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 Suzanne Teng
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Suzanne Teng’s Sounds of Ecstasy
by Caroline Ryder
Over the years, wind instrumentalist Suzanne Teng has gathered
literally hundreds of flutes from all over the world and brought them
back to her hillside home in Topanga.
There’s a wooden mijwiz traditionally used by Egyptian snake charmers, a 20-year-old Taiwanese bamboo dizi, a shepherd’s flute from Bulgaria, an Arabic oboe called a zurna—and that’s just in her travel bag. “People always ask me how many flutes I have, and to be honest, I have no idea,” she laughs.
Teng is performing at LA’s World Festival of Sacred Music on Sept. 24
with her band Mystic Journey, winner of the Best New Age Artist award
at the 2005 Independent Music Awards. Teng and Mystic Journey are best
known for taking a diverse range of ethnic sounds and creating
ethereal, ecstatic global music.
What many people don’t know is that Teng, originally from Berkeley,
started out as a classical flautist. The raven-haired beauty spent
years playing with top symphony orchestras, her goal being to break
into the international classical scene. Thoughts of entering the ethnic
music scene had never crossed her mind until she met an African drummer
at an experimental music workshop. What she learned from him
transformed her entire perception of music.
“We went to a retreat center and studied exploratory music, improvising
with drums and chants,” she recalls. “That day turned my life upside
down. I started along a new path, spiritually and musically.”
She quit classical music, started playing ethnic instruments and found
herself on tour with 14 African drummers. It was quite a
transformation. “I went from playing classical scales every day to
improvising with a bunch of drummers!” she says. “But I had realized
there was another path and it was something my heart felt really
comfortable with.”
Teng moved to LA and started a Ph.D. at UCLA’s Ethnomusicology
department, focusing on the healing power of music. However, the
scientific emphasis of the course didn’t resonate with her; she longed
to perform again. “I didn’t want to be a professor,” says Teng, who has
composed music for yoga and acupuncture videos. “I wasn’t interested in
measuring the effects of different frequencies on the soul. To me it’s
more spiritual, it’s about opening up to the music, having faith and
feeling the energy flow up and around—that’s where the healing comes.”
Teng’s husband, New Orleans native Gilbert Levy, is also
Mystic Journey’s percussionist. The couple married four years ago in
Topanga, tying the knot at sunset before enjoying a full moon and a
shooting star. “That cost a lot of money,” Levy jokes. A year before
that, the two had received an impromptu marriage blessing from a shaman
in Chicoi, a coastal cave in Guatemala. “It was summer solstice and the
energy was very high,” recalls Teng. “There was a procession in the
cave and then the shaman said he was getting a message from his guides
saying he was to marry us.” He anointed the couple with his holy water
and afterwards the whole group went to a restaurant to celebrate.
“There was no one there apart from us, and the tables had been set up
as if for a banquet. It was like a wedding reception, even though none
of it was planned.”
Audiences at the Sacred Music festival can expect Mystic Journey’s
usual whirl of flowing, improvised melodies as well as some
choreographed dancing, something Teng has only recently begun to
incorporate into her performances.
“This Festival is so exciting,” says Teng. “It’s amazing because it
involves so many people in the city, and so many venues. Everyone
involved is full of heart and love belief. It’s not about money—it has
greater vision than that.”
Caroline Ryder is a culture and lifestyle writer whose work has appeared in LA Weekly, Swindle Magazine, The Book LA, and The Independent (UK), among others. carolineryder.com.
Suzanne Teng & Mystic Journey, featuring Gilbert Levy on world
percussion, Fritz Heede on world strings and Barry Newton on string
bass, will perform at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre as part of
2005’s World Festival of Sacred Music. Special guest artists include
Prince Diabate and the Lexi Pearl MoMementum Dancers. Also performing
will be the Naser Musa/Adam del Monte ensemble with flamenco dancer
Laila del Monte. Call 323.461.3673 for tickets or visit fordamphitheatre.org.
Behind the World Festival of Sacred Music
Thai puppeteers, Brazilian carnival queens and African-Indian Sufi
dancers are among the multitude of artists preparing for a spectacular
celebration of multiculturalism at the World Festival of Sacred Music.
The largest event of its kind in Los Angeles, the 16-day
festival kicks off Sept. 17 and features more than 1,000 acts from
dozens of countries across the globe. All the more amazing when you
learn this event was put together with a staff of three (plus three
interns) and “hardly any money.”
“It’s been a wild ride, but really rewarding,” enthuses
festival director Judy Mitoma, an ethnomusicologist at UCLA. She has
organized all three World Festivals of Sacred Music so far. The first
was held in 1999 in response to calls by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
for cities across the globe to hold an event marking a commitment to
peace. The 1999 festival was supposed to be a one-time-only occurrence,
but the events of 9/11 inspired Mitoma and her team to hold another, in
2002. This year’s will be the third.
“The way it seems to work is that we do the festival, take a year to
rest and recover, then a year to think about doing it again and then a
year of actually doing it,” laughs Mitoma.
Japan, Australia, South Africa and Germany had all expressed an
interest in holding similar events in response to the Dalai Lama’s
request, but LA was the only community that actually managed to pull it
off. “Everyone else took the typical arts management approach,”
explains Mitoma. “That is, you get your million dollars together and
then you build your festival. Unfortunately, they could never find the
money.” Mitoma, on the other hand, focused on creating a broad-based
grassroots plan that relied more on volunteers and collaboration than
enormous fundraising.
The first festival cost over a million dollars and featured 85
events. The second, in 2002, was smaller, with 54 events at a cost of
$500,000. This year’s will have 43 events with a projected cost of
around $250,000. Despite almost halving in size since its inception,
the World Festival of Sacred Music will still be the largest
multi-venue event taking place in LA this year—although big is not best
as far as Mitoma is concerned. “We’re trying to refine our project so
that it uses the least amount of money necessary,” she explains. “We
want a festival that is not seen as some blockbuster commercial
endeavor.”
An estimated 60,000 people are expected to attend the
Festival, which opens with a benefit concert at UCLA under the harvest
moon. A truly international affair, this event will feature artists
from Thailand, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Siberia, Cameroon and
elsewhere. The closing ceremony, called “Honor the Sea,” takes place
Oct. 2 on the shores of Santa Monica beach.
“This festival is about advocating cultural understanding across
religions and faiths, as well as races and cultures,” said Mitoma. “And
of course we know how important this is today.” —CR
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