Dada's Music
12 videos • 1,981 views • by Dada Nabhaniilananda Here are some videos of some of the songs I've written or recorded over the years. I've produced three albums of original songs: The Fire Dragon Suite, Warriors of the Rainbow and The Return of the Magic. Also several albums of spiritual chanting (kiirtan), my favorite being Flight of Love which I co-produced with my genius guitarist friend Sukha Deva (Nils Einar Vinjor) in Norway. And I produced (but did not perform on) Sonali Bhor, an album of Prabhat Samgiit songs written by my spiritual Master, Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar. You can listen or purchase my music at www.TheMonkDude.com/music I began playing music when I was 4 years old when I discovered the magic of the piano. I studied classical music until I was 20, experimenting with various other instruments including clarinet, trumpet, cello and euphonium. Then everything changed and I became a yogi and took up the guitar and singing and songwriting. In 1984 I started performing and recording and I've been fortunate to play in many countries and with some amazing musicians including Paul Winter, Harry Williamson (of Gong), Daevid Allen (of Gong and Soft Machine), and Premik Tubbs (played with Santana, John Mclauchlin, Herbie Hancock, Whitney Houston and more!) Premik is actually the one who first called me The Monk Dude - his idea. He actually is a dude, so I guess he had the right to dub me with this moniker. A couple of performance highlights: Down to Earth Festival in Australia, we were playing at night outside for about 400 people. Our band included an oboe player. Right in the middle of Ocean of Tears, a pretty dramatic song about the Last Blue Whale, with big images of whales on a giant screen, suddenly we lost all power. We continued playing, but all you could hear was the haunting sound of the oboe in the darkness. It had an amazing effect - people thought it was deliberate. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was another highlight. I got to perform with a cool Brazilian backing band for more than 5000 people for an hour - we were on straight after John Denver, so he was kind of our support act. Go figure. The next morning we got to play with Paul Winter as the Dalai Lama came to address the bigger crowd of 10,000. I believe this was the biggest Baba Nam Kevalam kiirtan ever outside of India. Amazing atmosphere. People were talking about it for years. For the following week people were asking me for autographs and everyone wanted to have their photo taken with me. That was my only real taste of pop stardom. It's not all it's cracked up to be, but it was fun playing for all those people. I can see how pop stars get addicted to it if they don't have a better way of getting high, like spiritual meditation. Lately I've been writing with a great buddy, Josh Friedman, and we have a bunch of new songs ready to record. I think these are some of my best yet.