The Inayati Quartet Echoes Project:
Our Vision of Sharing this Music
The Inayati Quartet is dedicated to sharing joy through sung spiritual practices. Our repertoire consists of sacred chants, rounds and other choral pieces from numerous spiritual traditions including, but not limited to, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Native American Spirituality, Christianity and Islam.
A central tenet of universal Sufism is that of the universality of the spiritual ideal. The attuned heart is the prime instrument of communication with this ideal. Experiencing the voice of the heart expressing itself through song allows one to transcend the boundaries of language and culture. In the process of doing so, those singing and those listening are somehow raised above the differences and distinctions that divide humankind. It is this state of grace that we wish to share with the community through our music.
As with the previous two Echoes CDs, we produced Echoes 3 for the purpose of exposing lovers of sung spiritual practices to the reality that many, if not most or all, the world’s religions have sung essentially identical practices throughout the ages. Humanity shares a common, intense longing to express their relationship to the Divine through song.
It has been said that inside every human being there is a “Godshaped void”, an emptiness in one’s spiritual dimension that can only be filled by attunement to the presence of the Divine. Sung practices such as these help many fill this void. As the songs melt into our subconscious, their echoes resonate deeply within our beings, frequently resurfacing to our mind’s ear in response to this spiritual longing.
While completing Echoes 3 we received many requests to make copies of Echoes 1 and 2 available, as we had run out of these disks several years before. In response to this request we created a website (www.theechoesproject.org) which offers these two CDs, plus a third CD entitled The Humboldt Sufi Choir at the Morris Grave Museum. There anyone may experience these sung practices free of charge.