I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: March 1, 2024] Soma

Soma is an acronym for Sacred Order of Mystic Apogees.  It’s unfortunate that they go by Soma as there are about a half a dozen bands named Soma.  They are a New Jersey based band that plays spiritual/religious music.

I will display my profound ignorance of Indian/Hindu culture by saying that I realized by the end of the set that they were singing mantras like Hare Krishna, but I don’t know if only the Hare Krishna movement (?) sings this refrain.

I did look up some information about the Hare Krishna movement and learned this (from NPR)

The Hare Krishna movement is a branch of Hinduism, formally known as Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Its name comes from its chant — Hare Krishna — which devotees repeat over and over. It was started in the 16th century by Sri Chaitanya of Bengal (1486-1533). He emphasized the worship of Krishna and believed that chanting the names of God was so powerful that in addition to one’s own meditation on them, they should also be chanted in the streets for the benefit of all.

So that’s nice.

The band’s instagram handle is soma_kirtan.  Kirtan is (according to wikipedia) a

genre of religious performance arts, connoting a musical form of narration or shared recitation, particularly of spiritual or religious ideas is a call-and-response or antiphonal style song or chant, set to music, wherein multiple singers recite the names of a deity, describe a legend, express loving devotion to a deity, or discuss spiritual ideas

There was no call and response at our set but there was a lot of chanting.

Two other words that appear on their bandcamp page are devotional and psychedelic.  I discovered Soma because they opened for Devendra Banhart a while back (I did not attend that show) and was fascinated by this band that had fairly minimal information about them.

Then they announced this show as part of a series created by Luminous Abstract–set in a beautiful old church, lights would be projected on the walls in an otherwise dark room while psychedelic-adjacent music would make everything pretty amazing (paraphrase).

So I definitely wanted to check this out and the projections were great.  The giant walls of the church were a perfect canvas for the trippy spinning lights.

Soma played the entirety of their new album Burning is Learning.

I couldn’t really see them as the church was dark, but they had an eclectic mix of instruments–what sounded like a harmonium, I saw a small stringed instrument, there were hand drums and lots of percussion.

There were two vocalists and often the whole band sang along.

Although it’s rather reductive to say that Indian music like this sounds psychedelic, it does have a trance inducing effect, especially in a dark room with images projected on the walls.

One of the songs was pretty much straight up Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, etc.

I found myself really getting into the musical aspects of it.  The repetitive drum beat is very catchy and since the words were more or less just sounds to me, they were easy to let flow over you and float around the room.  And the visuals were really fantastic.

It’s pretty wild that this happened in a Christian church.

I recently learned that Soma will be opening for Grails on their upcoming tour, so I’ll be seeing them again at the end of June (in brighter circumstances, I assume).  I’m curious what a Grails-based audience will think of this more spiritual (sometimes) instrumental band.

SETLIST

1. Sadhu Saizina ♥
2. Someshwaraya  ♥
3. Bhutapasarana ♥
4. Shivranjani  ♥
5. Mahamrityunjaya Mantra ♥
6. Mahamantra ♥
7. Amrta ♥
8. Om Mani Padme Hum ♥
9. Radhe Govinda ♥

♥ Burning is Learning (2024)