#115 Biko Casini, percussionist with Rising Appalachia - a podcast by Planetary Gigs Society

Biko Casini is the percussionist with my favorite music group, Rising Appalachia. Biko turned me on to The Music Lesson book by Victor Wooten and that changed my life and led to the founding of the Planetary Gigs Society. Biko is a profound player and spiritual thinker.

Biko grew up in an intentional community outside Nashville, where he lives now, and he says it gives him the space to dream about what is possible when humans come together, sharing responsibility of stewarding the land. Biko’s father played guitar – all the time, many different songs, from many different countries and in many languages, like a troubadour. When Biko was 15, his brother carved him drumsticks and that started his lifelong craft as a drummer and percussionist. Through several interactions and his travels, he realized that for him music was a way to be of service rather than strive simply for personal success, and his quest has been to find a place or situation where music could be a key to unlocking healing energy.

He has found that with Rising Appalachia, which is like a spiritual community because they are all working on similar goals. So many musicians have been funneled and co-opted by the music industry to serve the profit motive. Rising Appalachia focuses on the experience and the wild magic of music. “Music has given me more than anything else in my life, but it has also taken more than anything else,” he says.

Biko is focused on an intention to create cultural and ecological learning and rejuvenation centers, with music being a huge part of that. He says concerts and festivals can provide energy for restoring ecology. Arts and creativity, he says, should feed the ecological restoration of the world and cultural renewal, which is the great work of our time. Biko says we all carry cultural trauma and music’s job is to connect us to what’s real inside of ourselves and then to help us be able to restore the external ecology. This also seems to me to be very much consistent with the music and message of Rising Appalachia, led by sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, and they have all meant so much to so many people.

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