The music man
Tuning into the deep connection between
yoga and music with Alex King-Harris
aka Rara Avis, co-founder of Desert
Dwellers and YogiTunes. By David Holzer
L
ike you probably, I take it for granted that any yoga class I
go to will include music. I also couldn’t imagine doing my
home practice without it. After I was fortunate enough
to be turned on to them, I now practice to the sounds of
Desert Dwellers. But I’ve never really thought about how
music works in relation to yoga.
So, I leapt at the opportunity to speak to Alex King-Harris, better
known by his ‘music personality’ of Rara – in Latin ‘rare bird’- co-founder of Desert Dwellers and now CEO of YogiTunes.
YogiTunes offers studio owners, teachers and wellness enthusiasts
an expansive library of curated, hand-picked music for yoga,
meditation, massage and sound healing.
I interviewed Rara by phone at his home in Victoria, British
Columbia, Canada. He’s clearly someone who lives and breathes
music and yoga and is deeply knowledgeable on the connection
between them.
FM
Why do you think music became such a part of yoga?
From a place of intuition, I’d say that, although incorporating pre-
recorded or live music into asana is very recent, music has always
been part of the yogic experience. The two just haven’t been married
together in the way they are today.
I was taught that at the core of yoga is an essential understanding
of vibration. The chakras are a map for vibration. The number of
petals that surround each flower speak to roughly the rhythms and
frequencies that those parts of your body are attuned to.
There’s something very beautiful in the architecture of sound
that creates a bridge between the philosophy of yoga and music.
It’s something we refer to in music as the harmonic overtone series.
This is a built-in series of relationships that all of nature uses to
create balance, proportion and harmony. Think of the body as an
instrument with its own equilibrium, alignment and structure. Music
has a similar map, whereby rhythm and harmony follow similar rules