For this album, multi-instrumentalist Tom Wasinger brings together five Native American musicians to contribute to this collection of Native American healing songs. Wasinger has won two Grammy Awards for Best Native American Music Album as a producer for his work with Mary Youngblood on her albums Beneath The Raven Moon and Dance With The Wind. For Come To Me Great Mystery, Wasinger worked as the engineer and mixer and composed all instrumental arrangements for the album’s eight songs.

Listening to this album is like taking a 50-minute tour through Native Americas vast historical culture. Every song comes from a different tribe and so, each tells a different story. While six of the eight tracks are traditional songs, Beauty Way and A Prayer From Above are original pieces that are sung by their composers.

The record starts off beautifully with the title track Come To Me Great Mystery sung by Thirza Defoe, who sets the tone for the rest of the naturally ambient and calming music that’s to come. Though this is an album intended to showcase healing songs, I thought the album carried on a little too calmly.

This isn’t a record that shines because of the complexity of its arrangements or the way it makes you move, but rather because of what it’s saying, what it’s asking and how the instruments work with the lyrics to showcase these messages. Like the lyrics of the song Beauty Way: “On Mother Earth / shall there be beauty / Songs, prayers, and good thoughts / With this shall there be beauty / on Mother Earth”.

This may not be the album that you would rave about and buy for all of your friends, but it is a good glance into a beautiful culture.

TRACKLISTING

Come To Me Great Mystery (Ojibway Traditional, Sung By: Thirza Defoe)

Hear My Prayer (Lakota Traditional, Sung By: Doug Foote)

Hue Hue (Inca Traditional, Sung By: Lorain Fox)

Beauty Way (Navajo Original, Composed and Sung By: Allen Mose)

Calling To The People (Algonquin Traditional, Sung By: Thirza Defoe)

I Am The Beginning And The End (Kiowa Traditional, Sung By: Dorothy Tsatoke)

A Prayer From Above (Lakota Original, Composed and Sung By: Doug Foote)

Kaio Kaio (Blackfeet Traditional, Sung By: Lorain Fox)