"Rhythms Within A Turquoise Dream"

"Rhythms Within A Turquoise Dream" is the latest music release from Native American artist Louie Gonnie. Gonnie is Dine from the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. Gonnie admired his father and uncles and wanted to be like them so he began to sing in the Native American Church. He is also a well rounded artist, expressing himself in music, art and writing.

Gonnie started singing for family and friends. Eventually, people were recording his music and he realized that he could have a career as a recording artist. His albums started out as Peyote songs of the Native American Church. Since then he has created a more contemporary style.

Gonnie is the exemplar of a creative artist. While very much a part of Dine traditions and very much living its values, Gonnie has an artist's desire to find personal expression within the world of his community. His first two recordings -- Sacred Mountains and Elements (my personal favorite) -- were explorations of the music of the Navajo people in which traditional experience was the foundation for this artist's unique music.

Gonnie's latest album, "Rhythms Within A Turquoise Dream," is a direct return to his roots in the Native American Church. The recording of peyote songs is always a controversial issue within the Native American Church. Some practitioners feel that the songs, as they are intrinsic to a sacred ritual, should never be recorded, while many others feel that recordings are important for disseminating their songs throughout the community.

Even as he lives in respect for NAC values, Gonnie takes the songs for the peyote ritual to a new place. While his song forms are very traditional, the means of producing those songs (extensive studio multi-tracking) is not. Nonetheless Gonnie's compositions and layered harmonies are reverent, spiritual, and achieve transcendence. Anchored by a water drum and sustained by waves of his flowing vocals, Gonnie leads an inner voyage from dreams to actuality, from earth to sky and from the past to eternity.