John Morgan Newbern is one of the old timers in the World Music and World Fusion genres. His first recordings were in 1966 for M. G. M.-Verve under the pseudonym, Malachi. The Long Playing record album was released the following year and was titled Malachi/Holy Music (Verve V6-5024). There was no genre at the time for this music which was a combination of Memphis slide guitar, Native American rhythms and various music of the Eastern hemisphere. Approximately 50,000 copies were sold and, along with albums-of-the-era from Paul Horn and Tony Scott, has been credited by some observers as having forged the way for New Age and World Fusion music as it is today. During that period John, as Malachi, performed many memorable concerts for promoter Chet Helms in San Francisco and for colleges, universities and elsewhere around the western states. A second album was never picked up by Verve and John’s music was left in the background as modern electronics sounds took over and further established the New Age genre. And of that genre John says, “They call it ‘New Age’ but the elements of my music are hundreds if not thousands of years old.”
After decades of struggling for mere artistic survival, John has been somewhat re-born by the advent of the internet, allowing him to bring his music back into the public light. When MP3.com came on the scene John’s friends and family encouraged him to make some of his recordings available for that format. Fortunately he had recorded a piece earlier that he had written and performed in concert during the latter days of the Viet Nam War titled A Prayer for the Dying, the composition based on the prayers from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. That music was then mastered for the formats of the day and was released on MP3.com in early 2000. It was soon followed up by a solo instrumental performance titled Just Playing for the Moon. Both albums had songs that went quickly to the top of MP3.com’s World Fusion charts in spite of the fact that John no longer used the pseudonym that had served him well in the ‘60s.
More recently, since the demise of MP3.com, John’s audience seems to have shifted to Europe. That shift actually began thanks to MP3.com, most Europeans having never heard John's music before. Today several European music websites bring John’s music to internet listeners all over the world while www.CDBaby.com and their associate companies provide distribution for John’s CDs.
John's latest release is titled DrawninwarD, a musical interpretation of his own dreams and memories of experiences in the land of the Maya at age eleven, experiences that ultimately led to the music that John has created over the decades. The music on this album returns John to his spiritual and musical roots, a garden of flowers from around the world, blended into a cascade of musical sounds quite unlike any other, and yet so much like so many that have gone before.
DrawninwarD was selected music for The Third Annual Toofy Film Festival held in Boulder Colorado in late September of 2006. Chosen for it’s originality and quality of production, John’s music filled the Boulder Theater between film presentations.
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