Although of German descent, artist/musician Ruddha grew up in the Limpopo Province of northern South Africa. Here, in the shadow of the pristine Soutpansberg, he was exposed to the large cultural and religious diversity of the local people.

He has always felt “passionate” about music, he says, but never underwent formal training. In stead, he obtained a Master’s degree in Marketing – a field of study he regards as a form of communication.

“An integral part of my life’s mission and vision is to reach out to other people,” he says. “Pivotal to this is the ability to communicate.”

After completing his studies, he further honed his talent as a communicator by lecturing at the Technikon Pretoria.

Ruddha also spent “the better part of 20 years” working as a freelance DJ at venues throughout South Africa. This, he says, brought him a deeper understanding of music and, particularly, of the influence it had on his audiences: “Certain types of music,” he says, “have an uplifting effect on people. While working as a DJ, I realized that, as the musician encodes into their music aspects such as state of mind and even their level of spiritual vibration, the audiences recognize them – they ‘decode’ them and ‘make them their own’.”

Once he started composing and performing music of his own, it was a matter of natural progression for Ruddha, who had been “spiritually attuned” since childhood, to combine with his music his natural ability to communicate and his own, deep-felt spiritual message.

In time, he says, the themes for his music and art merged. He cites as an example an artwork entitled In the Beginning was Sound: “The essence here,” he explains, “is the contemplation of the moment before creation; all that existed was energy – the scriptures refer to it as ‘sound’ energy when they say ‘in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and God was the word …’.”

Sound, he says, is the energy of creation. The image of the Buddha in the artwork is an icon for this sound and, simultaneously, for the Godhead, regardless of what name it goes by.

This same message, says Ruddha, is conveyed in the musical composition by the same title.

“Not all people will experience the same degree of spiritual awakening when they listen to my music or explore my art,” he concedes. “This depends on their own level of spiritual development. The music and art are merely there to facilitate or at least stimulate this awakening.” This, he says, often happens at an intuitive level, much as he intuitively incorporates these messages into his work.

Ruddha does not regard himself as spiritually more advanced or of a higher level of awakening than the rest of us; the messages and themes of spirituality and spiritual awakening in his works, he says, ‘come to him’ from universe about him as a form of inspiration. He merely channels this information through his art.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience.