Juan Isaza was born in Barranquilla – Colombia, lives in Miami Beach, graduated as an architect, composer, producer and active member of ASCAP (American Society of Composers and Publishers). He obtained his architecture bachelor degree at the Autonomous Caribbean University from Barranquilla in 1998.

As a musician Juan was part of several Colombian rock bands like Compania Ilimitada, Khaos, Spit Fire, Nicolas Tovar Band performing on numerous concerts, tv and radio shows. Juan is a self learning person, writing, singing his own music and producing at his recording studio. During his last 10 years in Florida he’s been working on composing many songs reaching nearly one hundred.

Juan is currently registering and copyrighting over 60 songs. Now as an independent artist he is promoting his music as well as other artists too.

Juan released on December 2010 a five song short album under the name of Juan Isaza Music on iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, Last.FM, Spotify and many more stores.

 

Right now Juan Isaza is working on a new project that will be released on late summer 2012. Will be an Etnic & Epic Musical project under the name of: "Sacred Mountain's Chants" (Voces de la Montana Sagrada) inspired on a disappeared Pre-Hispanic South American civilization named Tayrona who built their cities on  Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta (Colombia). This whole place was announced by Smithsonian Institute as the highest coastal mountain of our planet on an article published in October 2010 on their magazine as a result of a four year of investigation and research of the geological origins of Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. That research was jointly realized with important universities, natural and geological institutes of our planet.

Tayrona culture built more than three (300) hundred small cities all over Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta and the vast majority of their cities were located on mountainous terrain showing their mastery in construction of stone terraces with no deterioration of ecology at the rain forest where they lived.

The Tayrona culture rivaled on ideas with the Spanish conquerors basically because for them The Sierra Nevada was a sacred place and conquerors want them out of their territory so many of them were killed and others were taken to Indian reservations. The only survivors were the Kogi Indians who kept their culture intact without any civilization contact only because they went to live in the mountain highlands so they kept isolated until last years.

Juan Isaza through all this process of investigation and contact with this amazing culture was captivated by their smart way of building ecological cities and also got connected spiritually with the ecological message that Kogi Indians are spreading recently in behalf of our mother earth. That message was broadcasted by BBC of London on 2004 when their spiritual leaders the Mamos (Shamans) decided to talk.

The importance of Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta on the global context was given by the Kogi and all tribes of the world since they consider it “The Heart of our Planet” because for them the spiritual power of our planet resides there, so to help our planet in the process of healing they are encouraging us to protect Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta and the rest of the world from destruction. As a matter of fact the Kogi Indians considered themselves our elderly brothers who are here to maintain the balance on our mother earth so their mission according to them is to stop us from continuing poisoning our planet.

 

Kogi message says: “Our mother earth is the only one that provides us  everything we need, she is an alive being with hair which is the grass, breasts which are the mountains, her stomach is the prairie and her veins are the rivers with blood and blood is the water that flows everywhere necessary to maintain her alive. But happens that modern civilization is poisoning her blood (water) and she is dying. If she dies then we all are going to die”.  

     

"Sacred Mountain's Chants" - Voces de la Montana Sagrada

Now Juan Isaza approached the investigation from the side of the music doing an analysis of the musical patterns in the music of the aborigines of Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, he studied the pattern of their music and recreated through the use of sequencers and synthesizers a new type of music, articulating ancient sounds with modern technology. The final result is an astonishing work that narrates the settlement of this marvelous culture, their development, the construction of more than 300 cities planted on the mountain, their tragic disappearance when Spanish conquerors arrived, and the lost of their magic cities. This album also pretends to transmit their descendant message to the rest of the world.  Khoguis Indians have pronounced on BBC of London a speech related with conservation of our planet earth and the dangerous situation that we are advocated because the predating behavior of our modern society not respecting our mother earth. 

 

Sacred Mountain’s Chants (Voces De La Montana Sagrada) is a project that consist of 12 instrumental songs with sixty per cent of electronic generated sounds and forty per cent are natural conventional and non conventional aborigines instruments,  meticulously articulated with natural original ritual chants performed by “Mamos” (Spiritual/Shamans leaders) for hundreds of years. On the album you can find  sounds of real clay flutes that founded at archaeological sites and that were kept buried for hundreds of years until archeologists recovered them. Those clay flutes are only available at museums. On some parts you can find also wooden flutes, Indian rattles, sounds of water streams of the place, birds, animals and insects all from Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta. Smithsonian Instituted said that there is more than 40.000 species between plants, animals and insects on Sierra Nevada.  

The reason why Juan Isaza came up with a music project like this is because this music work is all connected with his archtect graduation thesis. By that time he did an extensive urbanistic investigation of the Tayrona cities and the name of it is:  “Urban Patterns Analysis of Tayrona Cities”. The jury awarded his work with the highes grade a “S u m a   C u m   L a u d e”.

 

This album also has an environmental cut and conveys the message from the Kogui's mission to the rest of the world.

 

Kogi message to the world: 

"Mother Earth is a living thing, her hair are the woods, her mountains are her breasts, rivers are her veins, the earth became her skin. Now if we pollute or poison everything, her veins, her skin and hair we will be destroying ourselves and our home too. "

There is more information about Juan Isaza and this project on Juan Isaza Music at Facebook, also pics of the Indians, the abandoned Tayrona cities at the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the spectacular natural beauty of the place.