CD available for purchase here

A collection of twenty-two electronic fusion tracks, merging both a darker electrogoth vibe and a lighter hip hop, dubwise bounce onto traditional and popular rhythms and beats of belly dance music.

Over the last few decades, and most especially in recent years, the forms of belly dance have shifted, evolved, and sprouted new hybrids. It is evident here, in the western U.S. of America, where many dancing soloists and troupes have blended traditional elements of Raqs Sharki with a host of other contemporary forms. Music needs to respond with similar lines of flight into the limitless potentiality of mutant forms. I humbly submit Dancing Electress as one such effort.

From the CD liner notes:
“As this project developed, twenty-two songs emerged. Knowledge of certain esoteric and occult matters will allow one to see the significance in this number, and to look for correspondences with the Major Arcana or Trump cards of the Tarot, and the letters of the Hebrew AlephBeth. In certain magical practices using the Tree of Life of the Qabalah, these symbols represent the twenty-two connecting Paths that offer passageway between and connect the Ten Holy Sephiroth or Emanations. Together, these Twenty-two Channels and Ten Stations describe a link between the Microcosm of the individual and the Macrocosm of the Divine throughout Nature. This system can aid in magic and meditation by informing the initiate of the qualities and relationships of the various components that comprise a being, both in space and through time.

There is a tradition in belly dance to name songs after specific dancers and a particular accomplished aspect of their physical manifestation of the dance. I wanted to adopt this practice in part, with the greater abstraction of using only initials. As each track is a movement within a larger body, I realized the association of each with one of the aforementioned channels. Each track then fell into place, taking on the initial from a letter of the AlephBeth, reflecting characteristics of the corresponding Major Arcana card, and locating itself in a general area of the body where this channel is situated in the Microcosm. The order is ascending, going from the bottom up, or the last letter to the first, the Universe or World to the Fool or Zero.

The idea being that together these tracks might trace the moving components of a divine dancer—a Dancing Electress. The intention is to infuse the image of the Macrocosm with the feminine, and this project with the magical.”