Tony Mantor: Why Not Me the World
BONUS EPISODE : East Forest's Journey from Anxiety to Musical Healing
Wed, 13 Nov 2024
Send us a textWhat if music could be your path to healing and inner peace? Dive into an inspiring conversation with East Forest, a pioneer in meditation and transformative music. Discover how his personal battle with anxiety and depression led him to create soul-soothing compositions that have become a beacon of hope for many. His journey from crafting music for personal solace to becoming a guiding light in meditative and shamanic practices worldwide is nothing short of remarkable. East Forest’s evolution from piano and electronic elements to a rich tapestry of flutes, Tibetan bowls, and emotive vocal expressions is a testament to the power of music in fostering resilience and peace.Explore the fascinating world of musical creation and its ripple effects across cultures and audiences. We uncover the magic behind East Forest's dual approach to music: blending meticulously planned studio work with spontaneous compositions from plant medicine ceremonies. His collaborations with artists like Keith Sweaty and Peter Broadbrook have birthed albums like "Karen" and "Burn," which resonate universally. Hear touching stories, such as how a paramedic used the "Music for Mushrooms" album to provide comfort during a psychedelic crisis, showcasing music's transformative power in the most critical situations.Join us as we traverse the dynamic realms of live performances and groundbreaking film projects with East Forest. Learn about the artistic preparation for an upcoming concert in Nashville and the significance of unique venues in inspiring creativity. We delve into his new film "Music for Mushrooms," which intertwines themes of mental health and psychedelic therapy, offering a sense of community and collective healing. As the film tours the country, aligning with World Mental Health Day, we wrap up with East Forest's future aspirations and opportunities for audiences to engage with his ongoing journey through art and healing.https://tonymantor.comhttps://Facebook.com/tonymantorhttps://instagram.com/tonymantorhttps://twitter.com/tonymantorhttps://youtube.com/tonymantormusicintro/outro music bed written by T. WildWhy Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Chapter 1: How did East Forest's journey with music begin?
With the East Force Project, it started because I was feeling a lot of anxiety and depression initially. I have my whole life. I was living in New York as in my twenties, you know, things were falling apart. I think when things fall apart, there's often some kind of doors opening too, or maybe it's clearing the rubble or I don't know, it burns the fields, however you want to look at it. Sure.
I think we all can understand that. I started making music for me to actually journey to, and my interest was, or I had some experiences with psilocybin mushrooms, magic mushrooms, that were really emotionally powerful for me, but I didn't understand them. I kind of wanted to return to that place. It was really a place of solace, a place of peace.
So I was trying to write music that would help me go to those places. And that really was the initial impetus, was soothing my own... You know, pain internally, very personal.
Yes, I get that. And lots of times that's the kind of pain that it takes to really grow and expand. So you was in your early 20s, right?
Yeah, yeah.
What was the path and how did it develop from there?
Well, it was really through the magic of serving other people because I had a friend that I had met who got really into that music that I made, the very first record. And he started organizing like these meditative shamanic circles for me to play music to. And that wasn't something that I thought I was going to do.
And so by offering this to others and seeing the benefit for them, they were working through their own stuff. It just kept propelling me to do more and more of it because you just feel like, well, it's helping this person or these other people. Therefore, if I were to stop, I'm no longer helping them. But that's mutually beneficial, of course, because the more I play it, the better I feel. So...
Absolutely. Right. Right. So you started out early in your career with a more calming type of music that really helped others. Did you do other styles? Did it evolve into other things? Because when you're helping others, you never know what can happen from there.
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Chapter 2: What role does music play in healing and meditation?
Yeah, and that gives a chance to breathe a little bit as well.
By doing that for many, many years, it starts to get its own language, like a musical language of how you do that or why you do that.
And so in that way, I think it absolutely shaped the sound and the instruments and the fact that it was like long form or if I'm bringing in field recordings because that brought a particular quality, you know, and that just became the language of the music I was making.
Yeah, nice. What was the instrumentation that you used starting out compared to what you may be using now?
It's always been a lot of piano or keyboard based as the primary, you know, glue or instrument, melodic instrument. I was using a lot of electronic elements too because, you know, you're by yourself and that's one way to make rhythm and beats. You can do it like on a computer. But I also started using a lot of percussion, shakers, and I wanted to bring a diversity of sounds.
And I could play woodwinds a little bit. So I brought flutes in, brought harmonicas in, melodicas. I also brought in non-melodic instruments like Tibetan bowls or gongs.
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Chapter 3: How has East Forest's music evolved over time?
Yeah, that's a great collection of instrumentation.
Part of that was wanting to just have a variety of sound. And it was also seeing like what other sounds can I play that are also going to be conducive to an inner journey to that sort of calming of the nervous system.
Yeah, that sounds like great music. Did you use your voice at all?
I started bringing more of my voice back into it. I started singing more, but finding I like doing a kind of like glossolalia, like singing without specific words. It's sort of like toning or words that sound like another language maybe, but more like vowels and so forth. And
That developed over the years because in the ceremonies, I didn't want to like, I don't know if like if you say words, they're very specific in a sense, like it has a meaning to people and the tones could have any meaning. It was just emotion. And so that became more of something that I do to this day. Now it's just second nature, but it came from that space.
And that's a great place to start because it allows you to find your inner peace. It allows you to evolve. And it sounds like you've been able to accomplish that. Now that you're out there, people are hearing your music. You're getting to meet people because you're doing more live shows. What kind of reaction are you getting?
And how is it affecting you knowing that you really truly are helping a lot of people in their lives?
It's the personal stories you would hear afterwards. Like someone might tell you that they had a relationship with their father that was very difficult. You know, it's negative in their mind. It's a story that they're carrying, a lot of pain.
In the experience that we would have together with the music, they might have said, you know, I had this vision of my father and eventually I got to this place where I was able to say, I love you, dad. They would say, I've never been able to say that. So I would recognize it like, wow, okay, that is your internal process. It's your world. I didn't tell you anything.
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Chapter 4: What impact has East Forest's music had on audiences?
But maybe it was in like a bodywork session or actually in like kids art classes. or people using it with the passing of a family member. I mean, really powerful moments in people's lives. It seems to be helpful to sort of amplify or help them walk through emotional spaces.
Yeah, that's just so good. When you record, do you record with a purpose? Do you have a group of songs that you can put together and create a body of work that's solely for that purpose? Or is it putting together the songs and then you hope that people like it?
I mean, you know, I could say it was a part of a plan, but as part of half plan, half it just unfolds. I would record in two ways. One was in these medicine ceremonies, plant medicine ceremonies where I'm improvising. So that's a very unique situation because things are just coming out and you're just recording what's happening. And then some of that turns into records.
Then I also will make studio records that are more traditional in the sense that, you know, I can work on it over months and other people can come and play on it. And I like doing both. Those can be more intentional because you might have a concept. Like it could be anything. Like I want to work with strings a lot on this record or I want this one to be more of like rhythm and lyrics. Yeah.
Yeah. Now you had a album out that was called Karen, I believe.
Karen. It's like the stack of rocks you see when you're hiking on mountains. Yeah.
Now I understand that has been classified as a very calming collective body of music. So how did that come to life?
Well, you know, that one was actually a collaborative record with Keith Sweaty, who's a producer.
Okay.
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Chapter 5: How does East Forest approach live performances?
Yeah, you just never know how things are going to happen when you work with different people. So now that brings up another topic. You recorded and worked with another artist, this one in the UK.
Did that lead you to live performances where you got to meet people from different parts of the world, seeing how they respond to your music and how it leads you to potentially not only helping people here in the US, but people all around the world?
Well, what I've seen is the similarities of the processes going on with people across countries. Like we're all actually, there's very similar things happening. And there's an emergence everywhere. I mean, China, Australia, Ireland, Iceland, South Africa. Really, it's amazing. And I'm like, oh, there's such common ground here emotionally.
Specifically to autism, actually recently, two people came up to me after shows. Both had autism. And they just told me they wanted me to know of how the music spoke to them and has been helpful for them. And specifically with them holding autism in their life, that's something like this is relevant to me. That was relatively, actually two people recently told me that.
That just shows how your music is touching people. And you're right. I've spoken with people all over the world. And the common thing is that the stories they tell are pretty much all the same no matter where you go. Yeah. So you've had autistic people come up to you. You've had varied people that have their issues, every one of them different.
What's something that you can tell us where your music really made a difference and you just impacted you as much as it did them?
It's a really wide range. I mean, here's a great story. A firefighter, He's a paramedic with firefighters, right? He's got the mustache, the whole thing. And he said, you know, his buddies, they had a call. And it was a guy who maybe on paper, whoever called is like, this person's freaking out. They're having a psychotic break or I don't know. So they called the cops essentially.
But the firefighter paramedics show up. They kind of quickly figured out this might have been drug related. And they all know that this guy, they're like, well, you know about that world. Why don't you go just talk to him first? So already that was a somewhat smart thing as opposed to like everyone just comes in in their firefighter outfits.
So he walks in there and says to all of his buddies, like, why don't you hang outside? Don't come in. And the guys in there in his place, of course, he's freaked out now. The authorities have arrived. And he instantly realizes the guy's taken mushrooms and taken more than he anticipated. He also recognizes that there's no immediate threat right now. that the guy's just really anxious.
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Chapter 6: What is the story behind the album 'Karen'?
Ram Dass, for those who don't know, was a spiritual teacher who passed away 21, I believe. He brought a lot of Eastern ideas to the West and was just a beautiful man. He's a really wonderful speaker and teacher. So we did this record where he spoke and I wrote music to it. And that has reached a lot of people. And a lot of people found it to be very, very calming. Nice.
They're like micro teachings that are very universal. When you put it to music, it's like a little movie. It's it's scores it. It brings it amplifies the emotion and. That one has done the rounds for sure.
Yeah, that's really good. It's always nice to have one that you really look at that defines you in your mind of what you think that you are. Over the last 10 years or so, you've built an organic community of music that helps people, does so much good in the world. What's your thoughts on when you release a new product on how it gets out there?
How do you spread that word so that everybody knows that you've got it out there?
Well, there's a lot to listen to these days and boys, our attention pulled in every direction. So I'm grateful to anyone who is paying attention and they're listening. I think my music too is a little bit more of a slow burn in that if I drop something, it's not like usually there's this big explosion of... Some of it takes a while to listen to. It's long.
Okay.
And so it takes time for it to gestate and seep into people's lives. And I recognize that. And it has a more organic process in which it then is being used perhaps in certain modalities. And that takes time too. So I often have to have patience as well.
Yeah, I get that. And patience is the toughest thing for an artist because they want to get their music out there. They're excited about it. They want people to know about it. So patience is a very good thing that you have that. A lot don't. Are you doing a lot of live performances? And if you do...
Are they specific areas where people need help or are they just doing concerts and let the people come out to get to know you? What's your dynamic there and how are you getting yourself out there for live venues?
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Chapter 7: How is East Forest's music used in therapeutic settings?
and that takes me around. So it's a total combination of variety.
Tell us a little bit about the film now.
The film, in a nutshell, is about mental health.
Okay.
So it's about music and mushrooms, psychedelic therapy, ceremony, and music, and are these things relevant today amidst everything going on? But I think the answer, in essence, or what the film's really exploring is how do we live more authentically today? or recognizing that what's happening in our society is the spiritual emergency.
Like at our core, we all have wounds and traumas and we're reacting from them. And that causes things like polarization and the loneliness, the epidemics of depression. So by sourcing within and sort of recognizing that our inner work, our work on ourselves, it really matters because we need to spring out from there to make change in the world. That's the primary message of the film.
That's great. How do they put it together? Is it musical? Is it more like a documentary? What's the basis of the way that they put it across to people so they get the message of what they're trying to tell?
All of it. Yeah. So the movie is a hybrid. It's a narrative documentary. So there's what we call verite scenes, meaning like they're just real scenes as opposed to talking heads, which you might see in some documentaries. But actually we have conversations in there as well. And there's a lot of music. There's music sequences that are like live on screen and
also sort of montage-y and the music goes from the foreground to the background. It's been really strong reactions, very emotional reactions from people. Like while we're talking today, I'm in Encinitas, California. We have a screening tomorrow. It's sold out. And we just came from LA where it's playing right now on October 10th. We're doing screenings all over the country.
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Chapter 8: What future projects does East Forest have in mind?
Right. And that's a huge statement right there. So how long is the film?
It's 82 minutes. So it's a feature length, but it's a nice and tight.
Yeah, that's a great time. And it sounds like it's a great film for the people that's going to come see it. So you've got a great body of work. You've done a lot of great things in the last 10 years. What's on the bucket list? What do you have to do that you still want to accomplish?
I think as any artist, you're never quite satiated in your expression. And I think that's what drives us forward. And there's still a lot of things I want to do artistically that I either haven't had the opportunity to do or I'm developing towards it as an artist. And that horizon keeps me driving forward.
Again, going back to that sense of service, like I want to reach as many people as possible. And I still think there's so many people yet to touch and to be in dialogue with energetically. That's what I'm excited to find creative ways to do.
Yeah, that sounds great. When you're out there, do you get a chance to meet and greet, talk with the people, get a real idea of what's going on? And then you can sit back and go, man, this is really working and it's really helping a lot of people. And then you can feel real good about what you're doing. So do you get a chance to take and meet the people? Yeah, I do.
I mean, with the film, I've been talking to a lot of people because we do panels when I'm at the events and I hear a lot of stories one-on-one. I also do a Patreon where it's more of a, I call it the council. And so we have more of a community there, but, and then people engage on social media and, you know, you hear stories and that's important too. So you're not just like working in a vacuum.
So over the next few months, where can people come out and see you? Are you doing any live venues at all?
Well, I'll be in Nashville, as I said. That's a music concert happening in November. And I'll be in Seattle, I believe, also in November. And we have an event at a conference called Eudaimonia at the beginning of November. And here at the end of October, there's a festival happening. I think I'm playing something in Mexico also. It's a Wanderlust event. Back's full circle.
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