In June 2001, I had a wonderful opportunity to travel to sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. In the Copper-belt region of Zambia, it is very lush and green, with wide boulevards and wonderful living spaces. There is a large Christian influence throughout the country. The Zambian people are very healthy looking and small in physique. Music can be heard everywhere. It is the call of the music sung by the students of the Sri Sathya Sai Miracle School that brought me to Ndola, Zambia.
Baker Bigsby—the noteworthy recording engineer of more than 750 albums in the United 
States—joined me in this great project .
We arrived via Johannesburg in the early afternoon and was greeted by Genoveva Kanu, the principal of the Sathya Sai School. Upon arrival at our guest quarters, we quickly settled in and set about assessing the recording facilities available in Ndola. After a couple of hours, we concluded that recording in the school auditorium would be the best thing for the project; the auditorium had perfect acoustics. So we moved all the equipment into the auditorium and spent the next six days recording and overdubbing and listening and rehearsing. When we left Zambia, we had twenty-five a capella songs. These songs were sung in five different dialects, from Bemba to Lozi. The twenty-two boys, all high school students, were fully cooperative and very talented. The choir master was not a student but an incredibly-gifted singer and director
named Evans L. Kalumba.
As a producer on this project, it was very gratifying for me to have such disciplined teenagers, willing to work hard for the music.
The album that resulted from this endeavor is called the 'The Miracle School of Zambia Boys
Choir'. In November 2001, it was with great pleasure that I took the finished copies of the album to the school's founders.
H A V A N A , C U B A
From left: Radha Botofasina, Demetorio Muniz, Lazaro Villa, and Angel Terry.
In April 2002, we recorded "Salsa Bhajans" with some of the sidemen who play in the Buena Vista Social Club and the Orquestra de Ibrahim Ferrer. The great percussionist Angel Terry was on congas and Lazaro Villa helped out on vocals. Roberto Fronseca and Adolpho Picardo played piano on this project. We spent a whole week preparing for one recording day at Abdala Studios. There were three horn players from Rohitas band and Osvaldo Rodriquez did a tremendous job on the horn arrangements. It was a totally unique experience because three bata drum players also joined us on the session. Baker Bigsby flew in from Los Angeles by way of Mexico City to co-produce and engineer the session. There is so much to share about this experience and the additional music that continued from this project. Bill Laswell & DXT were generous in their time and studio space at Orange Sound in New Jersey. John Barnes of Innersound Studio turned in three tremendous tracks for the project: 'Life's Pathways', 'Life in God' and 'Oyaheya'. Songs in Pasthu, Urdu, Farsi, Spanish, Sanskrit and English as well as Lokata Indian chants are on this new album. The name of the forthcoming album is ‘Aspirations of the Heart'.
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