Revealing the Art that Simmers Within
My name is Robert Campagnola. I play the guitar, keyboards, and percussion. I write and produce music, record it professionally, and do a little photography when I assist my wife, Katarina Campagnola, a professional journalist. I also produce and edit videos and assist with the creation of media sites. I come from a family of recognized musicians. For example, my cousin, Jim Campagnola, is a very expert saxaphonist, guitarist, bassist, keyboard player and drummer. My older cousin, JR, (or Andy Deno as he was known then), played for Joe Cocker, Sly Stone and others.
My story
My first instrument was a trumpet. I cannot remember how old I was when I got it, but I could not make it deliver any sound acceptable to human ears. I do remember the twisted face my mother made when I attempted to blow it and perhaps her reaction made me realize the learning process might take too much of a toll on my family. After a short and unsuccessful period of being a trumpeteer, my music teacher at school decided the problem was the instrument and switched me to a saxaphone. Later on it was discovered that my lungs are not strong and I have difficulty with any instrument demanding the use of breath. This early foray into music discouraged me and I returned to athletics and reading lots of books. Actually, my life in those days was mainly playing sports and reading a book every other day.
When I was in the sixth grade, there was a musical production in my school. This yearly production was a big deal at the North Side School in East Williston, N.Y. Participation in the performance was not voluntary. We children would line up, three at a time, in front of the music teacher's piano. I do not remember her name (maybe it was Mrs Simon?) but I certainly remember what she looked like and her incredibly serene and patient disposition. She would play a song and ask the three hapless candidates to sing along in unison. I had no idea why she was doing this or how she could understand what we sounded like individually. Later I realized she was very smart. If she had asked me to sing in public alone I would have first died and then playing on my harp and flapping my wings would have fulfilled her command. Somehow singing in a group was not very scary. Amazingly, she picked me to be the lead in Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" a musical farce at sea. I found that I had a voice and could express it well as the Captain of the Pinafore. It was a very rewarding experience and so my taste for music returned. About six months after the play was performed, my voice changed and my singing career put on a permanent hold. Gone was that sweet, high voice -- enter a much less interesting baritone.
When I was around 12 years old, my father brought home a very old piano he bought for $10. It was an ancient upright that was so old the tuner had to detune the entire piano to A430 or so as the nuts would not keep the strings tight enough. Needless to say this made future jam sessions troublesome, but we loved that piano. Actually, my father got it for my sister, Barbara (who was just named 2008's Citizen of the Year in Ohio for her work with the Paper Circle in Athen's -- congrats sis!) and he painted it white and finished it with gold trim. It actually looked quite nice and even in its lower toned state sounded ok. A piano teacher was brought to the house to train my sister but she was not interested. I would stand behind watching and listening and when they were gone I would play her pieces. My mother caught on that the piano was meant for me and so I was sent off regularly to Mrs Gleason, my first teacher. I must say, Mrs Gleason, although quite a large woman, was the nicest teacher I would ever have. She had the most wonderful disposition and was an expert transcriber. Each week I would have three assignments. The first was my scale practice (Hannon and others), the second was a classical piece she picked for me, and the third was to play a contemporary song that she would score right in front of me while singing along. I was amazed at her skill. Within two years I had advanced to fifth year classical piano. I was just 14 when she felt I could move forward even faster so she gave me a piece that was, as she said, a challenge that was within my reach. It was called "The Butterfly," I think (perhaps by G.Merkel?) and I practiced it over and over again to perfect the piece. It was not easy, the fingering was tough, and my 14 year old brain started yearning to do other, easier things. I finally cracked; not because I couldn't play it -- I could -- but because I could not play it perfectly and with the feeling I had given my other pieces. It was too hard for me. I was pushed too far too fast and I gave up in frustration. My teacher was sad. My parents, as usual, supportive of my decision. I continued to play the piano, but this time playing pieces that were fun. I suppose my development slowed, but at least I had a good time.
My school friend, Charles Trantum, had joined the choir in our High School (The Wheatley School in Old Westbury, NY) and soon I was dragged into it with him. Surprisingly, I loved every minute of Mixed Choir, Male Choir and Barber Shop Quartet, all expertly directed by Mr G. Wills. I really loved and respected him, but I am not sure he was so impressed with my singing. It was a ton of fun. I still remember all the pieces we sang and when I hear them today I sing along with gusto.
Sometime in my senior year, two of my friends, Preston Winters (now an MD in NY) and Neal Kirby (a science teacher in California and the son of Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics fame), invited me to play bass in their band known as the 2+2. Neal and I went to school together since kindergarten and we lived near to each other. I idolized his father, Jack. I would go to his basement studio and watch him draw comics that today are legend. In those days I was not impressed with him as a legend since the comics were not anywhere near as popular as they are now (we are speaking about the early 60's here) -- I was mainly impressed by him as a wonderful man. He would have large sheets of drawing paper in front of him where he drew the frames, created the characters, and penciled in notes on the sides to indicate what they were speaking about and so on. These sheets were sent to Stan Lee who then created the final text that went in the bubbles in each frame. When I was old enough to drive, I would deliver these drawings to Hewlett Harbor on Long Island where Stan Lee lived. He was a nice enough man, but I was only the delivery boy from Mr Kirby and thus there was little other interaction. Mr Kirby spent time with me when he saw my interest in his work and because he knew I couldn't draw for beans, he taught me the art of composing collages. We would sit together and cut out images from the magazines he had laying around (in those days it was mainly Life and LOOK magazines, as well as some Good Housekeeping and the like) and paste them onto a large stiff cardboard sheet. We were making, in essence, graphic mashups (for you younguns) and it was great fun. The training he gave prepared me for designing multiple album and book covers in my later years. I only wish he would get the recognition he deserves for his work to make the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Hulk and Sergeant Fury and his Commandos the success they were and are now. Those of us who knew him personally knew who was the real inspiration for these characters!
Anyway, these two friends brought me into their band. Now they knew as well as I that I did not know how to play the bass. I was, after all, a piano player. But we were young and enthusiastic, so I got a bass and an amp and started messing with it. They kept my volume low so it would not be too much of a disturbance. We had an enormous amount of fun and I got to play regularly at school functions and bar mitzvahs at the local temple.
Around the same time, my cousin, Andrew Passidomo (aka Andy Deno) and I started writing songs together. When we were kids we used to sit together and sing the songs from the radio while accompanying ourselves by slapping beats with our hands on our thighs. He was always the main inspiration for my music and we wrote some interesting songs. When I was 16 I joined ASCAP and our songs were recorded under the auspices of Bobby Daren, our first boss. My cousin, myself and Andy Newmark (now considered one of the grand masters of drumming) spent some time in Bermuda in the winter of 1966. I got to know Groove Holmes who was playing at the main hotel in Hamilton and he would show me how he did various tricks on his massive Hammond Organ. We became friends with a group of young Britishers and a band was formed, "The Bermuda Jam." Andy, my cousin, and Andy, the drummer, went off to work with them and I returned to Long Island. My cousin has played bass with Sly Stone and Joe Cocker, but cut short his career for personal reasons in the early 80's. Andy Newmark went on to play with George Harrison, John Lennon, and a host of others and is still going strong today.
I want to share some fun to warn you not to listen to my predictions about music. My cousin had played at a club in Greenwich Village called the "Purple Onion" and I got to know the Village in detail by hanging out where he played. In October of 1967, I took a girl friend to the Cafe Au Go Go. We were sharing an orgy a go go (a platter of banana split big enough for ten people) listening to my then all time favorite guitarist, Mike Bloomfield, zooming around the fretboard with the Butterfield Blues Band. They were, of course, fabulous. When they finished the set, the waitress came to our table (there were only about ten people in the whole club) and said, "You are in luck. A guitarist has just come to the US for the first time and will jam with Mike Bloomfield." I asked who it was. "Eric Clapton and he just arrived today." When they started playing Bloomfield left Clapton in the dust playing rings around him. OK, fair enough, Eric was definitely jet lagged (after all it was a long flight in those days and his time it was 3 AM) and perhaps he wanted to let Mike shine (I have heard he does that to not overstep another musician as he is a gentleman), but his playing led me to state openly, as if I was entitled to a prediction of importance that evening, "This guy is never going to make it. He just does not have it." Ah yes. Eric, wherever you are, forgive me. Wait, it gets worse. We leave the Cafe and as we start walking we hear coming out of the building next door (The Garrick Theater) some God Awful sounds. I simply could not believe this was a public performance. I went to the doorman and asked, "Who is making this horrible music?" He looked at me almost in agreement and said, "A new group called the Mother's of Invention." I shook my head and knowingly proclaimed, "Now these guys have no chance. They are awful!" So much for my career as a music critic....
I played keyboard in a number of bands, some better, some worse. I picked up the guitar in 1969 and played for about a year in a group. Just when we were being offered to work with a producer in Columbia Records, I moved into an ashram and took up spiritual life. I figured most musicians ended up either dead (Jimi, Janis, etc), mentally ill (Skip Spence, Brian Wilson) or so far out there, finding their way back was a tough chore. One of the most significant events to push me into the path I took was a conversation I had with Jerry Garcia in 1969. The Dead had just finished a concert at my University (SUNY at Stony Brook) and Jerry was sitting alone in his limo in the front seat. Since I had some pull in my college, I was roaming around backstage and he seemed a bit lonely to me, so I approached him and he invited me in for a chat. I did not know it at the time, but he had read a book called "Easy Journey to Other Planets" by Bhaktivedanta Swami (who founded ISKCON) that he had gotten during a charity concert he did earlier for the Swami. Jerry started talking to me about matter and anti-matter, about this universe and the anti-universe. I had a hard time accepting these concepts, or even the fact that one of my all-time music heroes was telling me about it, but he was gung-ho so we went back and forth for almost two hours about this hard to grasp idea. The conversation stuck with me and it wasn't till I read the same book that I understood what he was speaking about.
There are many musicians in the Campagnola side of the family and none of us could figure out why this was so as none of our parents or uncles or aunts were musical. Later on we discovered that our grandfather, Mauro Campagnola, had renovated La Scala in Milano together with his brother and due to the excellence of their work were later invited to come to the USA to work for a contractor. After the renovation was complete, my grandfather built the sets for the La Scala opera and he knew every part of every opera by heart and would sing along with them fluently. We grandchildren then realized where our musical genes had come from.
Many different forms of music have played an important role in my development. My father always played show tunes on a hi-fi he built himself (he is very talented at many things) and I grew to love the classic broadway musical. One of my friends was John Loesser. His father, Frank Loesser, was one of Broadway's icons and I listened to his music during my childhood. When I visited him at his apartment, I just sat in front of his father's piano without daring to touch it, simply soaking in the vibrations and imagining what it would have been like to be there while he composed. Classical music has always been the basis of my musical feeling. My training in classical piano and choral music was augmented by the music theory courses I took in my University. We were allowed electives and I opted for my favorites: music history, art history, art appreciation, music theory, syncopation and harmony, and theater. For me, these artsy courses were far more significant than the social science or technical courses I had to complete for my degree. Although I started off my university education as an engineering major heavily absorbed in mathematics, by the end of my junior year I realized there was very little connection between this kind of brain work and how I felt. I originally got into engineering to bolster my desire to be an architect. I took two years of architectural drawing and had even gotten recognition for a house design I did in a Long Island competition, but I started to feel this type of work would be too dry. In the second half of my Junior year I changed my major to Social Sciences and found sociology, psychology, history, political science, and economics (my secret favorite!) to be more inspiring. I sandwiched these subjects between multiple education courses and graduated with a teaching degree earning me the right to teach high school social studies courses. While I was doing this, especially during my term as a student teacher, I realized that music and theater were my real loves. I would work in my school in the morning, do the rest of the university courses in the afternoon, and by the evening I was in Manhattan working with my producer who wanted to groom me as his first programmer/musician for a prototype all-in-one keyboard (as we have today) synthesizer.
It was a keyboard in a rudimentary box with hundreds of wires all over the place. To make a sound one needed to move the clips at the end of the wires to terminals and the sequence of the clips to terminals would create sonic pathways. Needless to say, this was enormously complex yet interesting. "Switched on Bach" was a great inspiration for me, although the machine that man used was as big as my room. The idea of having a synthesizer as small as my Wurlitzer electric piano was exciting and I wanted to be a part of its creation.
During the 50's I loved the do wap a do choral groups, and in the sixties the ballads, folk rock, Ray Charles, the Supremes and then the Beatles. When the hippy era arrived I adored Buffalo Springfield and was at their first New York appearance in October or November of 1966 at the Top Hat club on the east side. There were only four of us in the club and the band sat at the table next to me. The drummer was especially nice to me. Neil Young did not say a single word, and the others huddled at their table seemingly isolated from us although we sat two feet away from them. Needless to say they were great. Later on, I idolized Poco with Richie Furay and Jim Messina, and their album "Poco" remains to this day my ideal of a lasting classic and their live performance at Stony Brook one of the greatest performances of any group I have ever seen. Neil Young was my model of a tormented artist and his songs stay with me still. Although Steve Stills was a neighbor of mine in Gainesville when we still lived downtown, I never got to say to him how much I loved Buffalo Springfield and the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young group. The Grateful Dead, although inconsistent in their recording quality and songs, always knocked me out in their live performances. Me and my friends were regulars at the Fillmore East, the Central Park concerts, and above all our University concert series where every major group in the world would perform to a really enthusiastic group of college students. We paid top dollar for our yearly entertainment passes and with this money the organizers brought the absolute best groups to us. When Ten Years After appeared on their first US tour, we practically tore the hall to pieces going insane over their power and passion. The next time they came they had already tasted success and were not as good. It was a lesson on how success can ruin your music. Naturally, Hendrix was at the top of my list as the innovator of psychedelic music, although today I have a hard time listening to him for some reason (age?). Brian Wilson's evolutionary music with the Beach Boys was a major force in my life and his work transformed the way I wrote songs. Some of his tracks are timeless and even today you hear them on the TV or in movies. I miss Tim Buckley and am so sorry that his unhappiness caused his overdose. His albums in 1970 transformed the way I looked at bands and I wanted to create a group just like his. Miles Davis deeply inspired me to get into the third stream form of innovative improvisation and one of my later groups attempted to create our own version of personalized musical chats in this exciting new format. Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page made my hairs stand on end. Joni Mitchell made me laugh and cry and write songs that had a deep meaning. Cream was always rising to the top of my playlists. I liked Arlo Guthrie's songs and personal style and had the honor to participate in making a movie with him in 1970.
Yup, I was there at Woodstock and was full of mud, starving, and in need of sleep. Sometime Sunday afternoon my girlfriend Janet and I started walking home (hmmm, it was a few hundred miles away so what were we thinking?) and out of nowhere my friends Preston Winters (see 2+2 above) and Johnny Loesser saw us on the road and drove us home. Actually, I was a bit dull after all that music, but I still remember the best performance was that of Canned Heat.
I was part of the first experimental college in Stony Brook in 1969. Part of the program was to develop your curriculum as you wanted. Without a doubt, my most interesting course was the movie making course sponsored by my two professors, Nam June Paik (the famous video art pioneer) and Lawrence Alloway (curator of the Guggenheim Museum). I dove into the art of film with a single minded purpose and created sound tracks on my two track recorder. During this time, I perfected the art of recording the original way using one or two microphones perfectly placed to capture the correct mix of the performers. This training would assist me when I designed and built my own recording studio in Korsnas Gard, Sweden, in 1980. It was a fully professional, multi-track system with all the features one would expect. To use it properly, I had to train in the art of recording theory and technology and we got to the point where studio engineers in Germany would listen to our tracks and marvel at our sound quality. But I get ahead...
So there I was in the winter of 1970-71, about to step into a professional career as a full time song writer and musician when I give up everything and enter a spiritual group. Disaster? Hardly. When I look back on it now I see that although there were great opportunities at my feet they were, after all, nothing but possibilities and the outcome could have gone good or really, really bad. Some of my friends from that time are mentally unstable, others are dead. Some are struggling even though they have perfected their art and attained fame. I think not going forward with my musical career at that time was the best thing for me.
The spiritual group I was in had one leader who was a free thinker and he gathered together a few of us to create a road show. I was taken along to play guitar and sing. We travelled all around the South of the US and had enormous success doing music and theater. Our unique show landed us on local radio and TV stations and we always played to full houses. One time we were invited to be the warm up group at a large outdoor concert in Tampa, Florida. There were over 6000 people attending and we were high up on an enormous stage. As we were not prepared for such a massive event, we were allowed to use the next group's equipment and after a few minutes the crowd started going wild over our blend of Indian rock and roll. Near the end of our set, the crowd held hands and danced around in a circle that must have been a few hundred yards in diameter (well, maybe not so big, but you get my point -- have to watch out for fish stories in this bio!). When we left the stage, flush with the excitement of our first really big show, the group we were warming up for said, "Hey, thanks a lot. You were supposed to warm the crowd up, not boil them and leave them cooked! How are we suppose to follow that show?" The organizer of the concert said we were always welcome back. Now that was fun.
Music was put aside in 1972 when I was sent off first to India and later to Europe. One day in 1979, quite unexpectedly, someone brought a large organ to the place I was staying in Germany and put it in my room. Wikipedia had an entry about this event that was deleted as someone felt it was not documented. Since I was the person this article was about, I can confirm it was really so! Anyway, for the sake of history, I am reproducing the deleted wiki entry below as it precisely describes the situation (and thus saves me the trouble of rewording it):
RASA (1978-1984) was a popular devotional band, made up of ISKCON devotees.
Background
The group RASA began in the summer of 1978. Robert Campagnola, then known as Harikesa Swami, had been playing devotional Sanskrit bhajans in a joking manner on a large organ recently donated to ISKCON Germany. Some of these songs were recorded and the tapes passed around. Jorgen Sundsvall (Vegavan das), heard these tapes and decided it could be potentially profitable to record an album and distribute it. He invited Robert into a room in the building where they stayed where he had secretly arranged a recording session with a drummer (Dattatreya), piano player Madhava Puri Das (Mats Olausson), electric guitarist (Stig Sjoberg), bass player and a recording engineer (Sperling). Robert sat behind the piano and started spontaneously playing Cintamani while the others gradually joined in. This became the first track on the extremely successful album, Oasis, which sold many hundreds of thousands of copies throughout Europe. Subsequent RASA albums were released, some with the same original musicians, and the band grew so popular they were requested to play the large open air concerts in Germany before huge crowds.
To facilitate the recording of the material, Robert built a recording studio in Korsnas Gard, Sweden, with the help of Ekhardt Matz (Ekanath das) and others. Together they learned the art of recording, mixing and mastering, and custom built many of the facilities within the studio that were used to record other albums and shows for bands and Radio Krishna, a popular Narradion production for Stockholm.
The music and lyrics were either adaptations of traditional Indian songs or original compositions by Robert. The band ceased to exist in 1984 . From 1987 till 1995, Robert recorded under the band name of BLISS.
*** End of Wikipedia article
As you can see, the music in me did not stop just because I changed; rather, it changed with me. OK, I admit, the lyrics I wrote in those days reflected themes I had to present to maintain compatibility with my community and are thus not my greatest work, but some tracks are interesting. You can hear a sample of these tracks here (look for the earlier years) which I offer for free download so they can live on even though I have moved on. By the way, I made 27 albums under the group names of Rasa, BLISS, Sri Hari, and others.
One of the musicians in Rasa, a bass player, would meet many famous musicians and invite them to visit us. He ended up marrying Anne Lennox of the Eurythmics and we became friends (and Anne, if you read this, I am sorry about giving you lousy personal advice in Switzerland, please forgive me.) Nina Hagen was a frequent visitor as well.
BLISS was a different band than Rasa. Rasa was a real group with real people playing when it was recorded analog in a studio. BLISS was pieced together by me in my room using the first midi sequencing software and a auxiliary 8 track tape deck for vocals and other live instruments. Most of the BLISS tracks were done either by me alone or with the help of one or two others. It was a drier creative process, not as satisfying as the Rasa work had been, and impossible to duplicate live. Most of the tracks were recorded when I was very sick and in isolation from 1987-1989 after I could no longer physically or mentally handle the burdens placed upon me. The last BLISS album was recorded in 1994 (Remember) and although it was good I lost interest due to decreased sales.
I also had the privilege of performing live with Gauranga Bhajan Band, a group that performed all over Eastern and Western Europe and the former Soviet Union to thousands of people per show. We would take traditional tunes and jazz them up to the delight of our audiences. Our finale was a performance before 32,000 people at Moscow's Olympiski Stadium together with Boy George. Our music was not very good that night and I am quite sure the crowd was not totally satisfied with our show. There were, however, a few interesting highlights. When the show was about to start, the 200 policemen we had hired from the local department walked out. The chief came up to me and said, "There are too many people here. We are afraid for our lives and I cannot let my men be in such danger. I am placing you personally responsible for their well being." Can you imagine this? I looked out from the stage (I was the MC) and saw a sea of people. Unless you have been in that situation, you simply cannot imagine what it is like. When there are 32,000 people in a hall meant for maximally 30,000 with no supervision and no guards, there is no possibility to control what is happening. So many people move like waves in the ocean. If one person in the back pushes even slightly the person in front of them, it creates a wave motion that flows all the way to the stage with increasing intensity. I looked out over the audience before starting the show and the first thing I see is the body of a girl being carried over the heads of the audience passed hand to hand to the front where she was taken away in an ambulance. I was certain I was cooked and I would be arrested immediately after the show. With all my attention, I tried to pacify the crowd by speaking softly, only in two minute intervals, and keep the show moving along. I pleaded with them for order.
Being extremely worried, I went to the dressing room and told George the situation and how the police chief had made me personally responsible if anything happened and requested him to stay in his dressing room till I called for him when he would walk behind the scenes to the stage where I would introduce him to the crowd. So much for this precaution for as soon as I mentioned his name he tore out of his dressing room waving his big black hat and screaming at the top of his lungs. I wanted to strangle him on the spot and considering I would be arrested no matter how I acted, I decided against it. Somehow he got everyone to sit with him on the stage and the crowd was silent and peaceful. It all went very well and I think they were happy. The police chief had been waiting outside and came to me later and said, "I have never seen a crowd this large be so calm and peaceful without incident in my entire career. How did you do that?" I have no idea, sir. But thank God!
More fun about that night -- We hired the first laser and smoke show to appear in Russia. We spent a lot of money and time to make this show really something to remember. Although the laser lights were flashing everywhere, the smoke never appeared. I tried to send the technicians around to find out what happened, but it was never repaired. Seven years later I visited a friend of mine in Moscow who asked me if I remembered about the missing smoke from that show. He confessed, "I was under the stage taking a break from all the chaos when I saw smoke suddenly pouring out. You were upstage performing and I was alone, so I started covering the smoke with tarpaulins I found and I sprayed the area with a fire extinguisher. I managed to control the smoke and went upstairs quite proud of myself. When I heard you yelling to someone to fix the smoke machines, I realized I did something wrong and never told anyone what I did. Sorry about that."
After this concert I decided my live performing days were finished and I needed a 20 year vacation from this very tough lifestyle of traveling all over the place and performing every night.
Sometime in 1995, a few people approached me and introduced me to the techno style of music with the idea that I should create a techno album as it would be really popular. I listened to these tapes and started to put something together. Those around me realized I was not a techno guy and I needed help, so they enlisted Ian Ion to work with me. Together we created two Sri Hari albums, the first much more successful than the second. My task was to create the basis of the track with singing or sampled phrases, and sometimes the instrumentation (as in the last track of the first album). The two albums together were fabulously successful. After the second Sr Hari CD I retired from the spiritual music scene for good.
I left this group in 1998 and started to experiment with my own personal style of improvisation without considering external expectations. Before various speaking engagements in Russia, I would spontaneously compose on a synthesizer whatever mood I was in. This was recorded on video or through a tape recorder that had been placed in front of me and I realized these pieces would make a nice CD. Using the marvelous software tool, CoolEdit (which was later sold to Adobe and is now known as Adobe Audition which is not particularly better than the original program) I removed 50 cycle hum, water fountains, coughing, people speaking, distortions, and a pile of audio artifacts that ruined the music completely, and managed to create fairly clean tracks that were compiled on a CD called "Living Dreams." My wife, Katarina, and I lived for some time in a super ecological community in Oxie, Sweden, called Toarps Ekoby, which is definitely the best place I have ever lived in and in 2003 I created a few tracks in my studio and these can be heard on the music player on this site. This set the stage for the music I am doing today.
In 2007 I met Alexandr and Mamed in Moscow when they were doing a concert. We hit it off and teamed up to expand their band North Pole. We played live together for a year, but then Mamed and I got together to create our own band called "Siva Hari" because he was known as Siva and I was known as Hari. We played many live concerts in Moscow and St Petersburg. All of our music is improvisation and the styles are varied. Mamed is a genius with Ableton Live and an expert musician and producer. I mainly played guitar. We have a wonderful connection musically and in life. You can hear some of what we did on our band's website and through this site.
We made two albums in 2008 as Siva Hari. You can listen to them on this site by going to the "Lastest Albums" link in the menu. You can also purchase these albums or tracks on our music store available through our band web site at sivahari.com where you can also hear and see many of these shows. In 2011 I ruined my vocal chords in the dry Russian winter and could no longer speak or sing for any length of time. I kind of retired from music after this.
My story
My first instrument was a trumpet. I cannot remember how old I was when I got it, but I could not make it deliver any sound acceptable to human ears. I do remember the twisted face my mother made when I attempted to blow it and perhaps her reaction made me realize the learning process might take too much of a toll on my family. After a short and unsuccessful period of being a trumpeteer, my music teacher at school decided the problem was the instrument and switched me to a saxaphone. Later on it was discovered that my lungs are not strong and I have difficulty with any instrument demanding the use of breath. This early foray into music discouraged me and I returned to athletics and reading lots of books. Actually, my life in those days was mainly playing sports and reading a book every other day.
When I was in the sixth grade, there was a musical production in my school. This yearly production was a big deal at the North Side School in East Williston, N.Y. Participation in the performance was not voluntary. We children would line up, three at a time, in front of the music teacher's piano. I do not remember her name (maybe it was Mrs Simon?) but I certainly remember what she looked like and her incredibly serene and patient disposition. She would play a song and ask the three hapless candidates to sing along in unison. I had no idea why she was doing this or how she could understand what we sounded like individually. Later I realized she was very smart. If she had asked me to sing in public alone I would have first died and then playing on my harp and flapping my wings would have fulfilled her command. Somehow singing in a group was not very scary. Amazingly, she picked me to be the lead in Gilbert and Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore" a musical farce at sea. I found that I had a voice and could express it well as the Captain of the Pinafore. It was a very rewarding experience and so my taste for music returned. About six months after the play was performed, my voice changed and my singing career put on a permanent hold. Gone was that sweet, high voice -- enter a much less interesting baritone.
When I was around 12 years old, my father brought home a very old piano he bought for $10. It was an ancient upright that was so old the tuner had to detune the entire piano to A430 or so as the nuts would not keep the strings tight enough. Needless to say this made future jam sessions troublesome, but we loved that piano. Actually, my father got it for my sister, Barbara (who was just named 2008's Citizen of the Year in Ohio for her work with the Paper Circle in Athen's -- congrats sis!) and he painted it white and finished it with gold trim. It actually looked quite nice and even in its lower toned state sounded ok. A piano teacher was brought to the house to train my sister but she was not interested. I would stand behind watching and listening and when they were gone I would play her pieces. My mother caught on that the piano was meant for me and so I was sent off regularly to Mrs Gleason, my first teacher. I must say, Mrs Gleason, although quite a large woman, was the nicest teacher I would ever have. She had the most wonderful disposition and was an expert transcriber. Each week I would have three assignments. The first was my scale practice (Hannon and others), the second was a classical piece she picked for me, and the third was to play a contemporary song that she would score right in front of me while singing along. I was amazed at her skill. Within two years I had advanced to fifth year classical piano. I was just 14 when she felt I could move forward even faster so she gave me a piece that was, as she said, a challenge that was within my reach. It was called "The Butterfly," I think (perhaps by G.Merkel?) and I practiced it over and over again to perfect the piece. It was not easy, the fingering was tough, and my 14 year old brain started yearning to do other, easier things. I finally cracked; not because I couldn't play it -- I could -- but because I could not play it perfectly and with the feeling I had given my other pieces. It was too hard for me. I was pushed too far too fast and I gave up in frustration. My teacher was sad. My parents, as usual, supportive of my decision. I continued to play the piano, but this time playing pieces that were fun. I suppose my development slowed, but at least I had a good time.
My school friend, Charles Trantum, had joined the choir in our High School (The Wheatley School in Old Westbury, NY) and soon I was dragged into it with him. Surprisingly, I loved every minute of Mixed Choir, Male Choir and Barber Shop Quartet, all expertly directed by Mr G. Wills. I really loved and respected him, but I am not sure he was so impressed with my singing. It was a ton of fun. I still remember all the pieces we sang and when I hear them today I sing along with gusto.
Sometime in my senior year, two of my friends, Preston Winters (now an MD in NY) and Neal Kirby (a science teacher in California and the son of Jack Kirby of Marvel Comics fame), invited me to play bass in their band known as the 2+2. Neal and I went to school together since kindergarten and we lived near to each other. I idolized his father, Jack. I would go to his basement studio and watch him draw comics that today are legend. In those days I was not impressed with him as a legend since the comics were not anywhere near as popular as they are now (we are speaking about the early 60's here) -- I was mainly impressed by him as a wonderful man. He would have large sheets of drawing paper in front of him where he drew the frames, created the characters, and penciled in notes on the sides to indicate what they were speaking about and so on. These sheets were sent to Stan Lee who then created the final text that went in the bubbles in each frame. When I was old enough to drive, I would deliver these drawings to Hewlett Harbor on Long Island where Stan Lee lived. He was a nice enough man, but I was only the delivery boy from Mr Kirby and thus there was little other interaction. Mr Kirby spent time with me when he saw my interest in his work and because he knew I couldn't draw for beans, he taught me the art of composing collages. We would sit together and cut out images from the magazines he had laying around (in those days it was mainly Life and LOOK magazines, as well as some Good Housekeeping and the like) and paste them onto a large stiff cardboard sheet. We were making, in essence, graphic mashups (for you younguns) and it was great fun. The training he gave prepared me for designing multiple album and book covers in my later years. I only wish he would get the recognition he deserves for his work to make the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Hulk and Sergeant Fury and his Commandos the success they were and are now. Those of us who knew him personally knew who was the real inspiration for these characters!
Anyway, these two friends brought me into their band. Now they knew as well as I that I did not know how to play the bass. I was, after all, a piano player. But we were young and enthusiastic, so I got a bass and an amp and started messing with it. They kept my volume low so it would not be too much of a disturbance. We had an enormous amount of fun and I got to play regularly at school functions and bar mitzvahs at the local temple.
Around the same time, my cousin, Andrew Passidomo (aka Andy Deno) and I started writing songs together. When we were kids we used to sit together and sing the songs from the radio while accompanying ourselves by slapping beats with our hands on our thighs. He was always the main inspiration for my music and we wrote some interesting songs. When I was 16 I joined ASCAP and our songs were recorded under the auspices of Bobby Daren, our first boss. My cousin, myself and Andy Newmark (now considered one of the grand masters of drumming) spent some time in Bermuda in the winter of 1966. I got to know Groove Holmes who was playing at the main hotel in Hamilton and he would show me how he did various tricks on his massive Hammond Organ. We became friends with a group of young Britishers and a band was formed, "The Bermuda Jam." Andy, my cousin, and Andy, the drummer, went off to work with them and I returned to Long Island. My cousin has played bass with Sly Stone and Joe Cocker, but cut short his career for personal reasons in the early 80's. Andy Newmark went on to play with George Harrison, John Lennon, and a host of others and is still going strong today.
I want to share some fun to warn you not to listen to my predictions about music. My cousin had played at a club in Greenwich Village called the "Purple Onion" and I got to know the Village in detail by hanging out where he played. In October of 1967, I took a girl friend to the Cafe Au Go Go. We were sharing an orgy a go go (a platter of banana split big enough for ten people) listening to my then all time favorite guitarist, Mike Bloomfield, zooming around the fretboard with the Butterfield Blues Band. They were, of course, fabulous. When they finished the set, the waitress came to our table (there were only about ten people in the whole club) and said, "You are in luck. A guitarist has just come to the US for the first time and will jam with Mike Bloomfield." I asked who it was. "Eric Clapton and he just arrived today." When they started playing Bloomfield left Clapton in the dust playing rings around him. OK, fair enough, Eric was definitely jet lagged (after all it was a long flight in those days and his time it was 3 AM) and perhaps he wanted to let Mike shine (I have heard he does that to not overstep another musician as he is a gentleman), but his playing led me to state openly, as if I was entitled to a prediction of importance that evening, "This guy is never going to make it. He just does not have it." Ah yes. Eric, wherever you are, forgive me. Wait, it gets worse. We leave the Cafe and as we start walking we hear coming out of the building next door (The Garrick Theater) some God Awful sounds. I simply could not believe this was a public performance. I went to the doorman and asked, "Who is making this horrible music?" He looked at me almost in agreement and said, "A new group called the Mother's of Invention." I shook my head and knowingly proclaimed, "Now these guys have no chance. They are awful!" So much for my career as a music critic....
I played keyboard in a number of bands, some better, some worse. I picked up the guitar in 1969 and played for about a year in a group. Just when we were being offered to work with a producer in Columbia Records, I moved into an ashram and took up spiritual life. I figured most musicians ended up either dead (Jimi, Janis, etc), mentally ill (Skip Spence, Brian Wilson) or so far out there, finding their way back was a tough chore. One of the most significant events to push me into the path I took was a conversation I had with Jerry Garcia in 1969. The Dead had just finished a concert at my University (SUNY at Stony Brook) and Jerry was sitting alone in his limo in the front seat. Since I had some pull in my college, I was roaming around backstage and he seemed a bit lonely to me, so I approached him and he invited me in for a chat. I did not know it at the time, but he had read a book called "Easy Journey to Other Planets" by Bhaktivedanta Swami (who founded ISKCON) that he had gotten during a charity concert he did earlier for the Swami. Jerry started talking to me about matter and anti-matter, about this universe and the anti-universe. I had a hard time accepting these concepts, or even the fact that one of my all-time music heroes was telling me about it, but he was gung-ho so we went back and forth for almost two hours about this hard to grasp idea. The conversation stuck with me and it wasn't till I read the same book that I understood what he was speaking about.
There are many musicians in the Campagnola side of the family and none of us could figure out why this was so as none of our parents or uncles or aunts were musical. Later on we discovered that our grandfather, Mauro Campagnola, had renovated La Scala in Milano together with his brother and due to the excellence of their work were later invited to come to the USA to work for a contractor. After the renovation was complete, my grandfather built the sets for the La Scala opera and he knew every part of every opera by heart and would sing along with them fluently. We grandchildren then realized where our musical genes had come from.
Many different forms of music have played an important role in my development. My father always played show tunes on a hi-fi he built himself (he is very talented at many things) and I grew to love the classic broadway musical. One of my friends was John Loesser. His father, Frank Loesser, was one of Broadway's icons and I listened to his music during my childhood. When I visited him at his apartment, I just sat in front of his father's piano without daring to touch it, simply soaking in the vibrations and imagining what it would have been like to be there while he composed. Classical music has always been the basis of my musical feeling. My training in classical piano and choral music was augmented by the music theory courses I took in my University. We were allowed electives and I opted for my favorites: music history, art history, art appreciation, music theory, syncopation and harmony, and theater. For me, these artsy courses were far more significant than the social science or technical courses I had to complete for my degree. Although I started off my university education as an engineering major heavily absorbed in mathematics, by the end of my junior year I realized there was very little connection between this kind of brain work and how I felt. I originally got into engineering to bolster my desire to be an architect. I took two years of architectural drawing and had even gotten recognition for a house design I did in a Long Island competition, but I started to feel this type of work would be too dry. In the second half of my Junior year I changed my major to Social Sciences and found sociology, psychology, history, political science, and economics (my secret favorite!) to be more inspiring. I sandwiched these subjects between multiple education courses and graduated with a teaching degree earning me the right to teach high school social studies courses. While I was doing this, especially during my term as a student teacher, I realized that music and theater were my real loves. I would work in my school in the morning, do the rest of the university courses in the afternoon, and by the evening I was in Manhattan working with my producer who wanted to groom me as his first programmer/musician for a prototype all-in-one keyboard (as we have today) synthesizer.
It was a keyboard in a rudimentary box with hundreds of wires all over the place. To make a sound one needed to move the clips at the end of the wires to terminals and the sequence of the clips to terminals would create sonic pathways. Needless to say, this was enormously complex yet interesting. "Switched on Bach" was a great inspiration for me, although the machine that man used was as big as my room. The idea of having a synthesizer as small as my Wurlitzer electric piano was exciting and I wanted to be a part of its creation.
During the 50's I loved the do wap a do choral groups, and in the sixties the ballads, folk rock, Ray Charles, the Supremes and then the Beatles. When the hippy era arrived I adored Buffalo Springfield and was at their first New York appearance in October or November of 1966 at the Top Hat club on the east side. There were only four of us in the club and the band sat at the table next to me. The drummer was especially nice to me. Neil Young did not say a single word, and the others huddled at their table seemingly isolated from us although we sat two feet away from them. Needless to say they were great. Later on, I idolized Poco with Richie Furay and Jim Messina, and their album "Poco" remains to this day my ideal of a lasting classic and their live performance at Stony Brook one of the greatest performances of any group I have ever seen. Neil Young was my model of a tormented artist and his songs stay with me still. Although Steve Stills was a neighbor of mine in Gainesville when we still lived downtown, I never got to say to him how much I loved Buffalo Springfield and the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young group. The Grateful Dead, although inconsistent in their recording quality and songs, always knocked me out in their live performances. Me and my friends were regulars at the Fillmore East, the Central Park concerts, and above all our University concert series where every major group in the world would perform to a really enthusiastic group of college students. We paid top dollar for our yearly entertainment passes and with this money the organizers brought the absolute best groups to us. When Ten Years After appeared on their first US tour, we practically tore the hall to pieces going insane over their power and passion. The next time they came they had already tasted success and were not as good. It was a lesson on how success can ruin your music. Naturally, Hendrix was at the top of my list as the innovator of psychedelic music, although today I have a hard time listening to him for some reason (age?). Brian Wilson's evolutionary music with the Beach Boys was a major force in my life and his work transformed the way I wrote songs. Some of his tracks are timeless and even today you hear them on the TV or in movies. I miss Tim Buckley and am so sorry that his unhappiness caused his overdose. His albums in 1970 transformed the way I looked at bands and I wanted to create a group just like his. Miles Davis deeply inspired me to get into the third stream form of innovative improvisation and one of my later groups attempted to create our own version of personalized musical chats in this exciting new format. Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page made my hairs stand on end. Joni Mitchell made me laugh and cry and write songs that had a deep meaning. Cream was always rising to the top of my playlists. I liked Arlo Guthrie's songs and personal style and had the honor to participate in making a movie with him in 1970.
Yup, I was there at Woodstock and was full of mud, starving, and in need of sleep. Sometime Sunday afternoon my girlfriend Janet and I started walking home (hmmm, it was a few hundred miles away so what were we thinking?) and out of nowhere my friends Preston Winters (see 2+2 above) and Johnny Loesser saw us on the road and drove us home. Actually, I was a bit dull after all that music, but I still remember the best performance was that of Canned Heat.
I was part of the first experimental college in Stony Brook in 1969. Part of the program was to develop your curriculum as you wanted. Without a doubt, my most interesting course was the movie making course sponsored by my two professors, Nam June Paik (the famous video art pioneer) and Lawrence Alloway (curator of the Guggenheim Museum). I dove into the art of film with a single minded purpose and created sound tracks on my two track recorder. During this time, I perfected the art of recording the original way using one or two microphones perfectly placed to capture the correct mix of the performers. This training would assist me when I designed and built my own recording studio in Korsnas Gard, Sweden, in 1980. It was a fully professional, multi-track system with all the features one would expect. To use it properly, I had to train in the art of recording theory and technology and we got to the point where studio engineers in Germany would listen to our tracks and marvel at our sound quality. But I get ahead...
So there I was in the winter of 1970-71, about to step into a professional career as a full time song writer and musician when I give up everything and enter a spiritual group. Disaster? Hardly. When I look back on it now I see that although there were great opportunities at my feet they were, after all, nothing but possibilities and the outcome could have gone good or really, really bad. Some of my friends from that time are mentally unstable, others are dead. Some are struggling even though they have perfected their art and attained fame. I think not going forward with my musical career at that time was the best thing for me.
The spiritual group I was in had one leader who was a free thinker and he gathered together a few of us to create a road show. I was taken along to play guitar and sing. We travelled all around the South of the US and had enormous success doing music and theater. Our unique show landed us on local radio and TV stations and we always played to full houses. One time we were invited to be the warm up group at a large outdoor concert in Tampa, Florida. There were over 6000 people attending and we were high up on an enormous stage. As we were not prepared for such a massive event, we were allowed to use the next group's equipment and after a few minutes the crowd started going wild over our blend of Indian rock and roll. Near the end of our set, the crowd held hands and danced around in a circle that must have been a few hundred yards in diameter (well, maybe not so big, but you get my point -- have to watch out for fish stories in this bio!). When we left the stage, flush with the excitement of our first really big show, the group we were warming up for said, "Hey, thanks a lot. You were supposed to warm the crowd up, not boil them and leave them cooked! How are we suppose to follow that show?" The organizer of the concert said we were always welcome back. Now that was fun.
Music was put aside in 1972 when I was sent off first to India and later to Europe. One day in 1979, quite unexpectedly, someone brought a large organ to the place I was staying in Germany and put it in my room. Wikipedia had an entry about this event that was deleted as someone felt it was not documented. Since I was the person this article was about, I can confirm it was really so! Anyway, for the sake of history, I am reproducing the deleted wiki entry below as it precisely describes the situation (and thus saves me the trouble of rewording it):
RASA (1978-1984) was a popular devotional band, made up of ISKCON devotees.
Background
The group RASA began in the summer of 1978. Robert Campagnola, then known as Harikesa Swami, had been playing devotional Sanskrit bhajans in a joking manner on a large organ recently donated to ISKCON Germany. Some of these songs were recorded and the tapes passed around. Jorgen Sundsvall (Vegavan das), heard these tapes and decided it could be potentially profitable to record an album and distribute it. He invited Robert into a room in the building where they stayed where he had secretly arranged a recording session with a drummer (Dattatreya), piano player Madhava Puri Das (Mats Olausson), electric guitarist (Stig Sjoberg), bass player and a recording engineer (Sperling). Robert sat behind the piano and started spontaneously playing Cintamani while the others gradually joined in. This became the first track on the extremely successful album, Oasis, which sold many hundreds of thousands of copies throughout Europe. Subsequent RASA albums were released, some with the same original musicians, and the band grew so popular they were requested to play the large open air concerts in Germany before huge crowds.
To facilitate the recording of the material, Robert built a recording studio in Korsnas Gard, Sweden, with the help of Ekhardt Matz (Ekanath das) and others. Together they learned the art of recording, mixing and mastering, and custom built many of the facilities within the studio that were used to record other albums and shows for bands and Radio Krishna, a popular Narradion production for Stockholm.
The music and lyrics were either adaptations of traditional Indian songs or original compositions by Robert. The band ceased to exist in 1984 . From 1987 till 1995, Robert recorded under the band name of BLISS.
*** End of Wikipedia article
As you can see, the music in me did not stop just because I changed; rather, it changed with me. OK, I admit, the lyrics I wrote in those days reflected themes I had to present to maintain compatibility with my community and are thus not my greatest work, but some tracks are interesting. You can hear a sample of these tracks here (look for the earlier years) which I offer for free download so they can live on even though I have moved on. By the way, I made 27 albums under the group names of Rasa, BLISS, Sri Hari, and others.
One of the musicians in Rasa, a bass player, would meet many famous musicians and invite them to visit us. He ended up marrying Anne Lennox of the Eurythmics and we became friends (and Anne, if you read this, I am sorry about giving you lousy personal advice in Switzerland, please forgive me.) Nina Hagen was a frequent visitor as well.
BLISS was a different band than Rasa. Rasa was a real group with real people playing when it was recorded analog in a studio. BLISS was pieced together by me in my room using the first midi sequencing software and a auxiliary 8 track tape deck for vocals and other live instruments. Most of the BLISS tracks were done either by me alone or with the help of one or two others. It was a drier creative process, not as satisfying as the Rasa work had been, and impossible to duplicate live. Most of the tracks were recorded when I was very sick and in isolation from 1987-1989 after I could no longer physically or mentally handle the burdens placed upon me. The last BLISS album was recorded in 1994 (Remember) and although it was good I lost interest due to decreased sales.
I also had the privilege of performing live with Gauranga Bhajan Band, a group that performed all over Eastern and Western Europe and the former Soviet Union to thousands of people per show. We would take traditional tunes and jazz them up to the delight of our audiences. Our finale was a performance before 32,000 people at Moscow's Olympiski Stadium together with Boy George. Our music was not very good that night and I am quite sure the crowd was not totally satisfied with our show. There were, however, a few interesting highlights. When the show was about to start, the 200 policemen we had hired from the local department walked out. The chief came up to me and said, "There are too many people here. We are afraid for our lives and I cannot let my men be in such danger. I am placing you personally responsible for their well being." Can you imagine this? I looked out from the stage (I was the MC) and saw a sea of people. Unless you have been in that situation, you simply cannot imagine what it is like. When there are 32,000 people in a hall meant for maximally 30,000 with no supervision and no guards, there is no possibility to control what is happening. So many people move like waves in the ocean. If one person in the back pushes even slightly the person in front of them, it creates a wave motion that flows all the way to the stage with increasing intensity. I looked out over the audience before starting the show and the first thing I see is the body of a girl being carried over the heads of the audience passed hand to hand to the front where she was taken away in an ambulance. I was certain I was cooked and I would be arrested immediately after the show. With all my attention, I tried to pacify the crowd by speaking softly, only in two minute intervals, and keep the show moving along. I pleaded with them for order.
Being extremely worried, I went to the dressing room and told George the situation and how the police chief had made me personally responsible if anything happened and requested him to stay in his dressing room till I called for him when he would walk behind the scenes to the stage where I would introduce him to the crowd. So much for this precaution for as soon as I mentioned his name he tore out of his dressing room waving his big black hat and screaming at the top of his lungs. I wanted to strangle him on the spot and considering I would be arrested no matter how I acted, I decided against it. Somehow he got everyone to sit with him on the stage and the crowd was silent and peaceful. It all went very well and I think they were happy. The police chief had been waiting outside and came to me later and said, "I have never seen a crowd this large be so calm and peaceful without incident in my entire career. How did you do that?" I have no idea, sir. But thank God!
More fun about that night -- We hired the first laser and smoke show to appear in Russia. We spent a lot of money and time to make this show really something to remember. Although the laser lights were flashing everywhere, the smoke never appeared. I tried to send the technicians around to find out what happened, but it was never repaired. Seven years later I visited a friend of mine in Moscow who asked me if I remembered about the missing smoke from that show. He confessed, "I was under the stage taking a break from all the chaos when I saw smoke suddenly pouring out. You were upstage performing and I was alone, so I started covering the smoke with tarpaulins I found and I sprayed the area with a fire extinguisher. I managed to control the smoke and went upstairs quite proud of myself. When I heard you yelling to someone to fix the smoke machines, I realized I did something wrong and never told anyone what I did. Sorry about that."
After this concert I decided my live performing days were finished and I needed a 20 year vacation from this very tough lifestyle of traveling all over the place and performing every night.
Sometime in 1995, a few people approached me and introduced me to the techno style of music with the idea that I should create a techno album as it would be really popular. I listened to these tapes and started to put something together. Those around me realized I was not a techno guy and I needed help, so they enlisted Ian Ion to work with me. Together we created two Sri Hari albums, the first much more successful than the second. My task was to create the basis of the track with singing or sampled phrases, and sometimes the instrumentation (as in the last track of the first album). The two albums together were fabulously successful. After the second Sr Hari CD I retired from the spiritual music scene for good.
I left this group in 1998 and started to experiment with my own personal style of improvisation without considering external expectations. Before various speaking engagements in Russia, I would spontaneously compose on a synthesizer whatever mood I was in. This was recorded on video or through a tape recorder that had been placed in front of me and I realized these pieces would make a nice CD. Using the marvelous software tool, CoolEdit (which was later sold to Adobe and is now known as Adobe Audition which is not particularly better than the original program) I removed 50 cycle hum, water fountains, coughing, people speaking, distortions, and a pile of audio artifacts that ruined the music completely, and managed to create fairly clean tracks that were compiled on a CD called "Living Dreams." My wife, Katarina, and I lived for some time in a super ecological community in Oxie, Sweden, called Toarps Ekoby, which is definitely the best place I have ever lived in and in 2003 I created a few tracks in my studio and these can be heard on the music player on this site. This set the stage for the music I am doing today.
In 2007 I met Alexandr and Mamed in Moscow when they were doing a concert. We hit it off and teamed up to expand their band North Pole. We played live together for a year, but then Mamed and I got together to create our own band called "Siva Hari" because he was known as Siva and I was known as Hari. We played many live concerts in Moscow and St Petersburg. All of our music is improvisation and the styles are varied. Mamed is a genius with Ableton Live and an expert musician and producer. I mainly played guitar. We have a wonderful connection musically and in life. You can hear some of what we did on our band's website and through this site.
We made two albums in 2008 as Siva Hari. You can listen to them on this site by going to the "Lastest Albums" link in the menu. You can also purchase these albums or tracks on our music store available through our band web site at sivahari.com where you can also hear and see many of these shows. In 2011 I ruined my vocal chords in the dry Russian winter and could no longer speak or sing for any length of time. I kind of retired from music after this.