The Rhythm makes you Dance
Hello and welcome to my website
My name is Rishi Sigurd Vlote. I am a drummer, musician, facilitator for TranceDance, Shamanic Rituals and Facilitated Drum Circles.
I play drums since my childhood and it is my favorite musical and creative expression. Creating rhythms, grooves, songs and spaces for people to dance to is where I feel at home. Very soon in my career I realized: If there is anything that gets people to move and dance, it’s the rhythm of the drums.
Since the earliest records of human „culture“, drums were the instruments which were used amongst all continents: Africa, India, South America, North America, Europe, I can’t conceive of a culture without drums and rhythm.
My personal drumming story
As much as I can remember, I started drumming at the age of 4 on the pots and pans of my grandma. And the next episode was arouns six years of age. A cook colleague of my mother made me a drum from a tin can, which was huge and had contained „Franfurter“ sausages before. I was about 5 or 6 then.
When I was 11, my mom had the idea to sign me up for the local marching band. I was quite shy and small yet, and when I got there, I was given a very heavy brass snare drum with skin of goat and a pair of long, heavy drum sticks. I was taught how to hold and play the sticks, and I was quickly picking up all the exercises. It was a good training – and although it was certainly not the kind of music that I wanted to play, I am forever grateful to my mom for her decision.
My favorite bands then, were Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, The Sweet and UFO. Quite the opposite of marching music.
At the age of 12 with my first „real“ drum
So after about a year I dropped the marching band and bought my first own snare drum and a cymbal,, fixed some cardboard boxes (from Grandmas washing powder) on a stand and banged ahead to my favorite long players (Vinyl LP’s – specially Deep Purples „Made in Japan“ and „Machine Head“).
I quickly had a reputation for my wild drumming, and my mother realized, that this was a real passion of mine. I spend almost every free minute of my time on my „drum set“ (often 3 – 5 hours daily), and after another year she bought a „real drum set“ for Christmas, which was the most amazing thing I could have imagined! I made the word quicly, and three weeks after I had a proper drum kit, I was already part of my first band – Chicoree
We went through some short personal metamophosis‘ and finally named ourselves „Hochspannung“ (High Voltage). We played Prog- and Latin-Rock, inspired by bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Nectar, Santana and others from the 60’s and 70’s. It was an exciting time and I was mesmerized the by this world of music, rhythms and sounds.
Hochspannung at the „3 Tolle Tage“ – City fest of Osterode am Harz ~1977
Music and drums where my healer and live savior. Without drums I would have most probably gone mad during adolescence! So, once I got into drumming, I focused most of my time and energy on music, playing drums and working on sound systems and recording music.
It was an exciting time and „Hochspannung“ became the local heroes of my hometown in those days…
Hochspannung at the „Jugendzentrum“ in Osterode ~ 1974
Besides Drums and Percussion, I was always very intrigued by the world of sound. Using literally almost anything that made a nice sound to include into my drum set, I spend hundreds of hours, listening to music. This lead to a great interest in sound recording and engineering – and finally to my first sound studio, which was a Tascam 4-track cassette tape recorder. This was of course just the beginning, and soon I upgraded to a reel to reel 8-track + Atari computer system and finally to a PC based digital audio workstation. I recorded quite a few albums under my own name and for or with other artists, like Prem Joshua, Milarepa and many others…
In my recording studio of „The Leela Center“ in Dorset, UK
During my lifetime, I also learned to play many other percussion instruments like the African Djembe, Talking Drum, DunDuns, Shekere and Udu. Congas, Timbale, Maracas and Bongos from Latin Amerika and Darbouka, Daf and Dumbek from the oriental culture – and many more from places like India, Australia, Asia. In 2009 I also became a drum circle facilitator (DCF) with Arthur Hull. Facilitated drum circles are a fascinating way to bring fun, joy and share rhythm church to the world and to energize events, congresses and company meetings. I will write an extra section about it!
Healing Sounds
Since quite a while I got especially interested in instruments which produce a lot of overtones, like Monochord, Tampura, Swarmandal, Dan Moi, Tibetan Bowls, Sansula, Handpan, Gongs, etc.
Natural instruments are often creating frequencies above 20.000 Hz, which is well above our ability to „hear“ them with our ears. Instead, overtones resonate with our cells and even the DNA and create a deep harmonious and relaxation state for most people and some are used since thousands of years in (healing) ceremonies specially in Asia.
It is well know that these the sounds of these instruments have healing properties and I use them for Sound Healing, Sound Massage, Gong Bath’s.
Some of the instruments in my healing sound set ups
A little history of Bands I played in:
Besides „HOCHSPANNUNG“ in my very early days I played in many bands with very different styles like NIMBUS (Jazz Blues Rock), HOT LICKS (Bluesrock, Fusion, JazzRock), COMBO (Ska, Reggea, New Wave), KARL HEINE SEXTETT (Dance, Music, Top40, Traditional Brass Music) and quite a few others. Specially in my time in Göttingen, I played in almost every existing band during my time, before I moved on to Munich in 1988.
Once I moved to Munich I played and recorded with TICO FEO (Jazzrock, Fusion), TERRA INCOGNITA (Ethno Fusion), HAMSAFAR (Ethno Trance, Fusion) MILAREPA (Spiritual and Meditation Music) and many other bands and projects.
HAMSAFAR (with Prem Joshua)
In 1994 HAMSAFAR (=Fellow Traveller) was born and in the following years became my first professional musical project. I had met Prem Joshua in the Osho Tao meditation center in Munich in 1992. He was still performing together with multi-instrumentalist Ravi from UK as „Terra Incognita„, and they asked me and my fellow bass player Chintan Relenberg to support them for a concert in Munich. At that time I often played with Chintan on bass, guitarist Shunyam and keyboard player Nadama Nowak from the US in the Munich area for various occasions. So Prem Joshua and Ravi hired the whole band, and we had a great successful concert.
This year, Prem Joshua asked me to mix, play and produce for his next solo album „Hamsafar“. We had a great collaboration and it was a big upgrade for his sound. Soon after in 1993, „Terra Incognita“ was booked for a big concert at the World Music festival in Lugano , Switzerland – this time with Kamal Engels on bass and keyboards and an Italian percussionist. That concert was a great success, and we started touring for the summer in Germany and Italy in varying line ups.
In 1994 Kamal moved to Australia and shortly after, Ravi left the band, refusing to allow the remainding to use the name „Terra Incognito“. Since I had mixed Joshuas previous solo album, I recommended to use it’s name for the new formed band – and „HAMSAFAR“ was born. We started playing under that name with Prem Joshua, Chintan, Nadama, Shunyam and me.
HAMSAFAR played mostly songs of Prem Joshua, but soon, Nadama, Shunyam and me contributed to the repertoire and we toured Europe every summer, from Germany to Denmark, the Netherlands to France, Spain and specially Italy. We build a fan base and became quite famous in the meditation- and upcoming World Music scene in Europe.
In October 1997 we started to record our first (and only) CD in the beautiful Meditation center „La Magia“ near Grosetto in Tuscany, Italy. It was a long process, due to very diverting schedules of the band members, but in springtime of 1998 we mixed and finished the album „Lifeprints“ in my recording studio in lower Bavaria and we had it ready to sell during our summer tour in 1998. This year was a successful tour for Hamsafar. Although Shunyam had left the band after the recordings of the album, as well as Nadama, who moved on to Maui, we found two brilliant new members for the band: Manish Vyas, Tabla player, singer and keyboardist from Pune, India (who had played tablas on all of Joshuas solo albums) and Dinesh Allan Mattuck from Denmark/US on guitar and keyboards. With these new additions we played bigger and more successful concerts in 1999 and build a strong reputation for a powerful band. We had a lot of new material from our own album, as well as Joshua’s hit „Shiva Moon“ from his album MUDRA (which I had mixed in my new studio in Osho Leela in the UK). Our stage appearance became even more professional and the peak was our appearance at the „Shantipi“ world music festival in Israel with more than 20.000 people.
Unfortunately no band picture of this amazing festival
We had our act together, I thought, and expected to really play more and bigger events, and finally make money, after spending a lot of time, effort and passion – but our band crashed in 2000, when there was growing discontent amongst the members and after a serious talk, Joshua left and the band blew and I was smashed.
The final line up – Manish, Dinesh, Chintan, Joshua and me (left to right)
The TranceDance Era
In 2002, I met my dear friend Harshil Filippo Chiostri, a brilliant percussionist and Didgeridoo player. Both of us were deeply into Shamanic TranceDance, presented by Frank Natale, a Neo Shamanic pioneer of the 80’s and 90th, who took many shamanic practices from Africa, North & South America, Siberia and Asia back to Europe, where the Christian religion had eradicated or assimilated most of the Pagans rituals (similar to the Islamic religion in the Arabic countries.
From this time on we started playing together a lot and gave birth to a mutual CD project. After some years and many meetings, lot’s of travelling to his seminar house Podere Amarti, countless recordings and edits – 2010 we finally released our first TranceDance album RISHI & HARSHIL – „Forget Your Limitations“. 80 continuous minutes (12 tracks) of deep, groovy, trancy, mystical music. An epic journey, which became quite a hit in the TranceDance and Conscious Dance scene and is still used world wide by many Ecstatic Dance DJ’s.
In 2014 this was followed by „Shaman’s Return“ – A Shamanic Experience Meditation. A one hour long shamanic meditation in 5 Stages: Shaman’s Breath, Shaman’s Dance, Shaman’s Journey, Shaman’s Stillness, Shaman’s Walkabout
2019 we released Rishi & Harshil – „Remember Your Freedom“, another masterpiece with 11 songs and 110 minutes of shamanic trance, powerful rhythms and sounds on 2 CD’s. This time the songs became even more trancy, mystical and haunting. On Bandcamp.com we offer all our albums in both 440 Hz and 432 Hz, which became a big „thing“ in recent years. Quite some people feel music, recorded or played back in 432 Hz, is more relaxing and enjoyable…
You find all our music on bandcamp.com for listening and download
https://rishiharshil.bandcamp.com/
My recent projects:
RISHI & DHWANI
(TranceDance, Ecstatic Dance, Conscious Dance, Sound Healing, Gong Bath’s),
I met Dhwani in 2009 at a World Music Festival in Sweden. We quickly figured that we are musical brothers and began to play together on various festivals and started organizing TranceDance tours all over Europe.
Dhwani is a gifted keyboard-, piano- and flute player and vocalist. He recorded many CD’s, specially in the New Age genres, but also Shamanic Titles as well as Meditative music and special CD’s for Hypno therapy.
For our TranceDance events, Dhwani is creating the spacious sound spheres and melodies, While I am responsible for the rhythms with drums, vocals and percussions. Together we create a wide range of spheres to send dancers on deep, intense healing journeys.
Besides TranceDance and Ecstatic Dance we also accompany 5Rhythm and Concious Dance events with various teachers like Olivia Palmer, Julia Knezevic, Roland Burkert, Oliver Euchner and others.
Another specialty are our „Healing Sound Bath’s“ with a huge variety of very spacious, delicate, rich overtone instruments like Monochord, Tibetan Bowls, Dan Moi, Hang and other Handpans and Gongs
Soundhealing setup
RISHI & SHAKYA
Shakya and I met in 2014 at the „Art of Being“ Festival in Czech Republic. It was another „Love at first sound“ affair. We had a very immediate musical connection and began to organize concerts and events together. Shakya moved to Switzerland the year after. Thus we started playing many events in Switzerland, like the Ecstatic Dance Festival Zurich, the „Church“ in Zürich and in his new domicile „Schloss Glarisegg„, where he took the job of the management for the next 4 or 5 years.
Besides Ecstatic Dance, 5Rhythm events and Ecstatic Dance we offer Mantra Singing Events, Sound Healing and Cacao Ceremonies with live music
In the meantime we also play as a trio, together with Dhwani, as well as with keyboard player Samy Bucher from Zurich.
Shakyas sunset concerts at Lake Constance at the boat house of Glarisegg
Shamanic TranceDance
Since the late 90’s, one of my main passion is „Shamanic Trance Dance„. I facilitate TranceDance since more than 30 years and always with Live Music. To me, Live Music is an essential part of healing processes! Music played alive, especially improvised music – performed by skilled, gifted, sensitive musicians – takes the dancer/participant into a deep healing space – the „HERE and NOW“! You tap into a different energy field – spontaneously created… Besides the magic, that can happen, when musicians and dancers get into „the zone“, as we call it…
Shamanic TranceDance offers a wide field of experiences, that hold a sacred, healing quality in a very easy way to access with a few, simple tools…
The six Tools
I identify six (6) main tools to access a state of Trance:
Intention – Blindfold – Breath – Dance – Music – Trance