Shantala

Located in Portland, OR, Shantala is really a husband-and-wife team comprising Heather and Benjy Wertheimer. Their major focus like a duo can be acoustic-oriented folk-pop, and Heather’s affects like a vocalist (either immediate or indirect) possess included Janis Ian, Joan Baez, Sandy Denny, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell (amongst others). But Shantala in addition has attracted some interest in the brand new age group market, which without doubt offers something regarding the actual fact that their folk-pop is commonly pastoral, gentle, calm, relaxing and tranquil–no you might mistake Shantala for anti-folk (a gutsy, hard, hard-edged college of folk-rock that’s connected with East Coastline vocalist/songwriters like Lach and Lenny Molotov in NY and Adam Brodsky in Philadelphia). And the actual fact that Heather, who brings a whole lot of sweetness to her shows, is really a yoga exercise instructor certainly doesn’t harm Shantala’s trustworthiness in modern circles. In Shantala, Heather and Benjy both put on a whole lot of different hats. Not only is it the duo’s business lead vocalist, Heather takes on acoustic guitar, supports the creating and does a lot of the songwriting. Benjy, in the meantime, provides history vocals and takes on several tools, including electrical keyboards, percussion and different traditional ethnic tools associated with globe music (like the djembe, the esraj and Indian tabla drums). He also supports the creating and does just a little composing for Shantala, although Heather may be the duo’s principal songwriter and will probably the most to form Shantala stylistically. It is important to tension that Shantala isn’t a full-time gig for either Heather or Benjy; actually, both of these have been extremely busy with a number of various other projects. Heather provides performed in various elements of the Pacific Northwest within the groupings Lonesome Taxi cab and Heartstrings; she’s been a presented vocalist within the musical Go back to Avalon. And Benjy offers taken part in a number of actions that range between playing and touring with different world music clothes (like the group Old Future as well as the Zakir Hussain Tempo Encounter) to composing music for tv programs; for a lot more than five years, Benjy obtained music for the NBC day time cleaning soap opera Santa Barbara (that was canceled). Like a single artist, Benjy offers provided a global fusion CD entitled Circle of Open fire, which was documented in 2001 and released individually on the Ancient-Future label the next yr. Heather and Benjy’s 1st CD because the duo Shantala arrived in 2003, if they released The Love Windowpane (a assortment of yoga exercise chants) on Ancient-Future. That disk was accompanied by the acoustic-oriented folk-pop work Chapel of Sky, also on Ancient-Future.