Artist statement

Enchanted Forest: Amazonía is an electronica-house fusion exploring the endangered ecosystems of the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon, centered around the sacred Manguaré drums of the Bora people. I spent a total of three weeks in the span of two trips in the Peruvian and Colombian Amazon and living in community with the Bora.

The premise of my work is at the intersection of deep ecology and sound design. How can we tell the story of nature as the intricate dance we all move to?

Field recordings of endangered birds are transformed into synthetic instruments and merge with the rhythmic patterns of the Manguaré, the ancient communication drums - where high and low frequencies traditionally carry messages across the rainforest, from summoning rain to sending river-bound messages.

The production sits at the intersection of natural soundscapes and electronic textures: water becomes ambient pads, cicada calls transform into melodic keys, and birdsong evolves into percussion. While firmly rooted in house music's pulse, the composition pays special attention to the space between beats - the "tender intervals" where rhythm breathes.

These purposeful silences echo the Bora language's own rhythmic nature, now endangered alongside its people and their drum traditions.

Within this work, rhythm becomes both anchor and portal - sometimes accelerating into driving house beats that mirror heartbeats in collective prayer and harvest calls, other times deliberately decelerating to reveal the sacred spaces between sounds. These shifts in tempo aren't just musical devices, but invitations to different states of consciousness, much like the rhythmic traditions found in Haiti, Colombia, and West Africa where repetitive beats serve as pathways to expanded awareness.

The piece plays with temporal elasticity - when the rhythms quicken, they create that familiar trance-like state that house music excels at, where dancers find themselves in what feels like suspended time. But then, like breath itself, the music pulls back to expose the silences. These aren't empty spaces, but intentional pauses where the Manguaré drums' messages can resonate, where bird calls can echo, where the Amazon's own rhythms can speak.

This interplay between velocity and stillness mirrors the way prayer itself works - sometimes urgent and passionate, sometimes settling into deep listening. The faster sections celebrate the ecstatic nature of rhythmic prayer, while the slower passages honor what the Bora people have long understood: that communication with the enchanted land requires periods of receptive silence.In these moments of deceleration, you might hear the space between a Manguaré drum's call and response, or notice how a bird's song hangs in the air before another answers. These are the tender intervals where enchantment lives - not just in the beats themselves, but in the sacred geometry of their spacing. Like breathing, like tides, like the Amazon's own rhythmic cycles, the music pulses between states of expression and states of reception, creating a sonic territory where dance becomes prayer, and prayer becomes a way of singing back to the land that has been singing to us all along.

This work explores enchantment not just as a state of wonder, but as a practice of deep listening. The word "enchantment" itself contains "chant" - to sing - suggesting land that has been both sung to and heard in return. Beyond mere conservation, this album advocates for re-enchantment: a reciprocal relationship with place that demands patience, attention, and imagination. It's a sonic meditation on how we might preserve not only ecosystems, but the wonder they inspire.

There is a profound difference between conserving wilderness and the re-enchantment of place, between fighting for the planet and participating in deep reciprocity with the land. As we make the necessary shifts to preserve global ecosystems, we must ensure there are still enchanted forests to wonder in. This isn't metaphorical - in the times ahead, the ongoing process of re-enchanting person and place will be vital. We'll need the qualities that enchantment instills: patience, deep listening, connection to local place, and truly long-term vision. We'll need leaders who have listened to bird calls, who have felt deep peace enough to build it, who can move hearts beyond reciting facts.

Part of a larger series on enchanted lands, this record honors the Amazon and the Bora people's tradition of using rhythm as a bridge between human consciousness and natural wisdom. In times of ecological crisis, it suggests that our survival may depend not just on protecting places, but on rekindling our enchantment with them - through song, through rhythm, through dance, through silence.

A percentage of the profits will go directly to the Bora people in Peru and Colombia.