Larisa Stow and Shakti Tribe

Career

Stow started in the pop-rock music scene in the late 1990s. In 1999, she released the album Moment by Moment, which was produced by David Tickle (U2, The Police, Peter Gabriel). She won the Los Angeles Music Award for Singer/Songwriter of the Year.

For her second album "Reaching In", Stow worked with producer Richard Hahn, who earned a Grammy Award for his work on Celine Dion's breakthrough hit album "Falling Into You". Reaching In features kirtans (Indian call-and-response chanting) blended with western music. It was released in 2005, and re-released by Oreade Music in 2007. It was the highest charting mantra/kirtan album. During the recording sessions, Stow connected with several musicians, and later renamed themselves from "Larisa Stow & Gathering Guru" to “Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe”. They released The Shakti Sessions and performed shows weaving kirtan, mantra and uplifting music.

In 2011, Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe released Rock On Sat Nam!. "Sat Nam" translates to "Truth Is Who We Are"

Shakti Tribe Foundation

In 2007, the band began performing concerts for inmates inside prisons and jails, teaching the concepts of oneness, community, and self-love. The Shakti Tribe Peace Outreach Program was created to facilitate these prison events which is sponsored by the International Humanities Center, a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code. They perform peace concerts and hold workshops in prisons, jails, recovery centers and juvenile systems. They also developed leadership and added inspirational speakers to their programs.

Members

Larisa Stow was an up-and-coming pop singer working the LA clubs and doing showcases with her band, when in 2001, catalyzed by the events of September 11 and her pregnancy, she underwent a spiritual transformation and quit performing. She spent the next years studying the science of Sanskrit mantra with her mentor, author Thomas Ashley-Farrand. In 2004, Larisa Stow & Gathering Guru was formed, giving Stow a musical vehicle to explore and share mantra by performing a very traditional style of kirtan. The members were David Del Grosso on bass, Kimo Estores on guitar, Marti Walker on backing vocals, Christo Pellani on drums, and Onyay Pheori on violin and vocals. Pellani left the group in 2005, and Walker took over the role of percussion, playing seated on cajon & djembe while singing. In 2006, Del Grosso left the band due to health issues, and was replaced on bass by Cincinnati Ohio native Benj Clarke. In the summer of 2006, the band changed its name to Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe. Pheori left the band in early 2007 and was replaced by woodwind player Richard Hardy. Walker left the band at the beginning of 2010 to pursue her own musical path, but stayed on board to sing backing vocals on the album Rock On Sat Nam. Clarke took over the harmony vocals, and the band performed with numerous drummers, and even used the computer program Ableton for a "drummer" on numerous live performances. Drummer Paloma Estevez, daughter of actor Emilio Estevez joined in the summer of 2011. Estevez left the group in 2012 and was replaced by Keith Larsen until her return to the band in early 2015. In 2013, guitarist Estores left after ten years in the group.

The current line-up features:

Supporting members

The band's musician friends have joined in recordings and performances.

Discography

Source: Larisa Stow website store and About Us section.

Albums as Larisa Stow & Shakti Tribe

Larisa Stow Solo Albums

Collaborations

DVD

Singles