Karen Salicath Jamali Finds Her Voice on OM Mare Shangri-la

The longer I make music, the more I think the bloody thing has a life of its own. You can have all the gear, plans and clever ideas you want, but when a melody pops into your head from absolutely nowhere, everything changes. Maybe we make music. Or maybe sometimes music makes us. Honestly, I gave up trying to figure that one out years ago.

Karen Salicath Jamali gives me another reason to think about it with OM Mare Shangri-la, her first full vocal album. And when you know her story, we might actually be onto something.

So, how did we get here?

Back in 2012, Karen suffered a serious head injury and went through a near-death experience. She spent the next three years recovering and came away from it with a strong belief that we’re all connected through something much bigger. Love, consciousness, sound, the universe, call it what you like.

Then Karen started playing piano. Fine, except she’d never learned how. She started composing too, and things went pretty wild from there: more than 2,500 compositions, eight solo performances at Carnegie Hall and around 30 million streams. Add years of awards to the pile and Karen has had a seriously busy second chapter in music.

“For me, OM Mare Shangri-la is not a departure from the music I have made before. It is another doorway into the same world — a world where sound, consciousness, love, art, dreams, and life are connected. The deepest understanding I have carried with me since 2012 is that we are all connected more deeply than we know, and only in love we exist. And we are deeply loved more than we ever can imagine.”
— Karen Salicath Jamali

But music is only half the story. She spent three decades as a painter, sculptor and photographer, with more than 180 exhibitions around the world, including the Louvre. So yeah, she’s been doing this for a while.

From Piano to Vocals

OM Mare Shangri-la brings another first: Karen singing her own lyrics and playing acoustic guitar. There are nine tracks – The Ocean of the Seals, Only in Love We Are, Angel of Mercy, Mary’s Song, Never Forget Who You Are, Seeds of God, In the Sea of Love, Wild Birds Flying High and Falling Back in Eternity.

Looking at those titles, we’re going a bit deeper than a simple night out here.

The Ocean of the Seals probably explains Karen’s world best. The song goes back to what she experienced in 2012: an immense ocean of consciousness, our connection with the Creator and the idea that, eventually, we return to an ocean of love. It also makes the album title – The Cosmic Sound of the Ocean Paradise – make a lot more sense. We can feel the rhythm of her heart.

Keeping it in the family

Karen’s son, Aqdas Salicath Jamali, recorded the album, while Maria Triana, Gary Gray, Austin Leeds and Karen worked around the mastering thing. Warner Music Group handles worldwide distribution, and OM Mare Shangri-la is being presented for consideration for the 69th Grammy Awards in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category.

I keep coming back to the same thing, though. Karen spent years saying all this through a piano. And now she’s got nine songs, a guitar and her own voice in there too. Apparently, the music still has things to tell her.

Jump into Karen Salicath Jamali’s world here and have a listen to OM Mare Shangri-la. And yeah, expect quite a lot of ocean along the way.

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