Reciting mantras showed Graziella the difference between how perfection is defined in music and the perfection required for reciting Veda.
By Sophia Ann French
Germany-based Graziella Schazad is a multi-instrumentalist, performing artist and workshop facilitator (sacred sound) — her relationship with sound began at age three when she started learning the guitar. She started playing the violin at four, and the piano at nine. By 11, she was writing songs. “My mother’s biggest dream was to learn an instrument and make music, but life didn’t offer her the chance to. My family had fled Afghanistan to live in Germany, and in Germany, my mum ensured I studied music. I studied the classical violin and piano in Berlin, but left formal education a year before graduation because I was already touring and winning folk awards as a singer-songwriter. I wanted to follow that path. So while I have a classical education, I am focused on singing and songwriting and always with lots of instruments,” explains Graziella.
An ear attuned to sound will naturally be drawn to the sounds of Veda as mantras are designed for an elevated sonic experience. That’s exactly what happened with Graziella. It was love at first hearing. Recalling her first recitation with Veda Studies, she says, “The first time I recited it was like there was no time and space, like a direct elevator to the divine. It was amazing.” Graziella first came to India 21 years ago and remembers that as her first experience with chanting. “I have a strong connection with my Afghan family, even though we don’t live there anymore. Everyone lives across the world. It was my husband who took me to India 21 years ago, and I felt very connected to India. I understood the mentality and culture. I heard chanting at temples, and I was very interested in mantras. At the time, I was only finding the Western style of kīrtana, and I would even sing mantras to my pop audience (laughs). I was keen to find out more about where these mantras come from, and I found Shantala online. I did the Free Essentials Course and then the Foundation Course, and I’ve been studying since,” says Graziella.
The Perfection of Satisfaction
The recitation of Veda mantras requires three notes with a few variations of those notes. Graziella didn’t find the segue from singing to reciting difficult, and the svaras and precision of Veda helped her understand an important distinction between the perfection we seek when we perform to present to an audience and the satisfaction we find when we perform to self-practise. “We can try to sing a mantra, but we realise immediately that it doesn’t work. We have to stick to the svara, the pronunciation, the rules. The struggle for me was to let go of this perfect sound image that I have. My background is classical violin, and classical education is all about perfection. You perform for an audience, so you can’t hit even one note wrong. It took me a long time to break away from that and start having fun with my music career. This was a long but beautiful healing process. I did a similar letting go when I started reciting Veda. Instead of trying to sound beautiful, I started paying attention to, ‘what do I sound like today?’ Even with Veda, a lot of precision is required. We try our best not to make mistakes. But the perfection of Veda doesn’t give me anxiety, whereas the perfection of music gives me anxiety. I had to figure out the difference between the perfection we need in Veda and the perfection in other creative arts. I think there is no anxiety in Veda’s perfection because the practice is intimate. It’s not to present to anyone. It’s your intimate connection. Even when we recite in a community, each person has their own relationship with the mantra,” says Graziella.
She feels she can stay committed to the practise because of this quality and how it never fades. “I am a very emotional person. I do have thoughts and intentions, but I function at an energetic level. When I recite mantras, I feel an immediate resonance, and what’s amazing is that it doesn’t fade. At times, I break my routine and don’t chant for five days. Then I pick it up again, and I can recite. It’s all there immediately. That’s how it feels — always in the eternal now.”
From Western Classical to Indian Traditional
A training in Western Classical music gave Graziella a taste of how much practise is necessary to exercise an art form correctly, and she was surprised by “Just how complex the Veda Studies tradition is. I didn’t realise Veda recitation was such a high art form. It is a discipline. The sūktams are always surprising me. Some just click, and some take me a while and are surprisingly difficult. What is incredible is that despite that, we have this community, and there are so many of us who have this yearning to learn,” observes Graziella. She is attending the current Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training Programme and feels, “It is a great experience. I love being in a safe place that has so much clarity. I love the community. We all have the same calling. We all have the same goal. It’s very focused. I appreciate that because everybody has family and lives and work, and we still get stuff done. I appreciate this a lot. After the teacher training programme, I want to teach, but I like direct contact. So I might form small groups. I’m really looking forward to recording. I’m a recording artist, and I love all of this, so I will definitely create self-paced courses, because I just love recording.” Her advice to future students is, “If it resonates with you, go for it.
Find out more about Grazeilla’s work at https://www.graziellaschazad.com/