Tune in to OrcasRadio.org next Saturday from 1-3 PM as I interview Rafe Pearlman, a local musician with stunning natural talent. (He started coming down with something this morning, so we postponed the interview to next week.) He makes sounds with his voice and his musicians like you might hear in ancient Israel, the deep interior of India, or a thousand-year-old monastery.
I first heard Rafe at his KANU concert at Orcas Center in 2022, and I have been playing his CD in my car ever since.
If you have the KANU CD, “Sunna” is my favorite song. I like to drive somewhere, park the car, turn the volume high, lay the seat back, and let Rafe’s vocals take me into another world. “Sunna,” which means the sun goddess in Norse or Germanic mythology, starts out sounding ancient and transforms into a love song that builds into a crescendo of deep power.
If you’re in the car, pull over and turn this up loud…
What first made the song powerful for me was Rafe’s KANU concert. It was not just any concert. I hadn’t originally planned to go, but our neighbors called the morning after the first night and said they had been talking about it for two hours after experiencing it. Even though we were packing for a trip to Texas, I decided our family better go. No one talks about a concert for two hours unless it’s extraordinary.
Extraordinary it was. Rafe and his musicians transported us to other places that night. He is authentically gifted at doing this. KANU pulled us into other times and places. It brought us not only through his life but into our own hearts and memories and dreams.
This is what I wrote on a post after being there:
It wasn’t a concert. It was like stepping into a whole different world for a few hours, immersing in the life of Rafe Pearlman, who grew up in the Alaska wilderness with sled dogs and ravens for friends. He has translated his formative thoughts and experiences into music that is nothing like the kind you’re accustomed to hearing in everyday life. (If it is, you’ve got to connect me with what you’re listening to!) It sometimes doesn’t even have words. The sounds he makes combined with the sounds his instrumentalists create are powerful, reaching a deep, stirring place inside you. I could have stayed there a lot longer, and photos or videos won’t do it justice. I think all of us in the audience were swept into another realm.
I had seen Rafe before, fleetingly when we showed up later than we wanted to at the Mount Baker Farm 4th of July celebration and concert before the laser light show a few years ago. We only heard the final two or three songs that were played, and I wished we had seen the whole thing. That’s when he first came onto my radar, but I had no idea what the KANU concert was going to be.
Throughout the show, Rafe was captivating. He can sing in umpteen different styles – by the end of the show, I gathered that he has devoted himself to the practicing of vocal nuances heard in cultures around the world. He even did the calls of ravens.
Rafe’s CD of the concert songs came out the weekend he performed, and were made available at Orcas Center when we walked out of the show. We bought one and listened to KANU again and again on the way to SeaTac early the next morning, and all the way back from SeaTac to Orcas Island after being in Texas a week.
Orcas Center did not record KANU for their website archives because Rafe and his phenomenal instrumentalists plan to do some more shows in the near future, according to Jake Perrine, who helped produce the show and the CD.
I ran into Rafe on the sidewalk several weeks after the concert and asked if he would allow me to record him doing raven sounds, and he kindly did:
He says this on his website:
Rafe Pearlman started his singing career with the wolves, ravens and sled dogs of the Alaskan wilderness. The wild nature of his exploratory singing has led to performances spanning the globe, from India, Hong Kong, Israel and Germany, to Italy, France, Spain, Australia, Thailand, Mexico and all across the United States. Rafe’s intention with his music is to inspire a vision of a world in harmony and unity, celebrating diversity, sustainability, and equality for all beings. Sometimes a simple song is all it takes to open a connection.
Wherever you are at 1 o’clock next Saturday, tune in to OrcasRadio.org to listen to the new Life on Orcas Island radio show with our local phenom, Rafe Pearlman.
