Don Conreaux and his gong

Speaker: Chuck Rolando (Standard American accent)

(Audio: the sound of Don Conreaux playing his world peace gong)

Don Conreaux is a “gongmaster” who travels the world teaching people the therapeutic benefits of this ancient musical instrument. He says that it is a powerful tool for reducing stress, but he also believes that its rich tonal quality can be used for “expanding awareness and global unity.”
Don Conreaux recently met with Speak Up at his studio in New York. He told us that he first discovered the power of the gong in the late 1960s. He was given a gong “sound bath” and this led to an “out-of-the-body” experience:

Don Conreaux (Standard American accent):

Immediately after I was first “gonged,” I bought a gong, exactly the same gong that my teacher had. And I have it today, in fact it’s hanging right now in my apartment, my studio. And it’s, well... it was made in the ‘60s, so it’s quite old by now, but the gongs are still meant to be the same way, so even today a gong that’s made today is built upon on these ancient methods and they produce the most beautiful sound of Om.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

It’s a flat gong and the gong, I think, goes back around 600 B.C. and Gautama Buddha was the philosopher then in India and there was Pythagoras in Greece and there was Zoroaster in the Middle East and all of these wise men were around at the time that the gong was used, I believe, most. And Buddha, when he was dying, had his missionaries, his students, spread out after his death and take the gong with two Chinese mandarin characters placed on the front of it, which were from a quatrain by Confucius and the characters simply mean “Happiness has arrived.” And so it became the signature of the gong, that the gong was here to bring happiness to each of us. Of course, happiness makes some people happy in a different way than others, but the happiness that it’s talking about is that neutral happiness that is you might be sad, but inside you have that deep happiness that, whether you’re sad or glad, it still remains very stable within the human being, so it brings that sort of deep happiness to the individual.

DELIVERING THE MESSAGE

We then asked him to explain the title “gongmaster”:

Don Conreaux:

Well, I think back in the ‘70s somebody called me a gongmaster and I worried about that title “master” and then I realised that, well, we have another name, we call it the postmaster and all he does is deliver mail to people, so I would say that a gongmaster is that kind of a master as well, which he delivers the sound of the gong to people, and lets the gong do the talking. There is another master that I think is very relevant to the gong and that’s the choirmaster, the conductor, because inside of the gong, oh, there must be an orchestra inside of a hundred or so instruments, but it also has a choir, a human choir is like a gong, and so, when you play it, you begin to listen for, and to evoke the presence of this choir that’s inside of the gong, so that’s another thing that a gongmaster does.

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

The other thing is that it requires an unconditional acceptance of all people because it doesn’t select you by your vocation, or by your religion, or by your  political leanings, or by anything, it takes everybody, like little children, embraces it in this great what we call “a mother sound,” the Om sound, the same sound that we all heard when we were in mother’s womb before we were born. So it’s not only a cosmic sound, but it’s also that original sound, so it’s a sound that all people can relate to and it nourishes even animals and plants, it’s a wonderful sound, the healing sound of Om.

Don Conreaux gives gong performances all over the world. For information visit www.holistic-resonance.com