With Incense of Music Nr. 9 on 30th January 2017we entered for the first time the prestigious halls of the Volksbuehne Theatre (thanks to Marc Weiser). From this moment on Dominik Breider become an official member of the organising team increasing the possibilities. Claudio Bohórquez (cello), Gareth Lubbe (viola) and Hayden Chisholm (sax and sruti box) played (and sung) a reedition of their project DOHA, which took place ten years before in a buddhistic monastery in Colorado, USA. In Berlin, in the first set, we proudly burnt Palo Santo, directly imported from Peru by the visual artist Antonio Paucar. This precious wood, with the scientific name of Bursera graveolens, is a wild plant native to Yucatán Peninsula throughout Peru, Venezuela, northern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and the Brazilian Mato Grosso. The tree belongs to the same family (Burseraceae) as frankincense and myrrh.
From Peru we moved to California with our three highly talented friends and found some White sage, also a classic in the family of the incenses. It’s charisma is shaped by the desert, It’s latin name is Salvia apiana. White sage is an evergreen perennial shrub that is native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, found mainly in the coastal sage scrub habitat of Southern California and Baja California, on the western edges of the Mojave and the Sonoran deserts. Names for white sage in local Native American languages include qaashil (Luiseño), shlhtaay or pilhtaay (Kumeyaay), kasiile (Tongva), we’wey (Chumas), qas’ily (Cahuilla), shaltai (Paipai), and lhtaay (Cochimí).