Prajna formed very recently (late 2003) and has been rehearsing and composing material on the weekends off and on for about 5 or 6 months. However, the three members of the band, so far, (Ian, Joey, & James) have been friends since High School. I suppose it was inevitable that we would get together and start a musical project some day.

Prajna is difficult band to describe. I know most people say this because they want you to think that they're original and therefore cool (sorry but juxtaposing a couple musical genres or bands doesn't make you original), but I seriously don't know how to describe this thing that we're doing because I feel like doing that would limit the potential of the band. I've been in a few other projects and I've described them; however, I cannot fully describe Prajna to you because it's so open and limitless right now. The band right now is setup like this: James- guitar & (in the future keyboards and vocals maybe), Ian- bass (he's also doing the electronic percussion for now), and Joey- guitar & sometimes mandolin. In the future there will be vocals on some Prajna songs and definitely percussion, but right now we have some things that have put the band on hold until summer.

So why the name Prajna? Well it's a bit of a complicated answer, but I'll give you my version of why we picked Prajna or, more accurately, why I voted for Prajna. First of all, the word “prajna” is a Buddhist term that means (roughly) 'inner flight.' So here’s what that means to me. In the modern world, I believe there is a powerful, yet widely undiagnosed, sentiment of escapism. People seek to find their inner peace through materialism, relationships, religion, careers, etc. This escapism acts as a vehicle for the de-humanizing of society. We, as a collective unconscious, are moving further and further from what makes us human and towards something much crueler and more sinister, something out of a George Orwell novel. So, Prajna, to me is the act of attempting an escape from the this crippling desire to be complete and to gain this completeness from a bunch of shit that is basically full of shit, and also, a simultaneous acceptance and rebellion against the de-humanizing of the modern world. We want to connect with the humanity in everyone. We want to connect through what makes us human, which to me is making music and through that music ART. I'm not exactly a Buddhist, but I think this is the only real choice in the name of humanity and freedom that is available to us. Escape from ourselves and from what we are being programmed to be. Inner flight. To be able to escape from the subtleties of control, to free oneself from short-sighted selfishness, and above all to LIVE and not give up, this is Prajna to me.

Finally (enough with the philosophy crap, right!?!?), I think the topic of musical influences is important ground to cover, especially when our views on the matter are so drastically different from most bands that you run across. When we write music and compose these songs, we are each others musical influences. The concept here is that everyone hears music in a different way, so we try to meld each of our own unique compositional tastes in our musical choices and personalities rather than shoot for a certain mix of groups or artists that we all like. The way one person in a group hears a chord progression or a groove or a melody is different from the way the other people in the band hear it. So what we try to do is use this to our advantage. We work with an idea in such a way as to attempt to bond our worlds of musical thought into a collective band statement. To become a collective consciousness as a band, rather than three people just slamming their musical ideas together in the hopes that when they back away it will magically sound like something. There are no accidents for those who know how to put themselves in the position of being open and being cognizant of everything that occurs musically. If we’re doing our jobs right, the music will flow out of us more and more naturally as we become better musicians and as we become more in-tune with each other.