with a Blackfoot teacher in Montana and discovered Native American fl ute, which “felt like an ancient friend. As much as I loved the piano and the drums, it slayed me. The heart opening that happened when I was in Glacier National Park, hearing the Native American fl ute for the fi rst time, was one of the most powerful moments of my life.”
Indigenous instruments, originally created by hunter-gatherer cultures, typically have a fi ve-note (pentatonic) scale in a minor key. The result, DeMaria says, is an earthy, bittersweet sound with a unique ability to tap into what he calls the “Great Loving”—the heart- centered energy connecting us to each other and to the whole world, seen and unseen. It makes sense, then, that indigenous music was always intended as a spiritual tool, a dynamic force to facilitate healing, transcendentalism and communal bonding. “That’s what’s so strange about our culture,” he remarks. “It’s one of the very few where music is seen primarily as entertainment, and only practiced by professionals.”
DeMaria took to the Native American
fl ute instinctively. Its evocative tones would become the centerpiece of his healing music.
Riding the Wave By then DeMaria was spending much of his professional time guiding clients through meditation and relaxation sessions. When he couldn’t fi nd accompanying music he liked, he decided to create his own. He set up a small recording studio in his house, bought digital software, and made meditation audios backed by calming blends of piano, synthesizer and indigenous instruments. “I was making New Age music before there was such a thing, at least in the marketplace,” he says. He also played his fl ute at speaking engagements, and it wasn’t long before people began requesting CDs of his music without the voiceovers. The result,
The title turned out to be prophetic. Ocean was shaped by Hurricane Ivan, which sent a 15-foot wall of water through DeMaria’s home.
September 2016 23
Indigenous music was always intended as a
spiritual tool, a dynamic force to facilitate healing, transcendentalism and communal bonding.
The River, came out in 2003. Created and marketed specifi cally for use in hospice, the album was inspired by the Native American belief that people do not die, but simply change form, like a river fl owing into the ocean. The River made back in sales what it cost DeMaria to manufacture it; he still thought of himself not as a professional musician, but as a sound healer. He began working on two projects simultaneously: Siyotanka, a play and accompanying soundtrack about the origins of the Native American fl ute; and, Ocean, a follow-up to The River. Ocean turned into a fi ve-year journey of healing, with DeMaria as the patient. It also made him a New Age phenomenon.
Ebb and Flow The title turned out to be prophetic. Ocean was shaped by Hurricane Ivan, which sent a 15-foot wall of water through DeMaria’s home. He recorded the album in a makeshift studio in his offi ce, where he was living with his family. The sound is raw, and not only because of the ambient noise he
couldn’t edit out. It refl ects an old wound reopened by a series of fresh traumas: the death of a friend, an unexpected legal entanglement, yet another surgery. Ivan was just the fi nal blow. DeMaria, who since childhood had keenly felt the omnipresence of death, was having suicidal thoughts. “There’s a feeling that doing it yourself gives you some control over it,” he says. “There were times when I literally carried my daughter’s picture with me so I wouldn’t kill myself…. And so, when I was working on this album, I was purely thinking of my own healing. I was that 6- or 7-year-old kid in abject pain.” The music did what it was meant to
do: when Ocean was fi nished, DeMaria was in a far better place. But he wasn’t sure the result was marketable. “I don’t think anybody’s going to get this album,” he told his publicist. “To be honest, I think it sucks.” Then Ocean was released and the
fi rst reviews came back. “I just got on my knees and cried,” he recalls. “I couldn’t believe it was touching people at the same level it touched me.” Ocean climbed to the top of the
New Age charts and was nominated for a Grammy in the highly competitive New Age category, building on the momentum created
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