Music as Sacred Art

Music uplifts, exalts and transports the soul. It is the universal medium of the Sacred and may be the ultimate expression of beauty. Kirtan (devotional chanting of the names of God, usually in Sanskrit) has always held a vital place on Lee’s western ashrams and on the ashrams of Yogi Ramsuratkumar and Swami Ramdas. For more information or to purchase chanting CDs recorded live at Triveni Ashram, including our most popular title Bolo Ram, click here. 

In the West, true to the Baul spirit, Lee’s personal love of music spilled out to embrace the transformational power inherent in all forms of music. A prolific lyricist, Lee began the first of several rock and blues bands in 1987, setting in motion a lifetime love affair with encoding and transmitting the teaching through lyrics and the power of contemporary musical performance. Over the years, he collaborated with students who composed music to his lyrics to create the rock and blues music performed over decades of touring. (Be sure to check out our “Bad Poet Radio” streaming function below to listen to nearly 3 hours of Lee’s music or listen to select tracks in the “Listen Up” section.) Through performance art, the profound truths and everyday teachings hidden within these songs touched ordinary people from all walks of life, from urban to rural enclaves. 

Over five hundred of Lee’s lyrics have been put to original music and recorded on CDs. The unstudied power of these songs communicate an authenticity, a disarming fresh quality that goes directly to the heart in an iconoclastic Baul signature that withstands the tests of time and endures as a powerful legacy for our world today, so desperately in need of real spiritual sustenance. 

Creativity is a hallmark of the Western Bauls. Lee’s lifetime passion for the arts in all forms, from books and poetry to paintings and sculptures,  inspired his involvement with the creativity of his students and permeated his own writing and poetry, always dedicated to Yogi Ramsuratkumar. Many of Lee’s songs are prayers that resound into the world and bring the listener to the brink of true feeling and deep insight. 

To learn more about Western Baul art and music and to buy CDs through Hohm Press, click here. 

The Blues as Metaphor

Today more than ever, humanity has the blues. Out of the heat and fermentation of that bittersweet alchemy is born an undefended, feeling heart that opens the doorway to the soul. To have the blues is to experience the suffering of the world and to respond with love, because love is the supreme force that causes the stars to burn and reconciles all opposites. In 2006 Lee answered a question about the enigmatic title of his new CD, Crushed by Love:

“Reality is Love, and we are crushed by Love to the degree that we are not defended against Reality.”

The poetic phrase “crushed by love” describes the natural vulnerability of the awakened state, which leaves the innate nature of the visionary or seer open to the searing, transformative fire of love. Being crushed by love occurs as a way of life as the innate wisdom of sahaja expressing through one individual. Through direct experience, we come to know that we are one with every other aspect of Life. Another way of expressing the felt experience of the Buddha’s teaching, “All life is suffering,” is reflected in the ordinary conversation of the day, when we might say, “I’m feeling blue,” or “I have the blues.”

The blues is a contemporary street-wise metaphor for the keen felt-perception of the awakened heart . Heartbreak is inevitable on the spiritual path. In the Shambhala training this is called “the genuine heart of sadness”—the vulnerable, softly broken heart of the true warrior. Contemplating deeply these teachings takes one into the pathways of pure bhava.  

Lee’s lyrics connect the deep patterns of life in the mandala of daily experience, pointing toward a seamless whole of many parts that work in harmonious concert to bring us to bhava. To find bhava is to discover our own broken heart; to find bhava is to have “a wound that only God can heal.”

As a metaphor for the spiritual path, “the blues” is another way of saying that one has entered into a sacred and therefore sacrificial relationship to life and death, or the teaching of Enlightened Duality. What we are seeking is to penetrate the mystery, beautifully expressed in another line from one of Lee’s songs, “My body lives and it breathes ‘cause it’s made of the blues.” 

When we are finally able to sing the blues, we have entered into a full embrace of impermanence and the fact that we are hopeless beings, longing for the eternal in an existence in which all things pass. Ruin and loss become the sweet taste of a refined bhava, as we become infused with joy and sorrow in equal measure in an exquisite, excruciating mood that rolls on into eternity. 

Such delicate and tender moments arise and subside like everything else, touching the heart and infusing us with the surprise of grace. In such moments we are “satisfied with the joy in the cracks between my sorrows,” as poet Lee writes. This one line of wisdom could be the koan of meditation for the next twenty years, the completion of which would be nothing less than the fruition of the path... and in this way, one may court the Beloved.   

Bad Poet Radio

A 38 track “Greatest Hits” mix of Lee’s music performed by Lee Lozowick w/Paul Durham, Shri, Liars, Gods & Beggars, Shri Blues Band, Denise Allen Band, Attila the Hunza and the Lee Lozowick Project. While several albums by Denise Allen Band and Shri Blues Band are available on streaming services like Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc. this is the closest we currently offer to streaming the catalog of Lee Lozowick’s music.

Just click the play button to enjoy nearly three hours of great music!

Listen Up

Presenting a sampling of Lee’s music as interpreted by his various musical projects for your edification and entertainment.

The Bands Through the Years

Taking the music to the people.

All of Lee’s band projects were focused on live performance as their primary vehicle of expression. Each band played extensively in the local music scene of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and southern California as well as many, many tours of Europe which focused primarily on Germany and France but also included forays to Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, England, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic, among others.