Patrick O’Donnell wrote this review.
If it’s meditation or inner peace you seek, Rain of Blessings may be the perfect musical accompaniment. But if you’re after anything else — some quiet background music or an interesting listen, for instance — there are more appropriate selections. That’s not to say this is a bad CD; few things could be farther from the truth. Lama Gyurme, who teaches Tibetan Buddhism in France, and French composer Jean-Philippe Rykiel are a fascinating duo, in a manner of speaking. Rykiel is a fine musician, and Gyurme’s powerful Buddhist chants are appropriately moving.
Most tracks have a similar pattern: a musical introduction — usually a few bars of synthesizer, percussion or kora (a kind of 21-stringed harp) starts quite softly, at an almost inaudible level, then swells until it fills the speakers with sound. Gyurme’s chanting begins a few measures later, a baritone on the border of monotone with a few changes in pitch to move things along as his voice rises and falls. The accompanying instrumentation usually rises and falls with him, as if each instrument is chanting along.
It’s difficult to tell just what Rykiel had in mind. Was he going for something spiritual? Perhaps. Or he may have just been out to tap the New Age market. If that’s the case, this work fails miserably; there are far better compositions to be had out there.
I did find that during some listenings, this music seems to broaden one’s mind — or ears — and all the pieces fit. Perhaps it’s the kora, the one instrument that seems perfectly matched on all nine tracks. Or perhaps there is something more powerful at work. These are, after all, real prayers. If this is what Rykiel intended, he’s not far off.
By the same token, the combination of Eastern religion and Western instrumentation can be a bit disconcerting. The synthesizer/piano and violin at times seem out of place when paced with Gyurme’s somewhat nasal chants. There were times when the chanting and instrumentation simply became annoying, like a giant gnat buzzing around my ear, and I had to reach for the off switch.
I don’t think this is a bad CD at all. I do think you need to be in the right frame of mind to listen — or have the patience to let the music take you there. Since that is a part of what meditation — and Buddhism — are all about, I would have to say this work serves its purpose quite well.
(Real World Music, 2000)
