This wonderful photo was taken at Mahila Milan 2008, PRASAD Chikitsa’s program for the Self Help Groups (SHGs) in honor of International Women’s Day. Read more

The Subject Tonight Is Love

“The Subject Tonight Is Love,” the title of a poem by the Persian poet Hafiz, was the theme for a concert to benefit The PRASAD Project in January - and the music was poetry, literally!

Musician, composer and PRASAD donor Laszlo “Laz” Slomovits first set Sufi poetry to music last year, when he helped plan an event in Ann Arbor, Mich., where he lives, to celebrate Rumi’s 800th birthday. “I'd find myself drawn to a poem, and music would start up spontaneously in response to the beauty of its images and the power of its meaning,” he said.

As a result of that experience Laz received permission from famed Rumi translator Coleman Barks to perform and record songs based on his translations of the poems. The resulting CD is called “Give Light.” Laz then also began composing songs based on Hafiz poems.

Laz and his wife, Helen, who also is a musician, performed some of the songs at a public benefit concert last fall, and got the idea to offer a house concert to benefit The PRASAD Project. They approached their friend Joan Hennigar, who recently had added on a beautiful artist’s studio to her home. It would be a perfect setting, they felt, for sharing this music with an intimate gathering of friends and inspiring them to support PRASAD. Joan graciously agreed to host and to provide refreshments.

The concert was held on January 19, 2008, and one hundred percent of the proceeds were donated to PRASAD. Said Laz of the evening: “It was a totally uplifting experience to play and sing lyrics that relate to our highest aspirations and know that PRASAD, an organization whose work is so in alignment with those aspirations, was benefiting … it was a ‘win-win’ in every way.”

Editor’s Note: If you’d like to hear some excerpts of Rumi songs from Laz’s CD, “Give Light,” you can listen to them here.