JOURNEYS OF THE WOLF REVIEW

Journeys of the Wolf is a CD that was done by the musical
artist Christine Campbell.

Heart of the Wolf was more than happy to review it. Especially
since it was donated to us by Ms. Campbell.
The CD has a great mix of synthesizer music, like most
New Age/Nature CDs, as well as percussion beats.

The CD is a story, and combines song, as well
as narratives before most of the tracks.

It keeps you on the edge of your seat, especially the
fifth track.

The vocals are well done as Campbell has a beautiful
voice. One that carries well, and is great even when
not singing but telling the story.

Many themes are a part of this CD and are a part of
this review.

CONTAINS SPOILERS, JUST SO
YOU KNOW.

1) Spirits are a big part of this story, as well as
animal patrons. Crows, various wolf spirits, and
places where they gather, are the center of legends
and beliefs.

Native Americans have spiritual totems that are in some cases
animals. Many religions and cultural practices all around the
world have spirit animals that are
the objects of worship.

Pop culture now uses animal spirits in this context.
Games like Werewolf the Apocalypse and Werewolf the
Forsaken used and uses animal spirit patrons in their games as
well as spiritual realms that they reside.

Prey for the Xbox 360 and PC had the main character,
(Domasi Tawodi) Tommy who is aided by the falcon spirit
of his former childhood companion, named
Talon. Tommy is a Cherokee who fights to stop alien
invaders.

Okami by Capcom for the Playstation 2, had a protagonist
that was the re-incarnation of the Shinto Goddess Amaterasu.
Ammy as she was called was reborn once again as a white
wolf and fought once again to save ancient Japan.

Vision quests are brought up as a woman in the song gets
summoned, and no matter where she goes, hears the song. The
woman finds out it is the wolf Heyawana,
and Heyawana wants her song to be remembered.

Vision quests are a part of Native American religion and just like
the idea of spirit patrons, is practiced
around the world as well.

Vision quests can make us learn more about ourselves. As well
as revealing more about the world and giving the person
who is on that quest, a cause to fight for as a result.

In pop culture there are many examples of this.

Werewolf the Apocalypse had the three main characters
Jonas Albrecht, Mari Cabrah, and Evan-Heals-The-Past, united
through the vision quest that all three unknowingly were
a part of at first. It was a part of Evan's Rite of Passage in
werewolf society.

Evan found out he was of Native American and White descent
and was destined to heal the werewolf tribes and save the
world, though the spirit of the Wendigo tribe, Wendigo.

Jonas Albrecht had a vision quest of his own through his totem,
Falcon. Falcon made him realize he didn't dishonor
himself and his tribe, the Silver Fangs, for his path in life.
Falcon told him that he had to rescue Evan, or all would be lost.

Tommy from Prey had to go through a couple of spiritual quests
on behalf of his grandfather Enisi, to become re-acquainted with
his Native American side. This was in order to stop the aliens
who want to destroy the Earth.

In Okami, Ammy has spiritual visions as she frees her children
who are held captive by the forces of the evil demon Orochi.
She gets her powers back by doing so as well as insight and
perspective on how to continue her quest.

The author had her own vision quest which inspired the album.
And that is where she met the Wolves that were the basis for
this CD, Heyawana and Ahmahnayah.

Also Ahmahnayah stays as a spirit in the spirit world while
Heyawana was sent back to Earth. This is much
like the end of Prey, where Tommy is returned to Earth while his
girlfriend Jen and his grandfather Enisi return to the spirit world.

2) Another theme is about nature and humans. Tied to that
is the idea of co-existence and how it must become a reality.

The CD takes the idea of telling the journey of the wolves on the
Earth and spirit realms of the universe from a role if we were
from their perspective. It isn't taken from humans looking at
them from one's misguided perspective. In other words
it recognizes them as what we should: intelligent, soulful beings
that are noble and live lifecycles of seasons. As well as raising
pups, and are those who have to hunt for survival, not for sport
and sadism.

It shows how a possible standpoint of nature from some point
in time that some who live in nature may not appreciate the idea
of being slaughtered and oppressed.

This is after track 5, where Heyawana's mate Ahmahnayah
is murdered from the air, and she is nearly is murdered herself.

However the idea by Heyawana's grandmother of co-existence
with humans in this story strikes a cord with Heyawana.
Especially when she tells Heyawana that they forgot their role in
the world, but they will remember it when they return
home. Which we presume is when humans die too.

And so she attempts to do so in the spirit realm before being
sent back to Earth in order to fulfill that role.

One could say this is a metaphor to ambassador wolves of wolf
sanctuaries around the world. A wolf that unites humans and
wolves together and seeks to eliminate intolerance, ignorance,
bigotry.

Nature isn't a being of vengeance. But you can see why it would
want to be.

Humans have strayed at large from their original role on the
planet. As to why and how that happened is really unknown.
What everyone can say is that humans as a whole deep back in
the past forsook nature and forgot about it and the
consequences are now showing themselves.

Scientists speculate though that humans were one of the main
causes that mammoths and dire wolves went extinct.

This is probably due to the over-hunting of mammoths, and the
destruction of the dire wolves since they couldn't live with them
as respected predators.

Humans also even now as a whole still aren't ready for
co-existence with nature as of yet. They at large are aware of
Global Warming, since it was discussed in the 2008 presidential
debates, and in films like An Inconvenient Truth, and the
11th Hour. But do many care about what LIVES
on the planet with us a whole or desire peace? Not exactly.

Protecting animal species hasn't been discussed much in the
news really, save for the Planet In Peril Special on CNN which
will be on soon. Planet in Peril will showcase the dangers that
many animals face. Such as sharks who endure the the shark
trade. And Paul Watson who is on the show Whale Wars
on Animal Planet, fights to stop the slaughter of whales.

Most shows really don't give a total realistic and positive
view of the wolf.

"Then why do people hate us?" -- Jubilee
"People fear what they do not understand." -- Storm, Night of
the Sentinels, X-Men the Animated Series

"The only way to fight such madness is wisdom." -- First
Autobot leader, Transformers: The Return
of Optimus Prime

A big theme is the idea that hopefully humans will one day
remember to live in harmony with nature and help take care of it.

The idea is that humans need to stop as a whole to mindlessly
slaughter nature and help co-exist with it.

This is a big issue since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
constantly wants wolves delisted, thinking their job is done.
This is even though wolves rarely occupy much area in the U.S.
They used to slaughter wolves constantly in peacefully
preventable livestock issues. And now state agencies do the
same. None of these agencies don't care about truly protecting
them. Only to create a middle ground of bloody, unethical
proportions. Such as in Alaska, where planes shoot wolves to
death in their culling programs. Which this theme is a part of
Journeys of the Wolf where Heyawana is nearly killed and
Ahmahnayah is killed.

Of course not all people don't fear nature and do their best to
protect it. And for those who don't fear and don't destroy it, they
need to be educated about nature and how to help it.

Simply put, people need to be able to peacefully co-exist with
nature to survive. And nature at this can't survive without the
help of people if humans are around.

The economic situation is proof of that. As long as people are
impoverished, people will cease to not be as concerned with
nature and it's conversation since their own survival is
considered first. And that even goes with human related causes
as well.

One of the main themes of the CD is that we must, as Heyawana
was taught, unite humans with each other and with nature
in harmony. And that includes the wolf.

Until that happens, war and destruction will continue to happen.

Journeys of the Wolf has themes that I can remember being
related to other forms of media. Such as the X-Men, which has
been around for 60+ years and deals with the theme of
oppressed humans who are blessed (or some would say
considered cursed) with powers. They are feared and hated for
it.

The season three finale of the original Transformers,
Return of Optimus Prime, dealt with the genocidal hatred that
two scientists had for all Transformers when the evil
Decepticons inadvertently nearly kill the daughter of the
scientist Morgan. They release a biological virus that manifests
hatred in everything. All the factions of the show:
human, autobot (forces of good), decepticon (forces of evil), and
the quintessons (the transformers creators), must team
together, despite their differences (and being adversaries of
each other) to save everything and everyone.

This CD is no exception in that theme. If all humans don't learn
to live in co-existence with others and nature, how can we all
survive? Especially with examples like this:

Species destruction is on par with the mass extinction 65
million years ago when all the dinosaurs died.

Urban sprawl continues to devour what's left of nature in cities.
Open space is trashed into parks that leave no evidence of
what they were before they were 'protected'.

Places like Darfur have people starving to death, yet people in
more developed societies are picky about their food. Where
hyper-consumer culture's lead to the death of a worker at
Wal-Mart. He was trampled to death because consumers
wanted to take advantage of the day after Thanksgiving sales.

And yet the people in Darfur starve at the end of the
day.

Global Warming, threatens all of us.

Therefore the 2nd big theme on this CD, Journeys of the
Wolf, is that it is important that we must get people to
remember their role to take care of the Earth, respect it, and it's
creatures as well as people. Not to be soulless and mindless
devourers and murderers of life. This duty we must take on isn't
out of vengeance or hatred either, as is illustrated in
Heyawana's journey.

3) Another theme is how Journeys of the Wolf is
groundbreaking in the sense that is one of the few CD's out
there that uses music as the background and tells
an actual story in the music.

Especially since would be classified as Nature Music.

A musician that I know, said that this kind of CD wasn't around
that often. And he enjoyed it as well.

In other words this is a CD that breaks the genres and creates a
genre in and of itself. It isn't solely a music CD and not a story
CD, but a mix of different elements to create a surreal
experience that you won't soon forget. It has complex
characters and themes in it as well.

A perfect analogy would be the Metal Gear
series.

Metal Gear is not just any series. It is a video game series yes,
but it transcends that by making it seem like a movie with the
types of scenes and characters, while still being a game. The
characters aren't two dimensional as in other sagas in games,
being that they are complex and have intricate story lines that
deal with real-life issues.

Such as those who were former child soldiers.
The product of the massacre of Kurds in the Middle
East like Sniper Wolf. And former soldiers (Solid Snake, Raiden,
Grey Fox, and Big Boss) who find out the truth about
the side that they serve. They then find another purpose
in life, which is to fight back against shadowy forces
in the U.S. Government who want to control
the world.

It goes into issues such as the environment, Global Warming,
Nuclear War, cloning, A.I., Private Military Companies,
and the evolving change of war, as well as secret societies that
control the world over time. It covers history and
more.

Journeys of the Wolf does this too by taking in a lot of these
similar aspects by the storytelling of complex wolf protagonists
that are loving parents. Parents that are willing to die to protect
their pups. In fact this is real.

In Bosnia this year a wolf mother was attacked in her den by
hunters. She was killed while protecting her pups. They were
beaten and shot to death, which wasn't declared
a crime since they were beaten first.

It shows that wolves are creatures with families and
social structures similar to our own. They have parents and
their children as a part of their families, called packs.
Some of these children will move on to make their own families,
like people do.

The complexity is further since the wolves interact with their
ancestors in the realms outside of space and time. Where they
can have a near-death experience and interact your loved ones.
Werewolf, and Prey both had this complexity as well.

All of these themes on this CD make it one that goes beyond
most CDs on the market.

This CD was a great CD. One with great themes, music, vocals,
and story.

It is a unique one that isn't to be missed.

Here is where you can visit the official site for it in addition to
it's purchase. Soon we will have it available for purchase
as well and the sales will go towards Heart of the Wolf
Organization.

http://www.artsforawareness.com

http://www.myspace.com/christinecampbellmusic

Support this CD today folks, it is wonderful.

Rating: 5/5 (Fantastic!!)

Mike Wagner
Founder and Director of Heart of the Wolf Organization
http://www.heartfothewolf.org

(c) 2008 Heart of the Wolf Organization
Heart of the Wolf Organization Journeys of the Wolf Review