met and became a student with\u00a0Sakyong\u00a0Mipham\u00a0Rinpoche\u00a0who wrote two song-like poems for me to set to music. From that time on I began to write songs directly related to either great practitioners, bodhisattvas or various dharma teachings. Being a trained classical cellist who had to put down the instrument due to arthritis, I was ready to experiment aurally\u00a0and the songs that emerged were\u00a0quirky and sometimes a bit odd structurally. I recorded my first album ‘Bloom’ in 2005 with the hope of not repeating instruments (except the voice) on any of the tracks, and then recorded my follow-up album ‘Dharmasong’ in 2007, which was truly a labor of love! After a tour in Malaysia, I re-recorded Bloom with more instrumentation and (hopefully) a more nuanced vocal performance (voice is not my primary instrument!). Since I have a deep interest in great female religious practitioners, many of my songs feature these women: Tara (Dolma), Machik\u00a0Labdr\u00f6n, Jomo Menmo, and Yeshe\u00a0Tsogyal. When performing I usually speak about the life stories of these women to order to spread awareness of their impact on the 1,300 year old tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.<\/p>\n

Andrew:<\/span> Could you tell us more about dharma music?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

[cincopa AQMAdmKDPqtL]<\/span><\/p>\n

Ravenna: <\/span>‘Dharma’ is a Sanskrit word meaning “the teachings of the Buddha”, “the way things are” or simply: “that which holds us back”. The Tibetan word for dharma is ‘ch\u00f6’, which can be translated as: “to heal”, “to restore” or “to repair”. Dharma music then is music that turns the mind toward the teachings of the Buddha or that which holds us back from harmful action.<\/p>\n

The idea of combining dharma and music is very ancient. Some of the earliest female and male disciples of the Buddha wrote songs and poems about their experiences as new renunciates. As in the Homeric tradition (Homer lived about 100 years before the historical Buddha; the poet Sappho lived about 40 years before and 20 years before the Buddha was born Homer’s poems began to be\u00a0sung at the All-Athenian Festival), these songs and poems were sung\u00a0or recited, memorized and passed down to succeeding generations of renunciates. Two collections of such songs and poems, the Theri-\u00a0and Theragatha\u00a0(divided by author gender), are said\u00a0to be\u00a0composed by direct students of the historical Buddha. They were collected\u00a0and included in the Pali Cannon around 80 BCE; Dhammapala, working in the 400s CE, added biographical information about the Therigathas’ many authors. Both the Theri-\u00a0and Theragathas\u00a0continue to be read and re-translated to this day because of their accessibility, beauty and proximity to the very beginnings of Buddhism.<\/p>\n

Songs also figure prominently in the Tantric tradition as spontaneous outpourings of realization and devotion called dohas<\/em>. The Tibetan Buddhist master Milarepa, (11th century), is probably the most well-known composer of dohas<\/em>; it is said\u00a0he wrote over 100,000 of them. Padmasambhava\u00a0(Guru Rinpoche), Machik\u00a0Labdr\u00f6n\u00a0and Yeshe\u00a0Tsogyal are all said to have\u00a0 used song to teach disciples, and express their practice motivations, devotion and realization.<\/p>\n

Andrew: Thanks for dropping by, Ravenna, and for sharing your art with us. I wish you much success in your future.<\/p>\n

To find out more about Ravenna and her music, please visit her website, www.RavennaM.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know, I know, “Culture and Arts Week” was last week, but this is Buddhism and we don’t get attached to forms and rituals nowadays, do we? Dharma-skippy we don’t. And, once you meet today’s artist, you’ll be glad we threw tradition to the wind. Meet the lovely and talented Ms. Ravenna Michalsen. Andrew: So…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[16,786,79,233,239],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","tag-andrew-bowen","tag-buddhism","tag-dharma-music","tag-project-conversion","tag-ravenna-michalsen"],"yoast_head":"\nDharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen - Project Conversion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen - Project Conversion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I know, I know, “Culture and Arts Week” was last week, but this is Buddhism and we don’t get attached to forms and rituals nowadays, do we? Dharma-skippy we don’t. And, once you meet today’s artist, you’ll be glad we threw tradition to the wind. Meet the lovely and talented Ms. Ravenna Michalsen. Andrew: So…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Project Conversion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-17T15:02:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/projectconversion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ravenna_2-300x238.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen - Project Conversion","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen - Project Conversion","og_description":"I know, I know, “Culture and Arts Week” was last week, but this is Buddhism and we don’t get attached to forms and rituals nowadays, do we? Dharma-skippy we don’t. And, once you meet today’s artist, you’ll be glad we threw tradition to the wind. Meet the lovely and talented Ms. Ravenna Michalsen. Andrew: So…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html","og_site_name":"Project Conversion","article_published_time":"2011-05-17T15:02:09+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/projectconversion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ravenna_2-300x238.jpg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html","name":"Dharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen - Project Conversion","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/projectconversion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ravenna_2-300x238.jpg","datePublished":"2011-05-17T15:02:09+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-17T15:02:09+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/projectconversion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ravenna_2-300x238.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/projectconversion.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ravenna_2-300x238.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/2011\/05\/dharma-music-with-ravenna-michalsen.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Dharma Music with Ravenna Michalsen"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/","name":"Project Conversion","description":"12 Months of Spiritual Promiscuity","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/projectconversion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}