phenomeNEWS - This Month's Music Review

This Month's Music Review
by Greg Ozimek
music@wwnet.net

Faith In Myself
Leana
Swedish Diva Records
www.leana.com

Hot “New Age” from Sweden?

Whatever “New Age” is these days, it is certainly uplifting, good feeling, positive, expressive, emotive music. Toss in an occasional handful of self-insight lyrics and we’d problem all agree, right? Yes.

Leana is like a conquering hero, a valiant victor (autumn football in Michigan, anyone?) Sweden, known for Volvos, the band ABBA, very beautiful women and now for singer Leana who has captured that tri-athalon for Sweden.

This blonde Swedish import is now discovered as a cross-over to the New Age genre, a current club legend in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and an icon to 20,000 plus when she sang her Dance With a Stranger, the Official Song at Stockholm Pride 2005 concert.

Leana is a straight mom of two who, while building her music career, has also been the owner of a successful court reporter company that has a mock trial facility for lawyers to screen prospective jurors. She originally bought the company with her earnings as a model back in Sweden.

“My hope was to create an album that’s fun to dance to, but also very inspirational and uplifting,” she adds. “I think its introspective lyrics about romance, self-discovery and finding courage and, yes, faith in oneself will appeal to people of all ages. The album title was really about me developing the confidence in myself to become a recording artist. The results are truly gratifying.”

The tunes in Faith In Myself are ABBA-esque and Club-esque too and have those “New Age” sensibilities that inspire and feel great.

I was talking to a friend in Australia the other day. I mentioned Leana and she said, (use a heavy Victorian accent here where the word ‘yeah’ has three syllables) “Oh yeah! Her name is Oleana and here, I’ll play my Club track fo ya.” I played my Leana CD and she played her DJ Club version for me of Faith. (Technology is so incredible, me in Michigan, she in Oz and both of us playing, recognizing and appreciating the talent of Leana from Sweden now in L.A.).

Leana has been multi-transplanted in the Los Angeles and international culture for 10 plus years now.

Leana’s Faith In Myself lyrics are a mesh, a nexus, a ganglia of metaphysical, “New Age,” soothing, inspiring, enlivening, living, growing topics; clear insights of love and relationships; with measures of bounce and fun.

It’s simple: Leana “gets it.”

...lyrics...

When I open that door

I just want to make sure

That I won’t have to shut it again

Faith!

Welcome to my life

Cause I’ve been waiting such a long time...

This time

When I’ve truly followed my heart

Faith has come my way

I’ve changed my world in a day...

So, yeah, I’m eager to hear more from Leana. And from her sweet, impish side too: Her last track, entitled, Kids, has a handful(!) of 6-year-old girls singing verses from Dance With a Stranger; we can be kind and call it “singing.” Certainly from their raucous giggles they are having lots of fun with it.

We will have lots of fun with Faith In Myself.

Mantras for Abundance
Shri Anandi Ma and Dileepji
Sounds True

For so long the word was that there are no Hindu songs for abundance or songs to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of abundance and prosperity. There are. And here they are.

Mantras are said to be the subtlest vibrations that affect all of the created worlds. They are very holy and are treated with reverence, sincerity and such great respect that they are not easily or openly shared with others.

Mantras for Abundance is a rare recording, special for its mere existence, for being recorded by a master of a tradition and recorded by a wife/husband couple.

Shri Anandi Ma is a respected master in the kundalini maha yoga tradition of Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandasji who specialized in using the power of mantra to uplift the human spirit.

The CD is a crystal clear 77 minute modern day digital recording. The 22 page CD booklet contains the mantras in Sanskrit with English translations. I consider Mantras for Abundance a real find and am very pleased to bring it to you.