Michael Waters

35 years ago I avoided choosing to be a professional musician when I began playing, as I did not want to harness the music with earning me a living. Music became part of my spiritual path.



After twenty years of playing I composed two songs, and at the same time encountered the ceremonial traditions of the Amazon and their connection to the spirits of nature. I played another twelve years with no further composing before I met Guillermo Arevalo, a Master healer from the Shipibo culture in Peru, and working with him confirmed for me the process of human exchange with the spirits of nature. It also triggered a sixteen -month wave of composition, recorded in my first two CDs. I call this body of work the Medicine Path, and play it as a form of prayer. A second body of writing has followed, more outward and sky-filling, called Acoustic Psychedelic Chill. I always play it after the Medicine Path :-).



I was born in 1954 and raised in a remote logging and fishing community in the coastal forest of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. We had no road, no telephone or television, no churches or restaurants. We did have ocean, forest and sky, and all the birds, animals and fish in them. This experience is without a doubt the foundation of the music I work with.



If you are interested in the approach I have learned, I will be conducting a three-day workshop in August at an incredible retreat centre called Hollyhock. Details are here.  I currently live in Victoria, BC, with my family.



Listen to more samples here



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