Length: 62 minutes

Reviews:
New Age Retailer
Steve Ryals

(Native Healing) - the late Lummi Cha-Das-Ska-Dum was a great grandson of Chief Joseph and a revered spiritual leader of his people. Known as a bridge builder between cultures, he connected with luminaries as diverse as the Dalai Lama and Pope John Paul II. His close friend Dean Evenson and other members of the Soundings of the Planet family now remember Cha-Das-Ska-Dum's voice and music with Native Healing. Cha-Das-Ska-Dum played his drum with a heart-steady beat, his deep voice echoing off the forested slopes of his beloved Northwest coastal mountains. The healing songs of the Lummi tribe are filled with the quiet grace of the natural world. In accompaniment, Evenson offers lyrical flute, keyboards, and digi-horn. Jason Darling handles percussion, and Chirachaua-Apache Scott Huckabay adds his haunting, evanescent guitar work. Native Healing offers sacred music from the heart of the world. Evocative, profoundly peaceful, and perfect for meditation, massage, and other healing modalities, voice, flutes, ambient keyboards, and drums weave a magical synergy of cultures, giving listeners an important tool for healing themselves and the earth.

The Light Connection
Heidi Bonisa

(Native Healing) - Cha-das-ska-dum Which-ta-lum was the spiritual elder of the Lummi Indian Nation. He was the great grandson of Chief Joseph and, like his predecessor, functioned as a bridge builder between cultures. Cha-das-ska-dum spent time with His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet and was one of a group of spiritual leaders invited y the Pope to pray for peace in the new millennium. This album is an expression of his life as a teacher, story teller and healer. It is dedicated to healing. As I listen to this CD, I not only experience the mystery and magic of the authentic Native American healing chants, I feel the great and loving hearts of those invovled and the loving healing energy of the earth and nature. This music is a hypnotic, melodic tapestry of sound. Trance guitarist Scott Huckabay and Lummi violinist, Swil Kanim, add their musical gifts and Marguerite and April Which-Ta-Lum, enhance the vocals with their beautiful harmonies and Native flute. Dean Evenson and his wife Dudley, founded the record label, Soundings of the Planet, in 1979. Their motto, "Peace Through Music," continues to be the foundation of all they produce. Native Healing is the fifth in the SOund Healing series by Soundings. Don't miss the writings of Cha-das-ska-dum Which-ta-lum printed on the inside of the CD cover. They are profoundly beautiful as well. The following is an exerpt from Coming Home. "Cha-das-ska-dum took (his own daughter) April and Swil-Kanim (who had been adopted and raised by a non-Indian society) to the mountains, to the sacred cedar grove where he got his music, and showed them how to find their songs by letting the branches give the beat and the wind the melody. He played his drum and the trees danced. He helped them realize that their roots had never left them"

NAPRA Review
BT

(Native Healing) - Hope and a certain aching beauty characterize this musical collaboration between Native American elder Cha-das-ska-dum and Dean Evenson, long-time musical innovator. Though strongly influenced by Cha-das-ska-dum's Lummi heritage, the music and its message are universal, communicating a feeling of optimism for peace and healing that is a balm for unfathomable sorrow. This was one of Cha-das-ska-dum's last great contributions, recorded just before his death in August 2000. The sounds and songs are sweet but somber with Scott Huckabay on guitar and Swil Kanim on violin accompanying the gentle chanting of Native men and women. Evenson's constant flute melodies weave in and out of the different moods to draw everything together into a cohesive, healing circle of sound. As on all his fine recording, Evenson conveys this gift well.

Musicdish.com
Ben Ohmart

(Native Healing) - There are 3 labels that always make my heart sing when I open up the ol' PO BOX to snatch up the latest review cds. One of those 3 is tranquil, ever-lasting Soundings of the Planet, an idyllic arch-type of beauty and thoughtfulness that projects a lasting well-named trademark, Peace Through Music.

New age or world labels be renamed: Dean Evenson, builder of this very spiritual Soundings in 1979, has treated his own genre of Healing Music. a blend of sounds and other etc. musical elements like a Stone soup in which the magician lends the rock while all other guests bring their rich stock and vegan delights.

The latest wonder of alternative medicine comes in the form of a true salve, Native Healing. Cha-das-ska-dum Which-ta-lum was a spiritual elder of the Lummi Indian Nation. He died last year, but not before leaving a good piece of his rich 'authenic native healing chants' that procide the very sustenance upon which composer Evenson wields his mighty countenance.

It's an interesting counter-culture they set up among themselves. Cha was a poet and a carver of totem poles, while Dean evelops us with a whole earth full of flutes, keyboards and natural sounds that blend better than anyone could hope for. If there really are synthesizers encasing this hour's worth of chanting instrumentals, I can't find them without squinting. And even then the lines between real and realized are blurred to the extent that we cease to care. The instrumentation is flawless and mystic. Smell the mountain air, see the eagles that form from the clouds (a very good illustration of such, you'll find within the cd booklet), be at peace. That is the entire point of just such a recording.

I can't review individual tracks from this disc. It would be like reviewing chapters from a book. If you, even for the slightest moment, believe in the Power of audio incense, you must look for and love this release. Patience for the New Age or not, few could help be enraptured by the charm and mystique that such a Sonic Tribe can produce. And this is not a rave review to be taken lightly.