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Ariana Saraha

Ariana Saraha

Ariana Saraha is a singer, ritualist, naturalist, and creator of Rewilding Wonder – a constellation of offerings that weave music, movement, and earth-based practice. Her work invites a return to deep listening, embodied expression, and reverent relationship with the living world.

Wilding bio

(music bio below☟)
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By 2025, Ariana’s offerings had grown too numerous to fit within ‘just’ a music website. So she named her body of work Rewilding Wonder, following her Substack of the same name.

While no one name or phrase can encapsulate an entire forest of offerings (“Flight Behavior” doesn’t exactly reveal much about her band either – you must listen…), Rewilding Wonder feels spacious enough to allow the many tendrils of her work to dance and weave under its canopy.

Ariana’s projects are all born from a lifetime of risk-taking, practice, and curiosity.

Raised by counterculture parents (an eleventh-hour PhD dropout turned apple-picking earth mama and a psychedelic woodsman Jungian analyst turned acid dealer), she apprenticed from a young age in land-based living, wild herbs and foods, earth care, crafting, backpacking, dreamwork, depth psychology, ritual, circle songs, and the healing use of psychedelics.

Over the years, these seeds continued stirring under the surface even as her life took new shapes: her own bachelors in psychology, a professional music career, training in yoga, and studies of musics and dances from around the world… (most notably and deeply from the Mideast and India*) But all her experiences came full circle – back to the land under her feet and the dirt under her fingernails – in the decade leading up to and culminating in her album From the Wild and its accompanying Rewilding Field Guide.

After those releases, she could no longer just sing or speak about this growing garden inside; she had to share her practices and experiences (both tangible and numinous) of befriending the more-than-human world and rewilding the soul.

So in 2024, Ariana resurrected The Moving Soul. Originally born in 2013 and paused in 2015 as Ariana stepped deeper into her own rewilding and remembrance path, it remains her keystone offering that weaves sound, earth, mystery, and movement. Ritual Rewilding – on the dance floor and on the land – with improvised incantations and invitations into the deep of the body and soul.

Seasonally, she also offers Medicine Makers – beauty-making, ritual, and skill-building intensives for mending our broken hearts and our relationship with this aching world, and Chrysalis, an online wintering ritual.

She also offers Wild Voice vocal medicine circles, and Land Listening Circles for her local community – as a way to deepen our relationship with the lands we share, and rest together in their presence.

Her hope has long been that we might fall back in love with this wondrous world, learn how to love it well, and heal our tender humanness along the way.

For there is much to celebrate, and much beauty that remains. May our work of remembrance and repair be a homecoming and a healing.

In service to the beautiful and the wild…

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☞ For more about this work and mission, including the decolonial context that informs it, we invite you to read About Rewilding

*For Ariana’s CV, and to read more about her musical and professional experience, see below...

Ariana Saraha

Ariana Saraha is a singer, ritualist, naturalist, and creator of Rewilding Wonder – a constellation of offerings that weave music, movement, and earth-based practice. Her work invites a return to deep listening, embodied expression, and reverent relationship with the living world.

“Listening to Ariana sing always gives me goosebumps.”

— YouTube comment

“Ariana not only has one of the most achingly beautiful voices you have ever heard, but she writes incredible songs as well. Her songs go to depths and heights not often visited by songwriters today. Mystical, sensual, inspiring, and real; she is not afraid of the darkness, but, just as important, she is not afraid of the light.”

– T.D.H., Fan

“I am utterly unprepared for her wild, mystical soul and music that transports me to faraway realms and ages. Frankly, I am blown away. I feel as if I have stumbled unknowingly upon a gypsy caravan and stepped into the circle of dancing firelight and music.”

– L.R. Heartsong, Author

“Ariana really, really helped me to come into my own vocalization. Her Womensong gatherings were an intimate setting for very creative openings. Back in the days when I could barely manage a squeak, she gave me the self-confidence to go further. I thank her every day for her expertise and assistance.”

– M.D., Womensong participant

“Ariana seems to project a sort of magic that pulls people in. The rare ability that everyone wants and no one knows how to develop.”

– D.A., Formerly of Musician’s Magazine

Ariana Saraha’s music feels less like performance and more like invocation – primal, intimate, and alive with breath and drum. She creates whole worlds of sound that draw listeners into a shared, felt landscape.

Music Bio

ARIANA SARAHA

Ariana doesn’t just sing about the wild, she breathes and becomes it. Her voice carries the howl of wind through canyons, the hush of snowfall on earth. She is a vocalist, composer, and ritual artist whose work rises from deep devotion to this living, aching planet.

For her first album, Maiden of Midnight, she shot the album cover in the whipping February winds of the rugged Oregon coast while living in a one-room shack nearby, warmed by firewood she cut, replenished by pure springwater straight from the land.

The original, unedited cover photo for From the Wild was shot in a 14°F blizzard outdoors in the mountains of Colorado. Most of the album's vocals were recorded in a studio she built inside her Sprinter van.

"The Last Days" music video was also shot in the month of February, this time in the Mojave Desert, at the seam where burned and still-standing Joshua trees meet – the edge between death and the fragile life so easily erased by human caprice. The winds also tore there, chilling the entire skeleton crew – but even through scathing winds and another snowstorm, they spent three full days shooting. Finally, on their last night, the winds slowed enough to allow them to shoot the firelight scene. Still, some of the best footage happened while the wind washed Ariana with so many sparks that she had to close her eyes. She kept singing.

This is Ariana’s dedication to the wild and the beautiful. This is her dedication to our home: this planet, but more specifically, these lands – the very lands we set our aching feet upon, the very lands we ravage with our industry and consumption, the very lands that provide every bit of sustenance and shelter and story from the beginning of time.

Musically, Ariana would be the wind, if she could – caressing, swirling, penetrating. She would be a thunderstorm, the rain pelting down, an occasional peal of lightning. And in her quiet moments, she would bathe us in comforting song, something akin to a murmuring stream (which happens to be her favorite sound on the planet).

To accompany Ariana's wild song, one would have to search the far corners of the earth. Fortunately, she's been given the opportunity to learn and perform music from traditions as varied as Turkish art rock, Persian and Armenian laments, Lebanese pop, Egyptian classical music, Bulgarian folk harmonies, Indian ragas, Greek and Sephardic love songs, and Peruvian icaros. She also has had the profound honor to play with some of the most creative and skilled musicians in the West, most notably her drummer and musical partner, Fernando Medina.

Through all the storms, Ariana will keep singing...

“I am utterly unprepared for her wild, mystical soul and music that transports me to faraway realms and ages.” — L.R. Heartsong, Author

“Like the voice of my ancestors calling.”

→ For press photos and more assets, please visit the EPK

Ariana Saraha
ARIANA'S MUSICAL HISTORY

Though born to a singer, in a lineage of singers, Ariana didn't consider herself one until a voice and a song flew unbidden from her lips one early spring day in 1996. The floodgates opened and Saraha wrote over 100 songs in her first three years of songwriting.

And then life took another unexpected turn: in 1999, she was offered the opportunity to sing lead vocals for the Colorado-based Mediterranean & Middle Eastern band Sherefé(amongst luminaries such as Cameron Powers, Jesse Manno, James Hoskins, Meagan Chandler, and Kathleen McClellan). For three years, she learned and performed the traditional music of the Mediterranean, Balkan and Arab worlds, singing in Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Ladino, Bulgarian, and Armenian languages.

In 2004, she went in another direction and joined the electronica ensemble Tribal Electra (with Paul Temple and Eyal Rivlin) for another three years; singing ancient mantras and prayers in Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, English, and Hebrew over a bed of electronic beats and electric guitar.

In 2007, enriched by these diverse musical experiences, she finally launched her solo career by performing and touring her original music at festivals and venues throughout the western United States (see full CV below).

In August 2010, Saraha recorded a live album in Boulder, Colorado (which was released the subsequent spring). She released her first studio album in 2015, Maiden of Midnight, which was co-produced with acclaimed dream-pop songstress Tina Malia and Mideast music guru Jesse Manno. She recently completed her follow-up album, From the Wild, after a long process of gathering inspiration by traveling the primordial and sweeping corners of the earth.

Along the way, Saraha found herself "accidentally" producing all her own albums. She now proudly bears the title of "Producer," and is steadily refining her skills as an audio engineer (sure to be a lifelong quest).

ARIANA SARAHA DISCOGRAPHY
PRODUCED BY ARIANA:
  • Ariana Saraha & Flight Behavior, From the Wild - 2022. Buy Here
  • Ariana Saraha & Flight Behavior, Songs of Christmas: To Warm the Dark Nights - 2020. A Holiday EP. Buy Here
  • Ariana Saraha, Maiden of Midnight - 2015. Ariana's debut studio album of mostly original world music. Buy Here
  • Ariana Saraha, Live at Immersive Studios - 2011. A six-song live CD recorded with full band in Boulder, Colorado. Buy Here
  • Ariana Saraha, Vocal Warmups - 2009. A self-produced studio album of Classical Indian vocal practices. Buy Here
  • Tribal Electra, Trance.Mantric.Groove - 2008. 5-song EP, released by White Swan Records on iTunes. Co-produced with Paul Temple. Buy Here
  • Angels of Alchemy, Chrysalis - 2002. A 16-minute ceremonial music vignette, plus remix by Ariana. Buy Here
OUT OF PRINT / DEMOS:
  • Ariana Saraha, Sampler CD - 2008. 108-print Limited Edition historical sampler of compositions from 2003-2008
  • Ariana Saraha, Angel Songs - 2001. Unreleased 5-song solo acoustic demo
RECORDINGS ARIANA HAS APPEARED ON:
  • Lil Sum'n Sum'n, Into the Deep - 2010
  • Khamsa Khala, All Rites Reversed - 2009. Lead vocals on "Auliya"
  • Scott Medina, Enchanted - 2004. Lead vocals on "Durga Ma"
  • Saffire - 2003. Lead vocals on "Spirit Song"
CURRICULUM VITAE : ARIANA SARAHA

PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE

  • 2015-Present: Performing with Fernando Medina, drummer (and as FLIGHT BEHAVIOR since 2018)
  • 2007-2015: Performing original works solo and with accompaniment throughout the western US
  • 2004-7: Lead singer for Tribal Electra, Colorado-based electronica-mantra-rock band
  • 2001-3: Founder of Angels of Alchemy, a collaboration with three other singers: Meagan Chandler, Mara Powers, and Marta Aarli
  • 1999-2002: Singer for Sherefe, the Boulder-based Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean ensemble, along with such luminaries as James Hoskins (cello), Jesse Manno (drums, lutes, flutes...), Cameron Powers (oud, guitar, bouzouki), and Meagan Chandler (vox)
  • 1996-9: Ariana begins her career by writing over a hundred songs
  • 1996: Ariana discovers her voice

PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE

ACCOMPANIMENT & TEACHING EXPERIENCE

  • 2025: Started offering Land Listening Circles
  • 2024-Present: Started offering The Moving Soul (after a 9-year break) in its new/refined form
  • 2015-Present: Live improvisational music for dance for Melissa Michaels & Golden Bridge, Boulder/Global
  • 2010-2016: Live improvisational music for dance for Ecstatic Dance Live Oakland, Santa Barbara Dance Tribe, Sacred Dance Live Santa Monica, Maureen Freehill of Butopia, and Sharing Weight Boulder
  • 2013-2015: Started offering The Moving Soul, an embodied expressive arts practice weaving Authentic Movement, vocal improvisation, and freeform movement
  • 2004-2015: Co-taught and played live improvised music for ceremony, dance, and workshops with Ixeeya Lin
  • 2005-2015: Womensong: Vocal improvisation and Circlesongs facilitator
  • 2003-2015: Vocal Improvisation facilitator
  • 2003-2015: Taught private voice
  • 2004-7: Kirtan and sacred chant leader
  • 2000-4: Taught Ashtanga & Hatha Yoga
  • 1998-Present: Live music accompaniment and facilitation of expressive-arts-based ceremony within various community contexts

STUDIES

  • 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training with Richard Freeman (2009)
  • Estille Technique vocal studies (2008-9)
  • Matrix Leadership Training (2006)
  • Study of Hindustani Classical Music (raga), most notably with Chaitanya Mahmud Kabir, Dhrupad singer Shanti Shivani, Ali Akbar Khan student Megan Yalkut, and Hindustani sarod player Rajeev Taranath (2005-2015)
  • Study of Bharatanatyam (South Indian temple dance) with Laurissa Vibhuti (2005-2010)
  • Sanskrit & Vedic Chant study (2005-6)
  • In-depth study of Kirtan & Mantra (2003-6)
  • Study of icaros and plant-based ceremony (2003-Present)
  • Extensive studies of Arabic, Turkish, Mediterranean, and Balkan music (songs, melodic movements, vocal stylings, and rhythm) (1999-2003 and beyond)
  • Studies of yoga, pranayama, and dharma with Richard Freeman (1999-Present)
  • Bachelors in Psychology from CU Boulder, with emphases in Women's Studies and Dance
  • Yearlong study of Authentic Movement with Pat Mowry-Rutter in Boulder and Denver (1995-6)
  • Dreamwork group (weekly), woodswalk, and psychedelic therapy apprenticeship to her father, Dr. Eugene Marks, PhD (1993-8)
  • Trance Dance with Wilbert Alix (1993)

EXPERTISE & AREAS OF INTEREST

  • Performance – as a lead artist and collaborator – vocals, percussion, instrumentation, dance
  • Sound Engineer / Album Producer
  • Frame Drums, Vocals, Kalimba, Live Looping, Sound Design
  • Various Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music forms – percussion & vocal
  • Sings in Spanish, Arabic, Ladino, Turkish, Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Hindi, English, and a little bit of Quechua
  • Improvised music for ecstatic dance (collaboratively)
  • Sacred chants from around the world
  • Body-based expressive-arts soulwork
  • Music for Unity & CSL services
  • Ceremony Facilitation
  • Authentic Movement
  • Dreamwork

“O to be delivered from the rational into the realm of pure song”
– Theodore Roethke

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