Dedicated to Julian Max Joseph (and his forebearers).

This collection of sounds and music was created as a soundscape for the “Rainbow Cave,” an immersive art installation by Basia Goszczynska. The piece is composed of various sound sources, some recorded in nature, some from the human voice and others, from an electronic music technology called FM synthesis. The title of the album, “Passage from Gaumukh,” refers to a remote glacial cave that sits at the head of the highly sacred, yet heavily-polluted river, the Ganges. The names of the songs reflect the various stages of a river as it journeys from its source to the delta.

Inspired by Plato’s "Allegory of the Cave" and the story about the rainbow at the end of the Great Flood in Genesis, the Rainbow Cave acknowledges humanity’s continual evolution out of ignorance and our current efforts to contain the flood of single-use plastics. Built from salvaged post-industrial scrap plastic bags and fishing nets, the Rainbow Cave invites us to reconsider our relationship with waste by making the discarded precious.

For more about Basia Goszczynska visit www.basiagoszczynska.com (Instagram: @basia_gosz)

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What was especially exciting about working on this soundscape was the opportunity to bridge my own interest in sound and music with my passion for intellectual and spiritual learning and expression. I loved working with minimal and experimental techniques which, while they may be esoteric in the pop or dance framework, were right at home and completely functional in the ambient setting.

FM synthesis has particular symbolic bearing on the Allegory of the Cave, which among a broader discussion about education, investigates the relationship between an original object and its shadow as well as that between a natural object, like the sun, and a man-made reproduction, like the bonfire. FM synthesis, which came to popularity in the 1980's was beloved for its ability to emulate acoustic and electro-acoustic instruments with far more fidelity than that of the preceding analog systems. This digital recreation came at the cost of losing the sometimes-fetishized imperfections and idiosyncrasies that were common with analog devices. Also, because of the complicated interface of an instrument like the Yamaha DX7 (one of the first commercially distributed FM synthesizers), many users relied on preset patches instead of crafting their own unique sounds. One result of this process is the common sentiment that the music of the 80's is “cheesy,” and that the artists who used these sounds were lazy or less technically profound. A more compassionate view of history makes concessions for the developmental stages of a new technology and gives credit to the foundational achievements which foster greater technical, artistic and societal innovation.

The human mind is blessed with both the burden and opportunity of a constant search for what is real and true. We are constantly faced with personal choices related to aesthetic taste, familiarity with a tradition or the status quo, adherence to a consensus or the dogma of the people in power, and the discomfort or pain, as well as potential growth, around new ideas. The setting of the cave in Plato's allegory, and in Basia's “Rainbow Cave,” is much like the emergence from the womb. Our introduction to new light, new stimulus, and inner growth requires a passage. As we make this passage, much like the water flowing from the glacial cave, we interact with the banks of our history and the tributaries of our current cultural and societal surroundings. We attempt to maintain or rediscover “purity” as we ascertain the true dangers (or benignity) of the “contaminants” (or, simply, new materials) which we produce or encounter.