Grow Wild

Recently a couple of guys named Nahoo and Jojo decided to let their music grow wild on their first album.

The band is AO (the ancient Polynesian word for light) and their first album "Grow Wild."

While their stage names might sound more natural coming from villains on the Power Puff Girls, their mission is nothing less than heroic. Using musical instruments from Native American and Polynesian tribes, lyrics in the universal language of Esperanto and a healthy attitude of having fun with sound, they've created a unifying sound that can reach out to almost anyone.

"The fist step is to get people to engage their hearts again," Jojo points out. "Art needs to promote positive thinking and energy. We're at a state in history when the world is changing more rapidly than ever before. We're becoming one people, one culture, tied together financially, with instantaneous Internet communications, sharing news and art, and questioning the old ways. We want our music to help people prepare for the changes, to let them know it's okay to embrace the changes."

Nahoo says the group's mission is even simpler, to encourage light, love and laughter in a changing world.

"We want each listener to walk away from this music with a deeper sense of dimensional freedom," Nahoo says. "Children invent their own worlds around them everyday and, AO will always present a very colorful palette that encourages that sort of playful imagination."

Components of the songs come from numerous native cultures, invoking the words, spirits and gods of cultures ranging from the Polynesians to the Chippewa and Australian aborigines. All is enveloped in a smooth, playful sound that's as modern as the words are timeless.

Through it all, AO's spirit grows wild and infuses the lyrics with laughing dare, a challenge to use your imagination and find other worlds to explore. Nowhere is this more clear than in the lyrics of "Chameleon Makebelieve:"

"So here we are, another hologram of makebelieve,
together we hasten our arrival.
The mind, it can bend and move like water
like a waterfall over all this feeling.
Again I asked the Chameleon
Okay, where do we go from here?
I mean which world and which reality?
Then he looked at me with a gleam in his eye.
He said, listen carefully, my brother
never choose from the menu ... and never be afraid."

At other times, the songs of "Grow Wild" come to us almost as prayers. The title song is the perfect example. The words are intoned in Esperanto by a child as drums and wood flutes, provide an eerie, yet somehow comforting, background. The translation of the single verse does more to sum up the spirit of the album than any reviewer ever could:

"This emerald jewel we live on
feels and knows our every thought.
We can breathe into her mighty heart while
peering down the tiny throats of flowers.

There, through a brilliant colored
lens, she loves to leap into our eyes
and kiss the soul of humanity."

Grow Wild is available at Amazon and more information on AO and their music can be found at www.aomusic.com.