How do we make everything that we touch more beautiful than we found it?
According to Diné (Navajo) teachings, to Walk in Beauty (Hózhó Naashá) is to live in balance and harmony with the unfolding beauty of all life. Walking the Beauty Way together, we weave ourselves more deeply into the entwined fabric of universal consciousness, becoming more connected with ourselves, with each other, and with the Earth. On Beauty Way, Poranguí is on a mission. The album weaves together diverse Afro-latin rhythmic forms with ballads, folk songs, and ceremonial music, blending world instruments from didgeridoo to kalimba with multilingual vocals. The powerful lyrics in Beauty Way meld with this sonic fusion informed by Poranguí’s pan-american heritage to issue an invocation and a call to collective action.
Vocals take the center stage in this album of reverence, healing, and community. Expressing the sanctity of the Earth and the artist’s concern for its future, in the focus track, “Walk in Beauty,” (track 3) Poranguí invites us to “help me love this sacred home” to “walk in beauty, talk in beauty, live in beauty, be the prayer the world needs now.”
Against a backdrop of Afro-Brazilian percussion and Pre-Columbian flute, the chorus of “These Hands” (track 2) reminds us of the power in our hands as “stewards of beauty,” charged with the sacred responsibility of “cleansing the rivers and healing the land.” In the vibey bossa nova “AnceStars” (track 8) Poranguí asks, “How do we make everything that we touch more beautiful than we found it?” then responds by making love to our ears with a rich samba accompanied by masterful Turkish flute from guest musician Eric Zang. Drawing from his years studying in Salvador, Bahia, “sKin” (track 4) unleashes a fire of samba-reggae batucada fused with cumbia. Joined by Alixa Garcia of Climbing PoeTree rapping in Spanish, Poranguí calls on us all “to move as one” united by “the skin of the drum,” the sKin that makes us all Kin.
Beauty Way manifests the expansive cultural hybridity of Poranguí’s birthright as a Latinx man and adopted Sundancer, born in Brazil and raised between South and North America. It is the artist’s first solo studio album since the instrumental Ayahuasca (original motion picture soundtrack, 2016). It follows his live solo album Poranguí (2019), which features his signature live-looping performances with voice, didgeridoo, African percussion, Native American flutes, berimbau, and other world instruments, a perennial favorite on the festival circuit. Beauty Way also builds on the artist’s earlier studio releases including Terra Sagrada (with Zang, 2011) and his recent collaborations with Liquid Bloom, such as The Kuya Sessions (2021 - 2023).
Hózhóogo naasháa doo. May we all walk in beauty.
Copy by Dr. Edward Shanken, UCSC
lyrics
Spoken in Diné / Navajo language -
English Translation
Our Mother Earth
From on Earth we left
from here We live
The five finger being
We have our identity
And on our mother earth
We have our home sites
From the east
Light in the East
In the South
The West
The North
Here on earth we live on mother earth
In the heavenly bodies
The Sun
The different Entities
The darkness
In the beginning, creation happened
With a thought, with thinking
It was planned
This is how it is going to be
And it is going to be continued
The sacred mountains were created
On mother earth
Set in place
So there could be air, fire
And the water
Today all these plans are with us
And life as we continue to live as male and female
With this duality
life is going to come about
There will be children & grandchildren
And they will create
In this way, life in the future will continue
With the prayer and hope
Our prayers, our songs,
They will be together
Our livelihood, the livestock, the bird nations, and the marine life,
And all the other creations,
Starting from the insect nation to all the different species
All of these relatives
Are in our prayer today
To the holy ones
You were there first
So we pray to you in holy way
We sing to you
This was planned and spoken like that
Today we remember all of these
We think different religion and prayers
And that our prayers will continue
And that our songs vary sounds
And our drums different types
And our words different way of doing medicine and prayers
All these will get us back into the healthy way of living
And with good manner
Everlasting goodness and beauty
That can be unheard
In this good way, we come back to our life way
Our plan will come back, the good plans for humanity
Our thoughts and thinking will grow again
Our ways of doing things for the betterment of life will continue
With your teaching and reminding of the beauty way we are going to live in that beauty again
Let there be beauty, let there be goodness
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
With your protection
credits
from Beauty Way,
track released April 21, 2023
All Songs Written, Composed & Performed by Poranguí
Produced by Vince Cimo & Poranguí
Mixing: Javier Garza
Mastering: Classic Master USA - Carlos Freitas, Natalia Bohórquez H. (Assistant)
Artwork: Noriko Maestas
Graphic Design: Kelsey Erin Sky, Scott Nice
Reared among the three cultures of Brazil, Mexico and the U.S., Poranguí was steeped in various traditional forms of music,
healing and ceremony since birth. Weaving ancestral songs & indigenous rhythms from around the world as a one-man orchestra, Poranguí bridges the healing properties of sound and movement to foster our individual and collective well being....more
