The band Dub Sutra describe themselves as “an eclectic mix of electronic dub downtempo with harmonizing chant and live instruments perfect for chill, yoga, lounge, and moving meditation.” They’ve been taking this music around the world at yoga classes and festivals. Their second album, All Is Love Is All by Dub Sutra, achieves a splendid balance between the trifecta of vocal chant, beats, and organic live instruments.
It builds on the blissful experience of their first album, the Rise of Downtempo, with more distinct tracks and musical styles.
“All Is Love” opens with buttery, warm layers of human voices in the circular chant. “Bow to You” morphs the electronic-dub sample approach in an extended, contemplative mix. “Heightened Awareness” transitions us to meditating on the feminine/goddess aspect of the Divine, weaving a magical spiral of female song and spoken word around a central core of cosmic dub groove.
“Gaia Love” makes a more decisive turn towards a dark synth, slightly techno flavor of dub, but of course the spiral of chant is always present. Three minutes in, I love how the track takes an even more aggressive synth edge. There’s a reason you hear this kind of soundtrack so often on many Burning Man documentary videos – it’s the sound and feel that helps capture that juncture of curiosity, mysticism, and technology.
My favorite track on All is Love is All by Dub Sutra is “Breathe With Me,” because conceptually, our breath is the pure essence of our yoga practice as well as our very existence. In a similar vein, this track is clean, stripped-down, and elemental; relatively dry, effect-free beats and instrumentation float underneath the vocal. I love the vocals here; it is hard to tell if this is a male, female, Indian, African…perhaps the perfect world citizen to carry forward Dub Sutra’s mission of moving meditation.
McKenna caught the “yoga bug” as a little girl, watching Lilias Folan on PBS. She leads an active life hiking, running, sometimes snowboarding, and once was a nationally-ranked equestrian. After years of working in the digital industry for clients in entertainment, publishing and fashion, she took a sabbatical to acquire her yoga teacher certification. A desire to help people heal soon followed. Also a successful musician and composer, McKenna shares cutting-edge music during yoga classes, recruiting musicians and DJs to perform with her. She owned and operated East Hollywood’s Chakra 5 Yoga studio throughout 2011, creating a vibrant community on and offline, but decided to shift to a mobile model. Now Chakra 5 brings yoga classes on site and by appointment to businesses, schools and organizations throughout greater Los Angeles. McKenna was certified in Hatha/Kundalini at Karuna Yoga, and has additional teacher training in Restorative Yoga with Master Teacher Judith Lasater. She teaches yoga at Chakra 5 classes and international retreats.