A Rainbow Path

There’s a ritual scene in A Circle Outside where the coven plays a bootlegged cassette of A Rainbow Path and its tempo and mood guide the ritual.

A Rainbow Path is an eight-movement composition intended to accompany a meditation on the body’s chakras. In the late 80s I bought the album at Gateways, the Santa Cruz spiritual bookstore, learned how to turn into my body.

I went to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival only once, and there I heard Kay Gardner play the movement for the throat chakra, “Castle in the Mist,” on the acoustic stage. To hear that music, live, while sitting in a silent audience of hundreds of naked women: do such things happen anymore?

Kay Gardner died too young, in 2002. She had felt sick, laid down, and died of a heart attack. Women don’t know that our heart attacks feel differently than men’s. I’m still angry we didn’t get to hear more of her music.

You can play samples from the entire album at Goldenrod Music. I keep a copy on my phone in case I need it.