The Healing Power of Music

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Ellen: And this is what makes it healing.

Akbar: That's what we are really discovering. And that's what we will discover more and more, not only with this piece of music, but with other works of art and work and play that have this intention. That's how some of this can, God willing, be connected to things like peace in the Middle East, because there's something in creating an intention like this that can be healing to us and that can then, with some of that same kind of flowing, washing, forgiving manner, be of benefit to situations that are appearing otherwise.

Ellen: I wanted to ask about your background and how you came to do this work.

Akbar: I was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1953 to two very wonderful Jewish parents. My grandparents came from Eastern Europe and other places; I think somewhere I have some of what we call Sephardic Jewish background because I've always been very attracted to that kind of Middle Eastern side of Judaism, that Spanish side.

I began learning meditation when I was in high school, when I was sixteen, an Indian style of meditation, and then I was presented in my life with teachings on sound and the mysticism of sound from Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi sage who came from India about 1910 to share his music and his wisdom. This particular form of Sufism is a form that honors all the different traditions, from Native American to Buddhist to Jewish to Zoroastrian, etc., and I pursued a course of study over many years, including travelling to Turkey, to Israel, a number of times to India, to South Africa, and to Europe to meet with people who had this kind of wisdom and who also had some knowledge of the mysticism of sound. My children are also interested in these things; they're in their twenties right now.

In the last ten years of my life, I've really combined this work with music and sound in healing with my professional background in music and applied social sciences. I work as a program specialist in music and expressive arts (working with sound and music and meditation and movement) at a large psychiatric facility and with other mental health organizations.

Ellen: Do you think, then, that these teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan on sound and music have affected the way you play music?

Akbar: Absolutely. I'd say that is the way I play music. Before I came across the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, I was very good at music, and I was also very good at poetry, and I was very good at art, and yet, I never had enough discipline in any of those things to really produce much. From the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan and my teachers in the Sufi order, somehow, not even consciously, my quality of musicianship developed until it became very refined. I go to many kinds of environments where I am asked to play music or to share the Dances, and it's almost like magic that the little bit that I do can have such an effect.

I really feel that's been some of the blessing of Inayat Khan and his whole lineage, which, without me thinking about it or making a fuss about it, has enabled me to be able to create this kind of music and attunement.

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