Laszlo Slomovits

Laszlo and Helen are a delight to know.  It has been a brief encounter, and it is my intention to nurture the blossoming friendship.  Laszlo wrote such a beautiful account of his work, I will share it with you here and encourage you to go online and support his music, a genuine gift.  I have found his story and music inspiring and nurturing.

Laszlo Slomovits:

I've been a musician all my life — other than odd jobs the first few years when I started out, I've done nothing else. I feel very grateful that I've been able to make a living writing, recording and performing music. My music falls into two main categories: music for children and families, which I perform with my twin brother Sandor as the group Gemini (GeminiChildrensMusic.com), and the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz which I've set to music (PoetryIntoSong.com.) This latter I perform solo as well as with my wife Helen, and other musicians. This is a good place to thank Helen for the incredible support she has been to me — musically with her exquisite flute playing, and through her continuous encouragement of my creativity over many years. I am also very blessed to have several other musicians in my life who have been a great help in realizing the sound I wanted when I went to record these poems.
 
 When I read these inspiring poems  —in translations by Coleman Barks (Rumi) and Daniel Ladinsky (Hafiz) — I listen for melodies that may want to sing to me. The content of the poems sometimes give me a clue as to which style of music might want to join it (I have set these poems to many different styles — from world folk, to blues, to Eastern European, to light classical and others) but more often, it's the rhythm and flow of the words that suggest a complementary melody. I feel very grateful to Both Coleman Barks and Daniel Ladinsky for their magnificent work, and for giving me permission to turn their translations into songs.
 
 These mystic, Sufi poets, Rumi and Hafiz, wrote timeless lyrics — their advice, encouragement, and support on the spiritual path is just as powerful and useful today as when they wrote them 700-800 years ago. They are loved and revered throughout the Middle East, and increasingly throughout the world, through translations such as these. In their original language —Farsi, or Persian — these poems have always been sung as well as read and recited. What I have tried to do by combining their poetry with contemporary music, is to connect their English lyrics to that time-honored tradition of poetry-set-to-music which is still alive in many parts of the world.

 It is a very joyous work for me to sit with these poems and listen for rhythms and melodies within them. Much of the time the initial musical connection to a phrase or line in the poem is quite effortless, like a key being handed to me. Crafting them into complete songs may take some time, but it's not strenuous — it's more like opening a door and marveling at the path that unfolds on the other side, and the beauty that is revealed as I travel it. I am deliberately using the image of a door being opened with a key from the inside, because that's what I feel as I engage with the poems — that they move me from a small room in my limited awareness into a vast, marvelous space, much more open and spacious than my ordinary awareness. I love to see, hear and feel the poem unfolding and consider it a great gift that I get to do this as my work.

In the same way that these poems have been translated from another language, I think of my settings as "translations into song" — offering another way to experience the poems. For people who do not read poetry, perhaps because they feel it's too difficult or obscure, these musical setting may give them a way to enter, or be entered by, the poems. And, of course, for people who already know and love the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz, I hope my "renderings into song" will give them a new way to relate to the poems.

 I find that the melodies help me remember the poems more easily, and that they come up spontaneously as I need them during my everyday activities. For example, a poem by Rumi "Don't Go Back to Sleep" has gotten me out of bed early many a morning — to write, to meditate — when otherwise I might have been tempted to go back to sleep. Another poem, this one by Hafiz, begins, "This place where you are right now, God circled on a map for you." What an incredible reminder that everything is unfolding just as it should, if I can only become aware of the gift of this particular moment and place.

 This last point — that the music makes the poems more accessible, memorable and more emotionally charged — is perhaps what inspires me most to keep looking for poems that sing to me, and to keep offering them to others through concerts and recordings.