Interview:

Historically, music has been intimately tied to spirituality. Indigenous people would use it to call in the spirits or to worship the gods. Great composers were commissioned by the church to create music for worship. It is the element of music in various religious ceremonies around the world that serves to enlighten the people or create a sense of what is referred to in Christianity as the Holy Ghost. I believe the reasoning for this is that music has the power to raise the consciousness of the listener, composer, and performer. For me, music is a direct talisman to “the other side”. In Buddhism, they talk about enlightenment being the loss of the ego, the loss of the individual self, and a larger connection to the whole. My only experience with that has been when writing or performing music, whether it’s in front of an audience or alone at home. I feel a loss of the individual self, a connection to what I believe to be God, and I feel the music serves as a voice for the spirits. For that same reason, the spiritual aspect of music gives it the power to heal individuals and society, as a whole. It’s frustrating to see how modern popular music in Western civilization has degenerated to a point where spirituality is lost.

“Historically, music has been intimately tied to spirituality.”
– Craig Minowa, singer-songwriter in Cloud Cult