The Eternal Cycle
The Eternal Cycle
Writtten by: David Joachims
Photographer: Justin Blevins
It’s common to conceptualize life as linear, a point that simply stretches forward until termination. The day to day minutia compounds into overwhelming obstacles almost impossible to see around. While a new year begins to unfold as we enter the heart of winter, we may be reminded that, just like the natural world, our lives also have seasons: sometimes growth, sometimes decay, sometimes transformation.
Those processes form the foundation for The Growth Eternal, a spiritual music project by the artist ghalani. The 28 year old Tulsa bred, Texas educated, and now L.A. based musician has seen many seasons within their own life, from djembe classes with their older brother at the Greenwood Cultural Center, to studying jazz bass at the University of North Texas, to touring alongside André 3000. This broad range of artistic and emotional experience, both positive and negative, can perhaps provide an anchor for navigating the immersive, eclectic sonic landscapes produced by The Growth Eternal, which to date has totaled two albums, two EPs, a few singles, and a handful of projects not widely distributed. On December 20, 2024, ghalani spoke to us about some of these experiences, and reflected on the influences and ideas that shaped their journey.
GROWTH
“My friends were talking about starting this metal band, and they needed a bass player, and I was like ‘no I’m not fucking doing that’,” ghalani laughed. They recalled the Thanksgiving around their 15th birthday, when they descended into their uncle’s basement where several instruments sat; it was there ghalani first started playing with the bass guitar. That day, a seed was planted. “There was something deeply resonant,” ghalani felt. “I was like ‘I need to do this’. Then I got back and said ‘let’s do the metal band,’ and they’re like ‘no we don’t want to do that anymore’.” Though ghalani could’ve walked a very different musical path, their passion for the bass guitar continued to bloom, eventually leading them away from Tulsa, their home of 18 years, to Dallas for college at the University of North Texas.
At U.N.T. ghalani studied jazz bass, learning under renowned professors including fellow Tulsan Lynn Seaton–“he was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had in my life,” ghalani remarked. While improving their musicality and technical proficiency on the bass, ghalani also began implementing another unique instrument into their performances: vocoder. Despite no official instruction within the school, they picked it up from the jazz vocabulary, citing Herbie Hancock and more modern artists such as Terrace Martin and the late Casey Benjamin. “There’s a lot of very notable, very inspiring people in the history of jazz who have used vocoder, so it felt natural to me.”
This dynamic presented a fresh challenge to ghalani’s musicianship: “I have a natural intuition for certain things, but definitely not for melody... Vocoder is such an interesting instrument in terms of sonics and history that like, I just had to fuck up. So my memories in college are a lot of me just trying shit in front of a live audience of my peers, being like ‘well that didn’t work’... But if you keep doing it long enough you start sounding good.” As ghalani grew, their branches began to reach the borders of what their habitat could contain.
DECAY
“We’re all so formed by our environments, for better and for worse,” ghalani observed. “The reason I got into jazz was because it’s such a present and self-evident means of connection and spirituality and insight for yourself and your community.” During their time in college, ghalani noticed their desire for that connection being obscured by aspects of the academic domain. The hierarchical bias and Eurocentric framework of the program did not allow for the full breadth of what they felt was truly possible in the art to be realized. “To have music that’s such a part of [Black American] culture and heritage be, frankly, bastardized through the curriculum in that way made me jaded,” they revealed. From feelings of frustration and stagnation would come a rebirth, another form that would lead ghalani into new territory both creative and, ultimately, geographical.
TRANSFORMATION
The Growth Eternal became a crucial outlet for ghalani in the midst of their dissatisfaction with the limitations of their surroundings, drawing inspiration from cycles of growth and decay and the symbiosis between them. Whether it’s the waning period of fall, where trees start to shed their foliage and leaves gather and wither on the ground, or worms recycling scraps in the form of compost (something ghalani personally cultivates), these processes, though difficult and dirty, are necessary for life to flourish. “That shit’s super dope to me, and beautiful,” ghalani stated. “I like the things that look ugly at first glance, but there’s this deep part of life that needs to happen.”
Since its inception, The Growth Eternal has embodied this healing mindset, prescribing sound as medicine, and showing reverence for its potency in our bodies and minds. “These are all like spells, in essence psychedelic because they’re consciousness changing,” ghalani examined. “There’s a responsibility and a beauty we have–I’m a fucking alchemist… I’m glad we can’t immediately kill anybody, like surgeons, if we fuck up and don’t play the right chords.” That appreciation manifests in every song, where each sound and note feels carefully crafted and placed, but simultaneously unconfined and teeming with vitality.
Far from the traditional jazz sound, the music of The Growth Eternal nevertheless retains some jazz-like qualities, utilizing free-flowing song structures and instrumental improvisation on bass guitars, synthesizers, and vocoder. For example, take the stylings of PARASAiL-18, their first full-length album which, according to ghalani, was “written in the midst of a high-functioning mental health crisis in college.”
The album flirts with the experimental, weaving electronic threads into a broad tapestry of harmonics and emotional expression. Processed vocal phrases pulse calmly between warm, subdued synths, fluid bass lines, and grooving percussion; meditative rhythms guide the listener through each feeling, never rushing ahead or dwelling on the past. These prototypical artistic explorations encapsulated a four year process for ghalani - one that they say made them as much as they made it - but also bookended another sort of exploration.
GROWTH
After college, in August 2019, ghalani moved to L.A. “I thought about my passion and my future, and I thought ‘if there’s a time to jump, might as well do it now’,” they concluded about the decision. The relocation proved to be fruitful as ghalani found a community that encouraged The Growth Eternal to evolve by expanding their abilities with modular synths, and pushing their music production skills in software programs like Ableton. “The ceiling is astronomically high in L.A.... In terms of music innovation, I’ve never seen a place like [it]. It was crazy to see such a beautiful and different and innovative approach to music. It’s inspiring.” In time, ghalani joined the local label Leaving Records, which would go on to publish The Growth Eternal’s first official work Bass Tone Paintings in October 2020 - an introspective collection of 17 minute-long musings sonically concentrated around bass guitar and vocoder - as well as the aforementioned debut album PARASAiL-18 in February 2022.
Even with multiple recorded releases under their belt, the live performance of music has been and remains indispensable to ghalani. Having completed at least 9 rounds of tours over the years with artists such as Shaun Martin, Daniel Noah Miller, and Sudan Archives (which accompanied André 3000 on tour in 2024), ghalani's experiences of reaching people in the moment through music have greatly affected their approach to creation in the studio. “The [jazz] culture I went through… it’s like athletic, either you can play it or you can’t, which is very self-evident and I like that. At the same time, sometimes it gets so masturbatory, where we’re playing for each other, or trying to flex on each other in the room, we kind of lose sight of the ultimate cultural purposes or what the audience wants. And playing with Sudan was the opposite of that,” ghalani discovered. “You see how it serves the audience in such a direct way. There’s all different types of fans losing their shit to it.”
The Growth Eternal’s tagline reads: “Music for growth–yours, mine, and ours.” ghalani believes that the connections we can make through music are central to that growth, the taproot through which essential energy flows. “The fact that music can pull us together with people who are, at face value, radically different from each other, it makes you more empathetic,” they explained. “The more types of people you meet, the more understanding you are, the more we can solve all this bullshit, this fundamental sickness of our era of humanity.”
DECAY
Just as a tree might be trimmed, its branches pruned, growth is not solely about acquiring more knowledge, but unlearning as well. Deconstruction has been a conscious effort for ghalani throughout this journey, encompassing creative habits, thought patterns, and cultural beliefs. “There’s so many ideas that have led us astray, like constant economic growth. You see the same boom and bust cycles happen in the economy as the seasons. You can’t have infinite growth,” they realized. “So it’s kind of hyperbolic to call it The Growth Eternal in a way, and I’m self-aware of that.”
Maintaining such awareness and equilibrium is required to reconcile the spiritual qualities of music with the materialistic aspects of participating in the music industry. “Is it better to harm no one and help no one, or harm one person and help one thousand?” ghalani pondered. “All money is dirty money, effectively, some is just dirtier than others. Which ways are we willing to participate to have art be made and be heard?” These dilemmas weigh on ghalani’s mind; even when the choice is clear, the decision is rarely easy. In addition to working with a small scale, ethical label, The Growth Eternal also operates independently, as on their August 2024 EP Songs in the Key of Growth, a four track collection of radically reinterpreted cover songs. “I think of how much different cultures will or won’t hear my music because of [how I operate]. It’s hard, it’s conflicting.”
TRANSFORMATION
These powerful processes persist throughout the stories of our lives, and are rarely revealed until after we’ve passed through them. New life - transformation - becomes possible when we accept accountability for ourselves, meeting each moment with willingness to learn or unlearn. Only by confronting the challenges presented to us can the great cycle continue.
Trekking into the unknown one mindful step at a time, The Growth Eternal addresses personal and systemic struggles through music in order to envision a bountiful future in a rapidly changing world. “All of life is constant impermanence, then growth and decay” ghalani affirmed. “I hope that by doing this project I can highlight that. It helps me come to terms with it, so I hope that it helps other people too.”