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Ghost Canyon

Title - Carry On Spirituals, Vol. 2
Artist - Radha Botofasina

For those not in the know, during a two-decade-long association, Radha Botofasina recorded four devotional albums with the late Alice Coltrane, her spiritual and musical mentor.

Alice Coltrane also gifted Radha with her first harp. She awakened an interest in Radha about the harp - the beauty of its harmonics and the freedom of its motion.

Thus her new album, Carry On Spirituals, Vol. 2 is a gem where harpist and vocalist Radha Botofasina sends us through the journey of the Kingdom of God is Within.

The songs play in order of need. Every passage of faith begins at the bottom, these songs help us overcome and arrive to a place within us where we receive the grace to carry on.

1. Satan We Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down
2. I Know The Lord Laid His Hands On Me
3. Woman At The Well
4. My Soul Gonna Shine
5. Going Back With Jesus
6. Mary Don’t You Weep
7. Mind On Jesus / God Is God
8. Move On Up a Little Higher
9. Carry On

This musically delicious, at all times captivating, and superbly crafted new album opens on the yearning reach of Satan We Gonna Tear Your Kingdom Down and the joyfully uplifting I Know The Lord Laid His Hands On Me and backs those up with the spiritual storytelling within Woman At The Well and the piano-led, soulful and gently funky My Soul Gonna Shine.

Next up on this wholly embracing and warmly heartfelt recording is the lusciously dulcet Going Back With Jesus which it itself followed by the melodically rhythmic Mary Don’t You Weep, the simply majestical Mind On Jesus / God Is God, the album rounding out on the percussion-embedded Move On Up a Little Higher, coming to a close on the atmospherically-imbibed Carry On.

Radha Botofasina has a rich and beautiful heritage that illuminates her journey of music and exploring its stunning facets. Her father, Gilberto Antero, hailed from Havana, Cuba, and her mother, Doris Botofasina, from Alabama by way of Brooklyn, NY.

The name Botofasina is from Pierre Botofasina, her mother’s husband, who left the US 4 years before she was born and subsequently died in Marseille, France, several months prior to Radha’s birth in Brooklyn, NY. Music has been an integral part of the backdrop of Radha’s life since she was three years old. She began piano lessons at five. The influence of music came from her mother’s side of the family.

Her mother suffered a nervous breakdown when she was nine months old, never again participating in her child-rearing. After being placed in a private Catholic foster agency, the next fifteen years of her foundational youth were spent with eleven different foster families. Finally, at fifteen, she was emancipated.

Her pride in her name Botofasina comes from Madagascar, where Pierre was born. Her ethnicity is Afro-Cuban American. Yet the abiding appreciation and the exposure and love she has been given by the African American people, as well as the fierceness of being half Cuban, is the foundation of her spirit.

During a two-decade-long association, Radha Botofasina recorded four devotional albums with the late Alice Coltrane, her spiritual and musical mentor. Alice Coltrane also gifted Radha with her first harp. She awakened an interest in Radha about the harp - the beauty of its harmonics and the freedom of its motion.

As a result, Radha performs in many venues on harp, such as the Royce Hall at UCLA, The Ebell Club of the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, to name a few.

Radha began her vocal studies while a student at Goddard College in Vermont with teacher Joyce Vos-Kadwell. She continued under the tutelage of Martin Lawrence in New York City, with whom she studied for five years.

She also studied jazz piano with the noted player and composer Mary Lou Williams during that time. Through her association with Alice Coltrane, Radha learned to sing beyond what her mind allows and go vocally where her heart takes her.

Radha is a multi-instrumentalist - on piano, organ, synthesizer, harp, and voice. In addition, she is a composer and a record producer. She has recorded with: several members of the Cuban band Buena Vista Social Club, Roy Campbell Jr., Brian Auger, Ndugu Chancler, John and Jeff Clayton, Herman Jackson, John Barnes, Ernest Tibbs, Phil Upchurch, Alice Coltrane, Ravi Coltrane, Oran Coltrane, Michele Coltrane, Yusuf Rahman, John Lehman, Cecil McBee Jr., Muthu Kumar, Russell Smith, Dave Stringer, Dwight Trible, Carlos Nino, Surya Botofasina, Slawomir Kulpowicz, Miguel Atwood- Ferguson and many more.

Official Website

Radha Botofasina @ YouTube

Radha Botofasina @ Spotify

Radha Botofasina @ Amazon Music

Radha Botofasina @ Apple Music

www.shailamusic.org





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