Interview:

My musical education was genetic, and gleaned I am sure from several past- lives as a musician. When I was twenty-five, a friend of mine had a reading with a Kahuna at that time he told him that we had a past life together in Italy and he was a Cardinal and I was an Italian tenor. Also when I took to guitar it came out very “latin” or “celtic”. Although I have never had a lesson, somewhere in my history I was told I had been a performer in Brazil. Also I draw fairies, so often I think many musical people didn’t just come by the information, they were capable and brought it with them from other layers of their existence. Both my grandmother and aunt were voice teachers. My mother told me that I would sing as a toddler. At three I was enamored by the piano, a player piano with the old-fashioned paper rolls. I remember sitting on the very edge of the piano seat so I could labor over playing the Christmas carol “O Come All Ye Faithful”.

My original yearnings to sing were simply because it felt natural. As with many sensitive people trying to mold my sound into other people’s ideas about music left me confused and unhappy. I did not enjoy the puppetry of performance for the masses, I was very shy and introverted and found solace in composition, on the piano and guitar. As a meditation practice I worked with my chakras and found that there were dimensions that actually opened in my awareness and body when I was able to anchor and feel the impact within my own body and consciousness. Vibration is everything! I have the ability with my voice to change the energy of a person or a room. A great gift. We are energy, light, and sound. If that isn’t spiritual then I don’t know what is! Having a medium of cultivating sound as a healing tool is a life-long endeavor. Early on I became familiar with Stephen Halpern’s “Spectrum Suite” in the mid-seventies. As a trained singer, focusing vowels from my chakras seemed to augment my sound enabling a richness I had never “felt” before. With playing guitar there have been times in which the music seems to take over and I am but an instrument and channel. I continue to learn and experience new levels of expression, and return to the joy that brought me to music from the beginning.

“I continue to learn and experience new levels of expression, and return to the joy that brought me to music from the beginning.” – Elizabeth du Preez, musician and singer-songwriter