I’d like to thank those of you who wrote comments on the previous blog about Eternal Beloved.  Thank you so much for your kind words!  I feel very supported by you all and was so touched by your comments.  In the last blog, I didn’t share much about the words of Eternal Beloved.  The lyrics were inspired by the writings of Baha’u'llah, particularly passages taken from the Fire Tablet.

I would usually describe more about the song but I want to keep the mystery of the meaning and allow you to interpret it for yourselves.  I would love to hear what the song means to you.  Here are the lyrics below:

Verse 1
Alone in the darkness of desolation
Where is the light of Thy love
My longing hands are lifted to heaven
Raise me up to the heavens above

Chorus
O my beloved, my desire
O spirit of the worlds
The warmth of your love is wind to my fire
A priceless gift, a precious pearl

Verse 2
Consumed in the fire of separation
Send down the rain of thy grace
Awaiting the breezes of confirmation
Anticipating that wondrous place

Chorus
O my beloved, my desire
O spirit of the worlds
Thy presence lifts me higher and higher
A priceless gift, a precious pearl

We have embarked upon the Festival of Ayyam-i-Ha which is a special time of gift giving, charity, hospitality and celebration for Baha’is all over the world. During these precious few days, I try and think of a small gift that I can share to make friends and family feel special. Today I thought of something I never have before! I decided to compose a song… not just any song but one especially on the theme of Ayyam-i-Ha!

I’ve been singing the same Ayyam-i-Ha song for my children for the last decade and I felt it was time for a change.  So in haste, I quickly jotted down some thoughts on what this festival means to me and the melody came in an instant!  The lyrics are below and I’m sharing a video of the song too so you can hear the melody.  It’s simple, short and easy to sing so if it appeals to you, please feel free to teach it to your friends too.  Please note – I just composed the song today and although I’m a beginner on the guitar and it’s very rough, I decided to share the video with you anyway.

Enjoy!

These are the Days Of Ha
Given by Baha’u'llah
Time for joy and happiness
These precious days are blessed

Chorus: Happy Ayyam-i-Ha x4

Acts of charity, hospitality
Giving each other gifts
Visiting the poor and needy
Friends and family

Happy Ayyam-i-Ha x4

A time of cheer, a time of joy
A spiritual preparation
Time for celebration

Happy Ayyam-i-Ha x4
Time of joy and happiness
Happy Ayyam-i-Ha

The music video we’ve been working on for ‘Where There is Love’ from my CD Birds of Love is finally ready!
We started working on the video last summer in Vancouver, Canada and the shoot took place on a beautiful beach.  Even though we only had a couple of hours and a limited budget for the video, we made the most of the time we had.

I had asked friends to contribute photos for the video and I’m delighted that we managed to add several of them (thanks to all of you who responded and sent photos – I wish we could have used them all)!  For a long time, Jarome has tried to convince me to be in one of my videos as he felt it makes it more personal.  I resisted for quite some time but finally gave in (thanks for your patience Jarome)!  I have to say that I didn’t expect it be so much fun and walking on the beach was so inspiring as I love the ocean!

In the video we wanted to represent different forms of love.  We tried to capture younger couples and older ones as well as love for God’s creation.  The video was inspired by the first part of the song where the quote is attributed to Abdu’l-Baha ‘Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time’ and develops from there.  The quotations were all so beautiful that we wanted to capture them in the beauty of the images that we found.

If you would like to read more about the song, I’ve talked about it in more detail here. Thanks again to those of you who gave us permission to use your beautiful photos and thanks to those of you who participated in the video and thanks also to Jarome for all the time and creativity he put into making yet another lovely video! I really enjoyed being a part of it! I hope you like it and will share it with your friends :D

For more information about the Birds of Love gift set, please click here.

For those of you living in China, please scroll down below this video and you’ll see the youku.com version! Enjoy!

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Youku.com version for those of you in China!

It’s my birthday today and I would like to share a gift with you! For the first time, I’m having a Year-End special!

We’re offering a special for the ‘Birds of Love’ gift set (buy 1, get 1 free) as well as a discount on our ‘Fire and Gold’ CD from now till Dec 15.  The ‘Birds of Love’ gift set is ideal for weddings, anniversaries and loved ones.  For more details and info on the special, please click here.

I look forward to sharing another special gift in the next blog so stay tuned…

Hoping you have a wonderful year-end celebration with friends and family wherever you are.

I’m thrilled to be writing my 100th blog! It has been an enlightening experience to have the opportunity to share my thoughts and to exchange ideas with friends.  I have enjoyed sharing thoughts on the theme of detachment, challenges in life, the joys of being a musician and many more topics.  One of my highlights in this whole process has been getting to know those of you who have participated in the dialogue on a frequent basis.  Strangers have become friends and deep bonds have been established.  It has been a pleasure to connect with friends and to learn from many inspired souls around the world.   I look forward to many more conversations about the lessons in life, the art of music and other inspiring topics.

To celebrate these wonderful connections and all the joy you have brought me, I want to share a gift of music with you.  One of the projects I am currently working on is a spiritual CD in Chinese (the goal for the release date is September this year).  We have translated some of the Fire and Gold pieces into Chinese and added some new quotations.  The song is a new one called ‘Rose of Love’ that is sung in English and Chinese.  I recorded it with a talented Chinese singer, Lily.  She has a truly heavenly voice.  I so enjoy the interplay of different languages sung together and set out to explore that with this piece.

You can listen to the piece here:

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Rose Of Love featuring Lily

Please feel free to download it and share it with your friends using the link below:
http://www.elikamahony.com/music/gifts

Some of the other songs on the CD will feature Cheng Lin singing with Phil Morrison on the bass and Keith Williams on the piano!
Enjoy!

It has been a long time since I have been able to post to my blog with all the final decisions I’ve had to make for my new CD Birds of Love.

I’ve been thinking of the holiday season upon us and was thinking about how many listen to certain kinds of music during this festive, almost magical time of year. It seems people’s attitudes change and they become almost more spiritual, compassionate, and generous in their nature. Pretty lights come out, and the landscape changes. But for many, it is also a reminder of destitution and loss experienced through the hardships of life.

The song I composed from Fire and Gold ‘This Earthly Plane’ came to mind when thinking about this because of it’s magical music style and ethereal lyrics. The words assure us of “days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight” in the realms beyond this earthly plane, despite whatever earthly disappointments we experience.
You can listen to it below while you read:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I wrote it originally on the piano, but we wanted to use the harp on some of our songs, and my producer Jarome felt this one would be perfect for harp. He suggested an internationally renown Baha’i harpist, Caroline Mackay, to take the piano melodies and embellish them using celtic harp to give the piece that other worldly feeling the words evoke. Despite the challenges of harp tuning when there is a key change in the song, Caroline did an amazing job. From there, Jarome added layers of voices and some synthesizer and flute parts to take the other worldly feeling even further (it does after all mention other ‘worlds’ in the lyrics…).
At one point there was so much going on, I told Jarome to remove the flute at the end as I felt it was getting too busy. But then, I missed it so much, we added it back again. If you have a good speaker system, you will even hear low celtic drum percussion in the song!

So that is a little insight as to how this song came about. I hope this is a wonderful time of year for you all and you enjoy some good food and heavenly music!

Very soon I will be posting about my family reunion in Africa, and the launch of my new CD and website.

or this one:

Thought Of The Day:

“Sorrow not if, in these days and on this earthly plane, things contrary to your wishes have been ordained and manifested by God, for days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes. You are destined by Him, in this world and hereafter, to partake of their benefits, to share in their joys, and to obtain a portion of their sustaining grace. To each and every one of them you will, no doubt, attain.”

- Bahá’u’lláh