On The Front Foot

Fred Woller has a theory about why home cooked meals taste so good and why music has the power to heal. He even has scientific evidence to prove it.

“In California there's a group called the Heart Mass Institute and they did an experiment in the ‘70s where they took three recordings of the ocean waves,” he says. “In the first recording they simply took a tape recorder down by the ocean, but in the second recording they took a group of people who were experiencing intense feelings of love and peace. In the third recording they took a group of people experiencing intense feelings of negativity and recorded the ocean waves amongst these people.

“Later the three recordings of the ocean were played to a huge subset of people and there was a huge correlation of people who heard the first recording and felt calm, and with the second recording they felt overwhelmingly positive, but on hearing the third they felt extremely unhappy.”

Fred believes the feelings and intent of people present when a recording is made will affect the listeners regardless of whether they know what's happened.
“I kind of extrapolate and I believe that's the case with all forms of creation so it doesn't matter whether you're painting a painting or cooking a meal. The presence, the intent and the feelings that you hold in your heart at the moment when you create are imprinted in that thing and when you share that with other people it affects them.”

Fred and his musical counterpart Yuval Shalit - who are Lubdub - stay mindful of the feelings and the intent they would like to imprint in their music, which Fred loosely describes as being uptempo, electronic dub mixed with world music.
“So when we create this music we create it with love, we create it with the intent of boosting immune function and cleansing blood and we literally put sticky notes around the speakers and around the computer to remind us of particular words and particular things we want to imprint.”

He explains that at outdoor psychedelic electronic festivals where they usually play, most people share similar ideas about music's healing properties.
“Music is this incredible medium to just communicate a message and unite people in love. Without a doubt the whole culture of dub, reggae and world music - a lot of people making that music are doing it from a place of respect and a yearning to see the world different to the way it is today. And I do feel that it has the power to do that.
“I know it has been an amazing force in my life and despite how bad things look on the planet at the moment I have incredibly high hopes.”

Conversely, Fred admits that music can at times be a rather destructive medium. “A lot of the mainstream electronic music when you go out to these parties - they're in nightclubs, everyone is drunk, they're fighting, there's a lot of ego, there's a lot of masculinity, a lot of aggressive energy and I certainly don't feel like I'm going through a healing process when I'm in a space like that.”

The word 'Lub-dub' is a medical term used to describe the beats of the heart. “Yuval has a nursing friend who mentioned it to him. We both fell in love with it because our music is heart-based music, we write music from our heart, it's music that is designed to connect people in a state of joy and create a space where people can express themselves through dance.”

Although he has a strong background in computers and has studied audio engineering, he describes Yuval to be his polar opposite.
“Yuval is a self taught musician who plays about six or seven instruments. He plays guitar like Hendrix. He's left-handed; he picked up a right-handed strung guitar and started playing it upside down. But his background is very much from a place of self exploration. He's never had a formal lesson or anything in his life because he just picks up instruments and learns them.”

The two have been making music together for eight years, with Yuval moving to Australia from Israel after spending a few years in India.
“He is an amazing human being; he is my best friend in the world and his music really comes from the heart … it's a beautiful friendship and it's also a beautiful match.'

LubDub performs at Reggaefest 2011, at Missingham Park Ballina, September 17-18. reggaefest.com.au