Interview:

The first significant event that took place in my life regarding the spiritual and healing nature of music was at the age of fourteen. I had been performing with my band in Rome, Italy when I came down with a flu bug. It was just a few hours prior to my going on stage when I felt I had to cancel. Though I was shaking with fever, nauseous, and aching, something seem to tell me to ride it out. Well, I went on to perform anyway when to my surprise just twenty minutes into the set I began to feel better. By the end of the set, I felt great and had no fever or symptoms whatsoever! I’ve had various experiences where music has made me feel better, such as getting me out of a poor mood or just lifting my spirits, yet this was the first time that I realized first hand the amazing healing qualities of music. This particular experience of being ill, performing and then being healed would repeat itself several times prior to my returning to the United States in 1971. This was the time when I realized that there was an inherit power in losing one’s self and surrendering to the moment.

Upon returning to the States I began reading a lot about Zen and other Eastern religions and philosophies all of which kept addressing this “Here and Now” which I had seemingly and accidentally come upon just a few years prior when performing. In years to come, I would always try to achieve this “Here and Now” state only to find it quite illusive. It seemed as though since I stopped performing in 1971, I could never repeat that “healing” experience which I had back in Italy, but as a composer something else began to emerge and take it’s place. I would begin to notice that when writing, hours would just vanish from my life, that when I would begin composing at eight or nine in the morning, it all of a sudden it was three or four in the afternoon! Where had the hours gone? Well, I had simply discovered my new “Here and Now”, a state in which I as a conscious being did not exist. No me, no ego, no ambition, no anxiety, no jealousy, no sadness, no happiness, and no judgment. I had simply found my state of being, my “Here and Now”, my new and temporary NIRVANA.

Now after thirty years of composing music, I know a lot more about the different stages and levels of the healing powers of music, both physically and mentally. Music carries within itself an energy which when directed inwards can be calming or agitating, exciting or inspiring, but always affecting. As a film composer, I have learned to manipulate which music affects my audience and how to accomplish this, but as a person I have been given the simple gift of being able to lose myself, even if for just a few hours at a time in the all and ever encompassing “Here and Now”.

“Music carries within itself an energy which when directed inwards can be calming or agitating, exciting or inspiring, but always affecting.”
– Richard Band, film and television composer