Regula Curti: Awakening Beyond

So, Dechen had lots of understanding for that and helped me to go into that vibration she was using, the vibration of the heart, so placing the voice in the vibration of the heart so that it can reach out to other hearts. And so, we started to work together developing this album.

Victor Fuhrman: Now, the three of you empowered by the success of “Beyond” produced a second album in 2011 called “Children Beyond.” This work included 30 children representing six different cultures and religions. What was the genesis of this gold award-winning album?

Regula Curti: It was a woman from Thailand who once called me and said, “Why don’t you do something for children, we need it so much.” And she was so insisting, and I just realized that’s the way to go and looked around in my neighborhood, looked around in my town where we can find children representing ten cultures and was asking Dechen if she and her two nephews would also be part of the project. And she immediately said yes.

So, we were developing again with 30 children, Dechen and myself together, different prayers and mantras from those different traditions. I had tea with Tina once, and she said, “What are you doing, you seem so busy?” I said, “Yes, I am busy with a new CD for the children.” And she said, “Can I listen to it?” So, we did, and she had goosebumps and said, “Regula, you can have my voice, my name, and my pictures again.”

So, I was like almost fainting because I would have never dared to ask her to make a children’s CD with me. And she was so much involved in this production. She was helping us so much to make it a success. She joined the children, she was dancing with the children. She was like also making her own introduction and saying, “You do the right thing.”

So, it was so lovely to see how she was really living up to that wonderful collaboration.

Victor Fuhrman: And what cultures and religions did the children represent?

Regula Curti: They represented Tibetan children, Buddhist belief system. They represented Christian children, Hindu children, Jewish children, then also Sikh children and Muslim children. We have many Muslim children in Zurich, and so we had six belief systems together.

Victor Fuhrman: “Children Beyond” was also selected to be the soundtrack of a film. How did that come about?

Regula Curti: Many, many years, we were following the wonderful master and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, and he became a friend to us. He has written this beautiful book Planting a Seed, a book for children to teach themselves mindfulness. And I think it was a student of his who had the idea to do a film about that book to teach children. He came and listened to “Children Beyond” and had the idea to join forces.

Let’s say, to have a strong soundtrack but also the name of “Children Beyond” and our, of course, celebrity Tina who could help us to bring “Planting Seeds of Mindfulness,” this beautiful movie about children, into the world.

So, we joined forces together, and that’s how it became the soundtrack of that movie.

In 2014, Sawani Shende-Sathaye, a master of Indian classical music, joined you, Tina and Dechen on the third album, the Tower Award-winning “Love Within Beyond.”

Victor Fuhrman: What was it like blending in this fourth voice?

Regula Curti: Sawani Sathaye is a beautiful soul. She comes, of course, from the tradition of mantra singing and prayer singing over generations, and she is one of those kinds of the singer she’s carrying the tradition for all the generations behind her. She was taught by her grandmother. I met her, and I immediately felt that she could, with her personality and with her knowledge, easily blend into “Beyond Project.” There was like this moment of, oh, we know each other from another lifetime. And so, the work with her was so beautiful and so joyful.

She’s a very joyful soul. She smiles a lot. She laughs a lot. And for the yoga world, actually, we thought that it will be very important to unite Buddhists mantras and Christian mantras because yoga is, in the Western world, so important today. We thought we would like to give all the participants from all the different belief systems, we would like to give them home.

If you listen to your own belief system like your “Amen,” then it’s home. If you listen to an Indian woman or man to an Indian chant, “Om,” they know that’s me, that’s home.

So, we thought it is very important to unite to make a wonderful soundtrack for yoga lessons and of course also for healing again, which always has been our focus to produce healing movement, transcendent music, uplifting music.

Victor Fuhrman: Your fourth and latest effort is called “Awakening Beyond,” and you added new voices to the group. Please tell us who joined you in this project and what each voice represents.

Regula Curti: It was always my vision and my wish to unite all the five religions and five Furhmancultures for a new project. And I knew that it would probably be the most difficult task to find a Muslim voice because, in Islam, the woman is not singing in public. So, that was very difficult to find. It had to be a woman who is liberal, a liberal Muslim woman who is allowed to do so.

And I knew that it will also be difficult to find that Jewish voice because I had a vision, we have the Sephardic voices, the Sephardic people that were leaving Spain, Andalusia, and were moving to Morocco or they were moving to Iran or moving back then to Israel. And they are carriers of all those influences, Spanish influence, Moroccan influence, Arabic elements. And I truly wanted a voice like that. And we found in Mor Karbasi this wonderful voice. She comes from Jerusalem. And finally, the Muslim voice was found in Illinois in the US. Her name is Dima Orsho, and she comes from a very interesting background, as well. Her grandparents, they come from Russia, and they moved to Turkey, and finally, they moved to Syria, and from Syria, they moved to the United States.

So, I have some very, very powerful voices added to Sawani Shende-Sathaye, our Indian voice from Pune, Mumbai. I had to find another Buddhist first because Dechen Shak-Dagsay decided to go her own way, and found in Ani Choying, a nun from Katmandu, she is called the “Singing Voice for Freedom.” She is an amazing voice. She has an incredible background as a nun and as a founder of a school for girls and as a founder of an association for diabetes in Nepal. And her singing is sponsoring all of her projects. And she has a vibration in her voice. She lives near the Himalayas, which is truly amazing. And I’m very happy that Ani could join the project.

Victor Fuhrman: And you had a Syrian American composer and producer. Please tell us about him.

Regula Curti: Yes, Kareem Roustom – I met him in Lucerne. Lucerne, Switzerland has a very famous music festival in July. And his music touched me so deeply. I was looking at my husband, and he had immediately same idea that that could be the producer of our next album.

And we met in Boston, and we were totally convinced of his personality and his knowledge. He had also studied Western music, but he is very knowledgeable about all the other traditions. The Arabic music system, the harmonies are totally different than in our Western music, of course. So, he was the right person to approach this difficult task to unite five different world religions and cultures together.

Victor Fuhrman: What message would you like our readers to take away from this wonderful body of work?

Regula Curti: I would love if people could open their hearts to all the different traditions and all the people who are carrying this tradition with them. And the music can take them beyond that they can experience that beyond into that field of neutrality that we have, no judgments that we have, no labels and that we all can do that to that world which is a world of so many interesting cultures. I mean, it would be very boring if we would be all Christians or Buddhists or–we would lose so much beauty, so much richness, also.

I would like people to be able, after this album to embrace the world as the world is in our days. That they realize that not every Muslim is bad, that there are many, many Muslims and many, many Jewish people and many, many Christians and Buddhists and which are wonderful personalities and wonderful souls. They bring peace and love into our society. So, that’s what I would like to achieve with our “Awakening Beyond,” so to create some sort of awakening in people that they realize we are all one, we just carry other names, or we carry another skin color. But, in the very essence of our beings, we are all living beings having a heart which beats for love and for peace.

Music is the universal language that is able to connect people, peoples and cultures. It is time to live ethical values such as understanding, compassion, tolerance and mutual respect beyond all cultures and their worldviews.

~Regula Curti