This list includes all songs where this music creator is a contributor (writer or performer). Click on headphones to listen and song links for more song information.
This list includes all CDs where this music creator is a contributor (writer or performer) on at least one song in the CD. Click on the Jukebox to listen and CD image or CD Title for more CD information.
Pioneering didjeridu virtuoso Stephen Kent has done more than any other musician to bring the ancient Aboriginal sound into a contemporary context. “I want to capture the essence and potential of the didjeridu and to put it on the musical map as a serious instrument with incredible versatility,” says the composer and multi-instrumentalist. During a twenty-year career with the didjeridu, Kent has developed an approach that is unmistakably his own, exploring a remarkable range of playing styles in diverse musical genres. Along the way he has amassed a catalogue of over a dozen critically acclaimed CD’s, including four solo releases and many others with his group projects Trance Mission, Beasts of Paradise and Lights In A Fat City.
Demand for Stephen’s didj work has taken him all over the world, playing, recording and collaborating with top artists in divergent musical arenas, from Leonard Eto of Kodo in Japan, to Megadrums with Airto Moreira and Zakir Hussain, to Habib Koite of Mali, and back home to the Oakland Symphony Orchestra’s new work by Afro-Cuban pianist Omar Sosa.
His newest solo CD, Oil and Water (Intuition) was recently hailed as a “potent mix of blood, guts and grace” in which the didj becomes a “living, breathing, rhythmist, capable of transforming deep groove music into something magical.” Rave reviews of Kent’s playing tend toward exclaiming how he “manages to sound both primal and cutting edge” by “merging spirituality and the modern world.” In his hands, one of the world’s oldest instruments is a powerful tool for bringing forth artistry “from the soul of the spirits to the soul of man.”
Raised in East Africa and the UK, Stephen Kent cut his teeth in the London music scene of the late 70’s with the punkish (and still beloved) band Furious Pig. In 1981 he found himself musical director of Australia’s Circus Oz, which led him to a relationship with Aboriginal culture and to the didjeridu. “Awakening to the Aboriginal world was like my own Big Bang. For me, the recreation of a musical universe on the didj, the culture of one note, continues to this day,” he says.
After seven years touring the world in the Circus Arts – four of them spent jumping in and out of locked suitcases with Ra Ra Zoo – Kent, based back in Europe, focused once more on music by composing scores for contemporary dance groups in Barcelona. He began to build a career around the sound of the didj, forming Lights In A Fat City in London and touring throughout Europe and North America. The group’s landmark debut CD Somewhere (1987) was the first European release of contemporary didjeridu music.
In 1991Stephen Kent relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he co-formed the groups Trance Mission and Beasts of Paradise, performing and recording to great public and critical acclaim in the U.S. and abroad. With the ground-breaking and well-received Landing (City of Tribes), Kent embarked upon his solo career. The follow-up Family Tree (COT) is a stellar collection of works from the aforementioned groups along with dazzling new pieces that together trace the unique sonic journey Kent began two decades earlier.
Stephen is also deeply involved with promoting music from all manner of global cultures, by producing a number of regional U.S. tours by Aboriginal musicians, Tuvan throat singers and other artists, and on his weekly radio show on KPFA in Berkeley, which he has hosted for many years. He presents music education programs on the culture of the didjeridu and on world music to audiences of elementary through college-age students.
A wholly original talent, truly transcending categories, Stephen Kent is an innovator on the global music scene with the ability to both trigger the imagination and transport the spirit.
Accolades
"...one of the finest non-Aboriginal didgeridoo players..."
J. Poet -Tower Pulse!
"As a key man in the groups Lights in a Fat City and Trance Mission, Kent has wielded the unwieldy wooden tube as deftly as possible, initiating many Western ears into how the didjeridu should and might by played."
Steve Heilig - The Beat
"The potential of trance music isn't just to provide a temporary escape from this culture, but to allow whole new cultural perspectives to be created... Kent's music is a strong hint at what might lie in the future of ambience."
Mark Heley - Clublife
"Kent's accomplishment lies in the hypnotic rhythm sequences and spiralling sounds that dance off the rough edges of his didj... Sublime."
Darren Bergstein - I/E
Staff Notes
Stephen Kent's music is phenomenal! He has collaborated with many talented musicians, composers, and vocalists and the catalog he's featuring on songpeddler.com is quite eclectic. Don't miss the collaborations with Eda Maxym, vocalist. I can't get enough of it. - Kris Thayer
Music without words means leaving behind the mind. And leaving behind the mind is meditation.
Meditation returns you to the source. And the source of all is sound. — Kabir
The Healing Music Organization
P.O. Box 3731, Santa Cruz, CA 95063 - 831.588.7498
Any questions, problems or suggestions about this site can be sent to webmaster@healingmusic.org
Healingmusic.org and A Really Good HMO are trademarks of The Healing Music Organization.
All other products or services mentioned are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective organizations.
Copyright 2000-2008, Amrita Cottrell and The Healing Music Organization. All rights reserved.
Go to feedback form
