MELT at the MRC Returns for our 3rd year, 4th Saturdays of the Month

Heart centered inclusive community exploration and celebration,
in a barefoot sacred setting.

Jan. 25th we are thrilled to welcome Samir Langus & Friends from Morocco, w/ DJ Luminus
Opening Yoga with Erin Schifferli of Resonance Yoga Amherst

Doors: 6pm
Yoga: 6:30pm
Opening Circle & Cacao Blessing: 8pm

Samir Langus & Friends: 8:30

DJ Luminus: 10:15pm Closing Circle 11:45pm

Samir Langus & Friends:

The MRC is proud to welcome back grammy nominated Gnawa Musician Samir Langus.
Born and raised in the city of Ait Melloule, in Agadir, Morocco, his passion for music stems from the variety of street sounds of his city.

Gnawa is the southern Moroccan trance music with roots in pre-islamic animist traditions. It is an hypnotic, take on this ecstatic, trance-inducing tradition which has enthralled and inspired generations of musicians from around the world.

Music has always been a part of the constant variety of street sounds of his city, from merchants to entertainers and calls to prayer. LanGus began learning Gnawa, a traditional, spiritual trance music, at an early age from the Gnawa masters of Morocco especially Maalem Hamid El Kasri.

For the uninitiated, Gnawa music is the ritual trance music of Morocco’s black communities, originally descended from the enslaved people and soldiers once brought to Morocco from Northern Mali and Mauritania. Often called “The Moroccan Blues”, Gnawa music has a raw, hypnotic power that fascinated outsiders as diverse as writer/composer Paul Bowles, jazz giant Randy Weston and rock god Jimi Hendrix. The music is utterly singular, played on an array of unique instruments — from the lute-like sintir that the band leader uses to call the tune, to the metal karqaba, castanets with which the kouyos (chorus) keep time and pound out clattering, hypnotic rhythms. The music believed to heal people possessed by jinn, or spirits in all night ceremonies called lila.

But “Gnawa is not just the music,” says Samir. “It’s the culture. You can’t play just the sintir, you also need the karqaba (karakeb is the plural of karkaba) to have the Gnawa spirit.” He describes the sintir, a stringed percussion instrument made of wood and camel skin with goat gut strings, as a “powerful instrument” with an amazing sound. “You feel it in your heart,” he says.

LanGus makes great use of this traditional repertoire, and adds his own, contemporary spin with additional jazz instrumentation. Taken as a whole, this exciting new artist fuses a centuries old North African tradition with the pulse and attitude of New York City now. He would like to collaborate with diverse musicians improvising new sound that respects the Gnawa tradition.

DJ Luminus

Luminus plays a colorful mix of world fusion, balancing electronic & organic flavors for ecstatic dances, CI jams & festivals.

Marek (Luminus) has a variety of backgrounds. He grew up in communist Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic) where he studied puppetry, improvisation and drama education. It was then when he started to be interested in somatic healing, body and mind connection and finding freedom through embodied expression. Later after moving into the US in 2001 , he got a counseling degree and began working as a somatic psychotherapist. He became fascinated with the practice of Focusing and completed his Focusing Teacher Certification. Focusing became a framework for his psychotherapy practice, currently in Greenfield MA ( Solis Healing Arts ).

Later on he encountered the dancing community and discovered contact improvisation form of dance. This opened new ways for him to work with bodily energy and to explore how dancing improvisation can contribute to healing stuck emotional energy.

From there it was only a step away to become a dance facilitator and DJ in 2012 and to start working with energy of music and its impact on the body, connection to one self and to others.

Since then his journey as a DJ and workshop facilitator led him to creating healing workshops and dance events across the US as well as internationally. Some of his beloved places that he likes to visit and create events is Vancouver BC, island Ometepe Nicaragua, Portland OR, and of course his homeland - Prague.

Currently he co-creates regular ecstatic dance events with his teams in various locations.

Yoga with Erin Schifferli

Erin began practicing yoga in 2000. With immense enthusiasm for learning
about and sharing these nourishing practices, she pursued 200 hour, 300
hour, prenatal / postnatal yoga certification, Yoga as Medicine Yoga
Therapy, vipassana meditation, mindfulness meditation, and Birth Doula
trainings and programs. She is grateful for these experiences and enjoys
sharing the benefits of yoga, meditation, and mindfulness with anyone
interested. With a focus on unveiling our already established wholeness,
Erin’s classes offer ways to re-connect deeply. As a registered
dietitian nutritionist, she invites the stress management aspects of
yoga into nutrition education workshops and counseling sessions. Her
group classes, private sessions, and courses often include playful
nature references and an encouragement to attune and listen.
Erin currently teaches at Resonance Yoga Amherst

MELT: Live Music, Yoga, Cacao Ceremonies, Workshops, Ecstatic Dance, Sound Healing, Live Painting, & Elixirs,

The HeARTbeat Collective, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) arts and cultural organization based in Montague, MA

The HeARTbeat Collective is a group of people united by the common cause of creating and supporting gatherings, workshops, and events that inspire and educate people through the healing and expressive arts, with a focus on healthy and sustainable relations to the earth and one another.