‘Voices of the Earth’ is the opening track of composer Sami Yusuf’s Ecstasy album.
“It’s music that embodies the mythic concept that we are shaped by the Earth even as we shape it. This is the sound of ancestry, memory, and beginningless beginning.”
This composition begins where sound itself begins: not with rhythm or melody, but with a single, undivided note—the pure potential from which all things emerge. As the piece unfolds, it vibrates almost imperceptibly from the Realm of Creation, much like dawn quietly reveals the contours of a hidden landscape.
From this primordial vibration comes an explosion of musical expressions of cultures and peoples—the resonant threads that encircle the globe in sound.
These voices of the earth are not separate lines, but strands of one living breath, evoking the sound of beginnings, the land of all origins, and that first journey from formlessness into form.

“The fluid interconnectedness of all things emerges as sound and echoes like a clear bell in that space where all separateness fades.”
‘Being’ immerses the listener in an experience of the fluid interconnectedness of all things through the medium of pure voice. Brilliantly performed a cappella by the Grammy-nominated British ensemble Voces8 and punctuated by Sami Yusuf’s iconic voice, this vocal piece moves in breath-like waves that rise and fall in seamless arcs, forming a perfect circle.
At its core is a recurring Arabic phrase, lā ilāha illa’Llāh (لا إله إلا الله). Often translated as ‘There is no god but God,’ it can be understood from a Sufi, philosophical perspective as ‘Nothing is real but the Real.’ This phrase is transformed into a sonoral meditation where individual voices dissolve into one resonant field of sound.
‘Being’ is the sound of the Realm of Unity: the place where duality disappears, where all rivers flow into one sea. Here, the sparse, crystalline clarity of the human voice becomes the ideal vessel for expressing what cannot be spoken, what can only be perceived by the human heart.

‘Amada’, is a sonoral depiction of the joys and longing that lead to the complete surrender of the lover into the arms of the Beloved, Amada.
Opening with symphonic instrumentation, the piece gives way to Sami Yusuf’s emotional vocal rendering in Spanish of mystical verses by San Juan de la Cruz. Strains evoking the fervor of Argentinian tango rise and fall. Showcasing the raw brilliance of Latin Grammy-winning flamenco guitarist Antonio Rey, ‘Amada’ weaves together the passion of flamenco and the emotional precision of Sami Yusuf’s own voice. In a rare and deeply moving vocal performance, Yusuf and flamenco singer Israel Moro unite on lines from the Cántico Espiritual, a Spanish masterwork of divine love and annihilation.
Flowing beneath and through it all like a river seeking the sea is a Sufi invocation: Ya Hayy, Ya Hayy—O Living One, O Living One—a musical current that binds the seen and the unseen. It reminds us that the Real wears many faces, and love is the path to all of them, while the last lines whisper ‘sin orilla’, an echo of the Andalusian sage Ibn Arabi’s ‘ocean without shore’. With ‘Amada’, Sami Yusuf offers us a glimpse of the greatest joy of all: the ecstatic sound of the soul coming home.