David Hykes

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David Hykes (b. 2 March 1953) is a composer, singer, musician, author, and meditation teacher. He helped popularize overtone singing — which he called harmonic chanting or harmonic singing — after studying Mongolian, Tibetan, and Middle Eastern singing forms.[1]

Hykes organized the Harmonic Choir in the mid 1970's, performing in America and France.[2] Of overtone singing and his own study of the form, music theorist Charles Madden writes, "David Hykes has done everything I had hoped to do, and more." His choir incorporated both basic overtone signing as well as additional advanced forms.[3]

[edit] Education

Educated at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio where he studied with avant-garde experimental filmmakers Tony Conrad and Paul Sharits, free jazz with the Cecil Taylor Unit, and contemporary, classical and medieval music with John Ronsheim and David Stock. He received an M.F.A. from Columbia University in New York. For many years he studied North Indian raga singing and the history of Indian music with Smt. Sheila Dhar.

David Hykes is a Dharma student of Choky Nyima Rinpoche, who gave him the name Shenpen Yeshe, "the Primordial Wisdom that brings happiness to beings," and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. He completed twenty years of spiritual studies in the Gurdjieff Foundations in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, as a student of Gurdjieff's successors Lord John Pentland and Dr. Michel de Salzmann. Over the years he received teachings from Tibetan Buddhist masters Dhuksey Rinpoché, His Holiness the XVI Karmapa, as well as the Gyuto and Gyume Monks, whom he helped bring to the United States for the first time in 1985-86.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Bellamy and MacLean (2005) p.515
  2. ^ Campbell (1989) p.64
  3. ^ Madden (1999) pp.85-89, 95
  • Bellamy, Isabel and MacLean, Donald (2005) Radiant Healing: The Many Paths to Personal Harmony and Planetary Wholeness ISBN 0-97568-785-9
  • Madden, Charles (1999) Fractals in Music: Introductory Mathematics for Musical Analysis ISBN 0-96717-275-6
  • Campbell, Don (1989) The Roar of Silence: Healing Powers of Breath, Tone and Music ISBN 0-83560-645-7
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