New Artists Collaborate With Ram Dass on "Love Serve Remember: Reimagined"

Soul Land Records, the label created as a repository for music dedicated to and inspired by teacher Ram Dass, released a new music compilation on December 7, 2023. Love Serve Remember: Reimagined is a five-song collection of new Ram Dass songs and musical renderings in collaboration with musicians The Human Experience, Liquid Bloom, and John Pattern. The tracks collectively celebrate the 50th anniversary of an expansive collection of Ram Dass radio conversations, readings, and music that first took form as the six-LP box set, Love Serve Remember, in 1973. The new release has been pressed to vinyl and is also available across all major digital platforms.

The songs on this album vary in mood and instrumentation but are interconnected threads of the same cloth. The three artists weave these archival fifty-year-old recordings of Ram Dass with fresh musical landscapes and diverse instrumentation.

Soul Land Records made available the first compilation singles in November, “My Heart Song” from Ram Dass and John Pattern, and “The Great Way,” featuring Ram Dass’ original reading of the 3rd Chinese Patriarch of Zen with music by The Human Experience.

“Listen, listen, listen, to “My Heart Song,” sings Ram Dass on the John Pattern single. Pattern took an archival 1986 recording of Ram Dass singing and transformed it into a musical love letter to the spiritual heart. Synths rise and fall, and while the instrumentation remains lush and elating, Ram Dass and John Pattern bring you to the essence of love and into the path of the heart.

Pattern is a psychotherapist in Utah specializing in a holistic approach to trauma, addiction, and overall mental health. He uses music as a therapeutic medium to convey spiritual messages that uplift and inspire.

“The Great Way,” the second single off of the compilation, is a seventeen-minute meditative journey, opening with reverb-laden synths and ambient natural soundscapes. Ram Dass’ voice echoes as part of the rich harmonics, as if speaking in a cavern from some liminal space: “Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.” Textures and moods shapeshift as the track evolves, The Human Experience traversing challenging sonic territory with Ram Dass and the listener. “To return to the root is to find meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.” This is a call to quiet, and in that sense, “The Great Way” is a vehicle for deep listening.

The Human Experience is musician David Block’s principal project as a live electronic composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. Block has collaborated with artists all over the world, including Rising Appalachia and Random Rab (previously featured on the Ram Dass Soul Land Music Series), Ignacio Perez (Buena Vista Social Club), William Close (The Earth Harp), Elephant Revival, and many others.

Ram Dass once said, “Certain musicians are doing karma yoga…it’s like listening to that inner-sound, and they are manifesting it. Someone else can use that as a key to go back into themselves, and where we meet is in this other level of sound.” The creative expressions of this new compilation not only edify or entertain but give everyone who listens the opportunity to presence into loving awareness; as Ram Dass reflects in the track “Opening Reimagined,” to meet in the moment of here and now.

Included with Love Serve Remember: Reimagined is a bonus digital download collection of the original 1973 recordings which include radio conversations, readings, and devotional music. To learn more, visit ramdass.org/music.