"J. Donald Walters, Derek Bell, The Mystic Harp and me"
by Adam Victor Christensen from "Matters of the Harp"
© Adam Victor Christensen 2001. All rights reserved
originally expressed to the Harp Mailing List
Dear Friends of the Folk Harp ...
I thought I would follow up my post regarding "The Mystic Harp" ... a recording created in collaboration by J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda and the harpist Derek Bell ... with a background note about reviews in general and reviews for the Folk Harp Journal in particular since people might find this helpful. For me,the Folk Harp Journal ... the quarterly publication of the International Society of Folk Harpers and Craftsmen ... is very much an "in-house" organ of communication and I've always seen it as a kind of communal diary of an ongoing cultural conversation regarding the folk harp.
Because of its small circulation ... only about 1,000 or so members/subscribers ... it really isn't much of a promotional medium for exposing new recordings or new artists. Reviews in the Folk Harp Journal are at best a pleasant acknowledgment of someone having accomplished a new recording and simply a paragraph or two will usually be enough to make a positive announcement on behalf of someone's new recording.
Most of
the readers of the Folk Harp Journal already know which artists they
like and want to hear about and will move through the magazine first to
read about the people they are interested in. Maybe, on a second or third
pass through the pages, they will stop and tune into someone as yet unfamiliar.
Most of the reviews that I did for the Folk Harp Journal ... I haven't
counted them but it seems like there were quite a few over a period of several
years ... had a very close and familiar focus. I was very aware that my
reviews and the reviews of other writers whose contributions I encouraged
would reach a small but appreciative readership ... the most appreciative
probably being the author of the new CD and their closest friends. (For
some of these reviews and writings, please see "Prose, Praise and Appreciation"
on this site by clicking on Orpheus.)
From an art director's point of view, it's a challenge to make a "cold" medium like a black and white paper-based publication come to life for the eyes of the beholder in the same way as a television show, feature film or a glossy full-color magazine. Pictures and illustrations are important to the final product and I always looked forward to assembling the reviews section of the journal since I usually had both a CD cover and/or an artist's photo to work with and I could count on creating some warm and vivid pages with that much source material. I would have been very happy if the reviews section of the Folk Harp Journal was 4 or 5 (or 8) pages per issue and occasionally it was.
A few years ago I worked as a publicist for Green Linnet Records, a mostly Celtic independent record label based in Connecticutt. I worked with owner Wendy Newton on the very beginnings of a subsidiary label called Xenophile which explored Afro-Caribbean and other world music genres. During that time, I wrote for and/or was in communication with Folk Roots Magazine (UK), Dirty Linen Magazine, CD Review, Latin Beat and other publications with much larger circulation. With those publications I was aware that a good review could possibly have a more significant influence in helping a new artist or recording, or in this case, a new label catch a wave of visibility and rise a little higher in the general public's view. Even then, working with publications with circulation of 20 - 40,000 readers/subscribers, it would be difficult to measure how much of an impact a single review ... mine or anyone else's ... might have. Promotion in the music world is a never-ending effort and you can never have too many people putting in a good word for you and your sound.
I was personally approached by Crystal Clarity, the in-house publishing wing of J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda's Ananda complex, to review the J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda/Derek Bell CD "The Mystic Harp" and I had pleasant expectations regarding it. Once I listened to it, though, I realized I had no real spontaneous impulse towards it as a collection of music. It looked attractive enough. It had some fine players including Alasdair Fraser on fiddle for one song but for me, "Bell but no bells." Anyone who knows me knows I have no ability to manufacture praise on demand. I have to feel something about the music and the artist before any sort of word association begins to take place.
For me, "The Mystic Harp" just didn't sound like what I expected from Derek Bell of the Chieftains. And of course, it wasn't. It was a collaboration with J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda and it was an entirely different kind of project. After the recording was over, I was left wondering where the "Women of Ireland" moments were and the other great instrumental blendings, colors and compositions that make the Chieftains such an outstanding recording and performing ensemble. There is no way I would place "The Mystic Harp" on the same shelf as "The Chieftains in China" or any number of their other recordings. "Mystic Harp" was vin ordinaire not Dom Perignon.
A little later, I was approached a second time with another copy of the same CD and at this time, I felt the label was behaving too aggressively towards me ... that their approach or I should say their expectation was out of proportion to what a one or two paragraph review from me in the Folk Harp Journal could realistically accomplish for them. Then I backed off more. This might be a helpful note: if you are sending a copy of your new recording to a journalist who still believes in the dignity of print, introduce yourself and your music in the most informative and attractive way possible and then let go. A real journalist will bristle and withdraw if they feel they are being "hooked" into something or that an artist and/or recording company is losing track of where they end and the writer begins. An "independent point of view" is what makes a review stand on its own two feet ... If you pester or over-aggress towards an independent writer, if you try to make them feel they "owe" you a positive review, from the writer's perspective you are diminishing them to the position of "catalogue copy writer" and it's likely they won't be favorably disposed towards any of your future efforts.
There are some wonderful people doing wonderful things with harps and if I have an opportunity to say or write something encouraging for them, I will. I'm still on the Crystal Clarity mailing list and I did receive the "Evening with Derek Bell" CD for review. The guest singer Mairéid Sullivan was stunning ... she has a great voice and a very colorful and poetic website that I enjoyed visiting. I personally contacted her to let her know I thought so and conveyed my best wishes to her. But by now, I was sufficiently aware of the J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda/Ananda story and poignantly aware of the backlog of human anguish involved to know that I personally couldn't have anything to do with the recording label. There are actually several labels that I personally won't be involved with, mainly because of how they treat their artists or their employees.
Is there anything mysterious about this?
I have to feel good about the label, the artist, the music, and anything having to do with a recording project before I offer my voice to the chorus of praise. Like most people, I want to donate my time and talent to people and projects that I feel are worthwhile. Much of that feeling is itself based on my perception of the "goodness" of those people and projects. If the knowledge I have of a situation is superseded by new and better information, I am very definitely going to move to the new knowledge and information. At the same time, I don't feel compelled to take people along with me and people on the Harp Mailing List can do their own reading and research about this subject if they are inclined. It's all on the web, assembled from legitimate news sources. I really don't assume there are *that* many people interested in this but there may be a few who appreciate knowing.
People sometimes mistake someone expressing their thoughts and feelings about a topic as a form of "persuasion" rather than simply a form of "self-expression." For me, speaking up about this subject is a form of self-expression and it feels great to be able to put in a good word on behalf of the people who obviously suffered over a long period of time as a result of being involved with this Walters person. I found the whole thing profoundly disturbing and am glad that I had enough of a journalistic instinct to do my own background research.
Can you imagine how I would feel if I had written an enthusiastic review of "The Mystic Harp" that I didn't really feel just "to make the label happy" only to find out some time later that there was this bizarre history of interpersonal exploitation and that much of it was actually taking place a town or two away from me in Palo Alto? That's close to home. I still get a shudder response when I think about some parts of this ... mostly the exploitation of innocence and also the idea of how much of a person's own core identity they have to give up in order to feel part of a "community." To a greater or lesser degree, that's something all of us are going to observe and learn about over the years.
There have been some interesting comments and surprising tangents since my first post. I'm happy to see the overall quality of thought and common sense that supports this list. Looking back, my first post was a kind of emotional shorthand that I certainly understood but it doesn't surprise me that someone else would misunderstand. It may be that the Harp Mailing List isn't the ideal province to present these particular feelings but I was honestly very heartened to see how adeptly people on the list can separate for themselves what's usable and unusable in anything I have to communicate. If someone imagines I was "attacking" Derek Bell then they've completely misread my message. The situation I refer to relating to J.Donald Walters/Swami Kriyananda convicton for fraud brought to court by Anne-Marie Bertolucci is a matter of public and court record quite beyond anything I can add to or subtract from.
Quoting from the court document ...
"Walters' conduct was unmistakably reprehensible," the presiding judge wrote in court documents. "This court was struck by the arrogant and uncaring attitude demonstrated by this defendant throughout the trial proceedings, undoubtedly a circumstance not unnoticed by the jury."
Over a period of several years, the trial and the subsequent convictions of both J. Donald Walters/ Swami Kriyananda and his Ananda Church (which was legally considered his alter ego) received substantial coverage here in the Bay Area with articles appearing in The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Weekly, The San Jose Mercury News, The Sacramento Bee, The Nevada City Union, The Palo Alto Weekly and The Yoga Journal. Most of the significant articles are archived on the net ...www.anandainfo.com ... and this is all a part of Northern California history now. The best overall article that I've read is by staff writer Helen Goa, published in The San Francisco Weekly, March 10, 1999. It's informative, even entertaining and doesn't stray into the"tabloidy" area so it would probably be alright for the "Family Version" of the Harp Mailing List. It's located at www.rickross.com/reference/ananda1.html
I'm not the sort of person who tries to round up other people to form coalitions "against" someone or something. Life is too short. I think it's much healthier to live your life *for* the people and organizations that you care for and that you believe in rather than *against* someone or something.
with a grace-note or two
References and Resources ...
Court Records of the County of San Mateo
The San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Weekly
The San Jose Mercury News
The Sacramento Bee
The Nevada City Union
The Palo Alto Weekly
The Yoga Journal.
Suggested Reading
"Nonviolent Communication ... A Language of Compassion"
by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D.
published by PuddleDancer Press
PO Box 231129, Encinitas CA 920323-1129
Center for Nonviolent Communication
"Captive Hearts, Captive Minds ... Freedom and Recovery from Cults and Abusive Relationships"
by Madeleine Landau Tobias and Janja Lalich
published by Hunter House, Inc.
"Cults in Our Midst ... The Hidden Menace in Our Everyday Lives."
by Margaret Thaler Singer with Janja Lalich
published by Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco
enter the circle of turning leaves
learn about the Universal Declaration
