Educational Media Reviews Online

Song of the New Earth is a documentary that transports the viewer on a mystical and transformative journey created by the power of sound under the guidance of musician and psychotherapist, Tom Kenyon. With natural musical gifts and formal training in psychology, Kenyon discusses how sound affects our consciousness and illustrates this concept with performances displaying his four octave vocal range that is able to move from a high soprano to the lowest bass sound. He states “For me, music and sound are both the language and underlying architecture of the cosmos.” He remembers as a child reading a book The Boy Who Sang to the World and realized that when he was unable to find the book later that he was functioning in another realm of consciousness. With more experiences that could be described as mystical with altered states of consciousness, he begins his quest to understand what these experiences were and to bring the human and divine together. This led to an undergraduate degree in psychology followed by the study of whole brain learning in California to discover how to use music, sound, and frequency to open up latent potentials of the brain. This work combined with the study of eastern religions and Egyptian alchemy as well as the science of neurophysiology provides answers that he documents with scientific research.

The film alternates between performances by Kenyon, special workshops to share this information, and discussions about sound and the mind. It is both instructive and informative with documented research but also challenging as it invites the viewer to become a part of this mystical journey and special experience. Viewers see Kenyon as he conducts workshops using his vocal melodies to allow for sound meditation in the class. As the sound meditation occurs, viewers see vivid nature scenes—wind blowing, vibrant leaves of different colors, waves in the wind, and scenes of the earth for the song of the earth. The soprano voice and the vocal range call forth the moon dancing on the water, the green meadow with the rising of the sun, and the sunset with the moving clouds changing colors over the earth. These visual scenes describe the mastery that Kenyon displays in using the voice with no words. Kenyon emphasizes that “sound vibration speaks to our souls; it speaks to our bodies; it bypasses the cognitive mind; and when that happens the door opens and people can go through that door and discover miracles and mysteries in themselves they never imagined.”

The film effectively uses animation to describe the experiences in the discussions and allows the participants to share the profound changes in their lives that occurred from the sound experience in the workshops. The music score by Jason Staczek and Ian Moore along with the original melodies by Tom Kenyon are powerful and spiritual and help create the background for the impressive journey of the film. While the running time of the film is over an hour, the DVD does include over 2 hours of special features with selected segments repeated from the film and additional sections with Kenyon discussing in detail other topics such as the “Neuropsychology of Mystical States” and “Journey Through the Stars.” Highly recommended for university and public libraries.

Awards

• Winner, Special Jury Award Health and Wellness, Worldfest International Film Festival
• Winner, Certificate for Creative Excellence, U.S. International Film and Video Festival
• Winner, Best Feature Documentary Made in America Film Festival