A muse in our midst Local band Fontain's M.U.S.E. joins the ranks of Bay Area diva bands

By Karen Willemsen

A few local music aficionados know what many will soon learn -- that Mountain View is home to one of the Bay Area's hardest working diva bands, Fontain's M.U.S.E. (for "Music is the Universal Source of Enlightenment").

Singer/songwriter/multimedia artist Fontain Riddle, her husband Farhan Khan, and <uncle> Robert Constantine founded the band in 1996. This year they released a debut CD, "Sacred Sacrifice," and are recording their second, due out next April.

One of a growing number of female-led bands, they've played at Printers Inc. as well as at the Gaslighter Theatre in Campbell, Coffee & More and the Road House Blues & Rock CafÇ in Sunnyvale. This past April they headlined and organized a benefit concert for the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco.

Playing what they call "music for the cosmic space in your head," Fontain's M.U.S.E.'s style could be described as spiritually and emotionally charged. Lead singer Fontain Riddle's vocal style is that of a smooth, jazzy soprano, punctuated by hard-rock wailing.

The Eastern, and specifically Indian/Pakistani, influences in the band's music come from incorporating sitars -- both electric and acoustic -- and other unusual stringed instruments into a melange of Western instruments like piano, trumpet, and bass. The resulting world-beat sound might remind listeners of pop musicians Dido, Sting, or Peter Gabriel, who bring an international flavor to their music.

Introduced to live music by her father, who had a circle of Indian and Pakistani friends, Fontain says she felt an instant affinity for them, despite her very Euro-American roots. She'd try to sing like the great Indian female singers, even though she didn't know the language.

Yet fortunately the muse found Fontain Riddle when she was young. By the time she met Farhan at Cogswell College, she'd come to incorporate singing and composing into her life. Born in India and raised in Pakistan, Farhan grew up on American jazz, blues, and rock. He came to the United States to study guitar. Discovering the music of Ali Akbar Khan led him to the same passion for creating harmony from the disparate cultures that Fontain had discovered in her life. Like many prolific songwriters, Fontain feels her ideas come more effortlessly than not. Inspiration for the song "Ghost" came on a trip to Malaysia in 1994. In this crossroads for several cultures, she found the everyday invocations of spirits and mysticism intriguing. In "Ghost," she played with that idea and with the more Western concept of psychological ghosts -- fears, guilt, shame. "Parts would come to me and I'd be scratching them down on bits of paper. I even wrote on my shoe. Then I had to spread them out when I got home to write the song," she said, laughing. Her purpose is explicit: "to help people experience the universal," she said. "I'm a student of world religions, but I'm not a joiner." "Breath," the first cut on "Sacred Sacrifice" relates to the experience of chanting. A former practicing Buddhist, Fontain learned yogic breathing and practiced memorizing long passages of Buddhist prayer chants, a ritual that helped her to feel the spirituality in tuning to one's breath, one's heartbeat, one's soul. She incorporates mythic masculine archetypes -- the hero, the warrior, the lover and the idea that each leads to the concept of "what is sacred" -- into her music, but she also turns them inside out. " Warrior" is in reality a song about not being a warrior, but rather about inner peace. Like other female musicians of the Lilith Fair generation, she also deconstructs the feminine archetypes of women as lovers, healers, and heroines. Finding her muse in writing about what is sacred and what is flawed about human beings comes naturally to her. "I want people to hear the music, see the show, and realize they can turn off their pager, put away their cell phone, and be part of something," she said. Fontain's M.U.S.E. gigs often incorporate other musicians and performers. At the Gaslighter Theatre in Campbell the band plays as part of Magique Bazaar, a monthly Carnaval kind of theatre event. Between circus acts the band, spread around the corner of the proscenium, plays original songs mixed with jazz and the occasional rock standard. Fontain's M.U.S.E. sightings in Mountain View have happened at Printers Inc., NASA, and at Inner Journey, where Fontain brings her multimedia students to fuel their creativity. To find out about their upcoming gigs, or post your own review of the band's music and shows, log onto http://www.fontainsmuse.com/ The group's CD is available at Printers Inc. Fontain's M.U.S.E. will be playing at the following locations:

New Year's Eve, 8:30 p.m. at King's Head Pub, 201 Orchard City Drive, Campbell. (408) 871-2499

Jan. 13, 9 p.m. at Road House Blues & Rock CafÇ, 1102 West Evelyn Avenue, Sunnyvale. (408) 739-7939

Jan. 25, 8 p.m. at Printers Inc. Bookstore, 301 Castro Street, Mountain View. 961-8500

Jan. 27, 8 p.m. at Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Co., 1383 Lincoln Avenue, San Jose. (408) 297-9077  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------