Catherine Hunziker is the owner and lead formulator of WishGarden Herbs. Catherine purchased WishGarden Herbs in 1986.
Catherine, how did you get started in music? I came into contact with music relatively late. My family consisted of engineers and professionals. And there was this idea that there wasn’t a creative bone in our family. But during the “back to the land” movement, I’m an old hippie – I was in college during the Vietnam War, when the protests and the Cultural Revolution were happening. I really wanted to be part of the answer to a sustainable future. I wasn’t an herbalist, but I was a plants person, and I moved to the Ozarks during the “back to the land” movement in the early 1980s. It’s rural there and there were a lot of hippies and different cultural groups on the land. And what you did for fun is you went to your friend’s house, maybe 10, 20 miles away, and they played music. That’s how we came together.
Your style is absolutely genre-defying and defies categorization. What was the path like for your current style of music?
I was in the rural scene. There I started playing guitar and singing a little – with influences of country music and bluegrass harmonies. I had taken piano lessons and even played the clarinet in high school, but that’s when I started to get really interested in music. And that was that. I bought WishGarden in ’87. I was a single mother with three children, and to bring balance to my life, I took the first intercultural classes available at Colorado University and Naropa. I took drum lessons and dance lessons because I couldn’t sit still. I loved the beat and rhythm of the African dance. I was kind of semi-professional and took part in various performances. And I still like to dance today. This marimba band showed up at one of the performances. I thought, “What is that?” It is a wooden xylophone that is cross-cultural in Southern Africa. That was my first introduction to Zimbabwean music. I did African dance, dance with Cuban and South American African influences, and learned about the culture and cosmology of the time. There is such a strong connection to ancestral lineages within African culture that it reintroduced me to my own Celtic Druidic British child, way back in Scotland. I then invited teachers from Zimbabwe to come and teach here. It gave me a very nice balance with entrepreneurship, with business, work and stress levels.
Music takes you to a different physiology, especially when you get the rhythm going. It puts you in an ecstatic space. I’ll go into it in a moment, but you get an ecstatic space that is measurable, and you get a balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. So they’re working together and something’s going on: it’s not deep sleep, it’s not REM sleep. It is not ordinary consciousness. It is all in the physiological, energetic or neurological state. And it washes away negativity and puts you in that space where you feel connected to people. It supports true intimacy. You know, you feel connected to people, you feel part of the community. And one of the things I’ve learned from African culture is that it’s not about artists and audiences. You go somewhere together. You enter that ecstatic space together. And that’s what I loved and that’s what I appreciated.
So I kept playing with them and I still danced. The band is big because it is similar to Latin American music. You have all these instruments that you play together, and African music is more about the group than about any particular person; it’s about how it all comes together. The band members have been connected through music over the years. It actually feels more like a family or a community.
What does your band’s creative process look like? How do you make decisions and work together with such a large group?
Zivanai Masango is our bandleader. He is a world class musician. He came to the US perhaps in the early 2000s. He recently went back to Zimbabwe for the first time, which was great for him. He’s absolutely world class and he can play all these different instruments. And he has played with many famous people. I’ve been functioning as something you might call a band manager, helping to make this happen. But usually it is about cooperation, and certainly not dictatorial. We’ll just figure it out together. Just like when we were trying to figure out what to do with rehearsals during the shutdown, it was a group process. Different people weigh in on their different opinions. So I would say it’s mainly a democracy when decisions are made about things.
Who would Zimbira most like to work with? If we played with a band, maybe a world famous band like one of the big acts from Africa. But if there was, say, a rock and indie band, if String Cheese was still playing, we could open for them. Our music is sincere – it’s joyful. It definitely takes people to that ecstatic experience. Collaborating with a band that does that would be great.
What was your biggest musical challenge? What I wasn’t prepared for is the business side of music. It’s big and it’s a lot, and it’s just as important. Yes, you have to have the talent, but you also have to give people an experience. Whether you tour the country, whether you end up being famous, it’s the business side of it, right? And it’s remarkably similar to the natural products channel in a way. But making money from music is more difficult than many other paths. There is a threshold, you have to basically invest in yourself and not make a lot of money up to a certain point until you can attract people to shows and to your music. And then things turn around and you start making good money. But the whole business side of it is, wow, that’s a lot. I don’t know where we’re going, because in many ways we’re a community band, but we have a lot of potential.
Do you feel there is a connection between herbal medicine and musicality/the creative process? Yes, there is definitely a connection. I chose our logo, the Angelica leaf, because the leaves flare out slightly in the middle. Bridging the world between earth and music. Bringing people together, cross-continental, cross-global. There is something else that bridge represents: the indigenous and the postmodern. How do we move forward towards a sustainable future? And so the image is one leaf and an image of a hunter and gatherer. And then you have the postmodern, our version of it. We must learn from this and strive for a sustainable future. So bridging the indigenous and the postmodern, for a way forward. Racism and all this hate – I mean, your skin color is just like the clothes you wear, you know, it doesn’t matter, we’re all human and we all have something to offer. Music is a way to bring that together and bring people together. Especially in an ecstatic space where people are more open. And when you’re in that physiology, you’re open and available to meet people and connect with people. Herbs are intercultural and music is intercultural and they both build bridges.
For educational purposes only. This information has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease, or to sell any product.
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