GUILDERLAND—For a man interested in the cosmic inter-connectivity of things, Rich Goodhart must be impressed with how he’s come full circle.

As a young man, he listened to the ’70’s progressive rock of Yes, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, and David Allen and his band, Gong, which Goodhart calls "the ultimate pinnacle of psychedelic art-rock music." Goodhart heard something he liked in that music.

"Among a lot of elements in that music that attracted me, there was this exotic element all those bands would bring in," Goodhart said.

That exotic element, the sounds of instruments and music styles from beyond the Western world, was the first step on a path that has taken Goodhart, of Guilderland, to become a respected and versatile world musician.

On his latest recording, Earth Spiral Water Sound, Goodhart convinced his hero, Allen, to join him in the studio for two songs, which Allen co-wrote.

"It was wonderful," Goodhart said. "It was really like working with some sort of Buddha in the studio, some sort of Zen master."
It was also the fulfillment of a dream—literally. Ten years ago, Goodhart said, he had a dream, the sleeping kind, in which he met and played with Allen.

Earth Spiral Water Sound, Goodhart’s fifth album, recorded on his own label, Beginner’s Mind Productions, was released this month. Although Goodhart calls his previous disc, The Gathering Sun, his "best in terms of composition," he says of Earth Spiral Water Sound, "Overall, I think it’s the best in connecting my truest and deepest thoughts about music."

As with his previous albums, Goodhart plays a host of instruments, many of them unfamiliar to the average listener: dousongoni, dulcitar, sanza, African drums (djembe, sogo, kidi, ashiko), talking drums, doumbek, frame drums, kanjira, clay pot, udu, bendir, bazouki, melodica, jaw harps, keyboards, bamboo sticks, berimbau, conga, shakers, tambourine, bells, quartz bells, and vocal parts.

And though the instruments are foreign, the compositions are not always. Not a musical purist by any means, Goodhart, like his prog-rock predecessors, brings in rock, jazz, and funk sounds equally with world beats.

"It just makes natural sense that all those elements work together," Goodhart said, "that it doesn’t sound forced."

Besides, Goodhart likes to do his own thing with his music, "mixing it up in the internal realms," he said.

"I’m just a white boy from up-state New York," he said. "I don’t try to be Native American, I don’t try to be African, I don’t try to be Middle Eastern in my music."

The path
Goodhart started in music as a teenager, playing keyboards in bands, covering Led Zeppelin and The Allman Brothers. After having his interest piqued by the prog-rock bands, Goodhart started seeking out world music, especially on WRPI, a local college radio station.

After attending a concert by Oregon, one of the earliest groups in world music movement, Goodhart took a bold step. He approached group leader Collin Walcott backstage, told him he was interested in learning tabla, drums from India, and asked if he knew a teacher within 50 miles of Albany.

Walcott said he didn’t, Goodhart recalled, but told Goodhart he would teach him himself, if he were willing to drive to Oneonta, at least an hour away.

"So that’s what I did for the next year," Goodhart said. "I consistently went out to his home."

A year later, however, Walcott died in a car accident in Germany. Goodhart still wanted to continue learning new instruments.
"After that, I felt I was very much immersed in this path," he said.

For two years, he studied at the California Institute of the Arts, learning a multitude of instruments and styles: northern Indian, Ghanaian, Javanese and Balinese, and Korean, to name a few.

With each new instrument, Goodhart found it easier and easier to adapt to completely different modes of playing.

After studying in California, Goodhart returned to Guilderland. He started trying to write his own songs.

"I was always interested in composition," he said. "That seemed to be the most important thing to me."

Goodhart couldn’t easily ex-plain his approach to writing. Teaching at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck a few years ago, he was asked to teach a course in songwriting, he said. He declined.

"I ended up not teaching a songwriting course because it really made no sense to me," Goodhart said. "What I do as a writer, I couldn’t teach because there’s no process. It’s just an idea comes."

He revised his statement. There is a process, he said, a process of clearing the mind of worries, reaching a state of clarity, mentally and physically.

"And then you just see what comes," he said.

Sometimes, what comes is a riff or melody that he later expands into a full composition. Other times, what comes can’t be replicated. For example, the last track on Earth Spiral Water Sound, "Sound Spiral Water Light," is a 13-minute improvisation on the dulcitar, a hybrid of the dulcimer and guitar Goodhart created. Goodhart has since not been able to match the improvisation he did for the CD.

"I’m still trying to figure out what I did on that," Goodhart said.

"Personal mind trip"
As a performer and a song-writer, Goodhart has found a small amount of success in world music, a low-selling genre.

"I am very happy with where the music has taken me," he said. "It has taken me places, internally and externally, that I couldn’t have gotten to other-wise."

His most regular gig right now is accompanying Shahram Shiva, an Iranian translator of the poems of Rumi, a 13th century Persian mystical poet. As Shiva reads the poems, Goodhart plays along, creating what he calls a "multitextural musical experience."

At the Omega Institute in 1999, Goodhart and Shiva invited the spiritualist and best-selling author, Deepak Chopra, who was visiting the institute, to join them onstage. Chopra read his own Rumi translations.

The collaboration led to three years of Goodhart and Chopra occasionally performing together, culminating in a CD and a DVD. Those recordings remain unreleased by the record company, which cites their "low profit potential," Goodhart said. Meanwhile, he’s in limbo, on the brink of national exposure.

"It puts you through a whole personal mind trip that some idea of success seems to be dangling in front of you," Goodhart said. "So, there’s that sense of hope. Once you go though it a couple of times, you just learn it’s all part of the business that we’re all subject to."

Commercial success doesn’t mean too much to Goodhart, but he does acknowledge that selling more CD’s means more people are listening to his music. He’s happy to scratch out a living playing his music and teaching classes, but said he wishes he had a wealthy benefactor to pay his expenses—Earth Spiral Water Sound drained his bank account.

But it’s not the fame he plays for. It’s not even the music he plays for. Goodhart says he doesn’t play "music for music’s sake," or just to play things that are faster and more difficult.

"There’s something else there," Goodhart said, "a spiritual energy of transformation. This goes even for the Beatles. Their music was never just about the music. There was a spirit inhabiting the music and it was about that spirit energy."

Goodhart tries to tap that energy in his own music.

"Along with that energy and that spirit is the element of nature," he said, "the holistic consciousness that is in the natural world."

Sound healing
It’s not just through music that Goodhart accesses the holistic consciousness of nature. He studies and teaches Qigong and Tai Chi, ancient Chinese techniques for channeling energy through the body.

"I feel it’s all connected," Goodhart said. "It’s the same energy and my Qigong work is reflected in the music."

Lately, he’s been studying sound healing, a method, dating back to ancient Egypt, of healing the body through sound.

"It works with a reality that has been corroborated by modern quantum mechanics, that the essence of all material in the universe is vibration," Goodhart said.

In the 1980’s, he said, his right hand began to hurt, limiting his playing and stymying doctors. But, because he continued to play, he said, it healed itself spontaneously through the music.
"I can look back on my over-20 years of my musical experience and see that I was already on the path to sound healing," Goodhart said.

"A blessed experience"
Goodhart says he doesn’t think he’s reached his full potential as a musician yet. Whether or not that happens, he’ll keep playing everyday.

Two years ago, he said, he decided not to learn any new instruments and instead focus on perfecting his technique on the ones he already knows.

"That’s about when I started to learn native American flutes," Goodhart said, laughing, and then grabbing a long wooden flute and playing a tune. Many of his instruments he has built himself.

"It’s been a very interesting and unconventional life," Goodhart said. "I would not trade it for anything. It’s an in-credibly blessed experience, and I’m thankful for it every day."

Earth Spiral Water Sound, and other Rich Goodhart CD’s, are available directly at www.richgoodhart.com. Those interested in Qigong or sound healing can e-mail him at the address found on the web site.