Logos

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I believe that names hold power. I have three names right now. Jim Genaro was the name I was given at birth. PanDoor is the name I have chosen for myself. And Logos is the name I’ve invoked for my musical creations, as a way of reminding myself of the primal link between sound and spirit.
“Logos” is Greek for “word” and it was used by the Christian mystic St. John to describe the fundamental creative force that gave shape to the universe at the dawn of creation.

This project began in 2001 as an effort to synergize electronic sounds and human voices. As my personal journey has taken me further into explorations of psychedelic trance and other more dance-oriented forms of electronica, my music has come to reflect that shift.

Originally, though, it was classical music that forged the pathways in my neurons that associate sound with experiences of the sublime. As a child, I was introduced by my mother to records of the classics — Beethoven, Bach, most of all Edvard Grieg — and listening to those recordings, I developed a sense of music as narrative. Music, I came to realize, had the power to take the listener on a journey into the unknown, even into the unknowable.

Many historians have identified two distinct musical lineages that have their roots in ancient Greek culture.
The Apollonian lineage, of which the music we would call “classical” today is a part, derives from the tradition of lyric poetry, and its patron was Apollo, the solar diety. In that tradition, music (literally “the inspiration of the muse”) described a connection between the poet and the gods, who spoke through him. Lyric poets accompanied their epic tales by playing the lyre, and the melodies were meant to serve the story or narrative.

The Dionysian lineage, on the other hand, was the music of ecstatic revelry. Dionysus was the god of wine, and his music was played on aeolian pipes to accompany dancers and drummers in their celebratory (and often orgiastic) revelry. Dionysian music encompasses all the musical traditions that awaken ecstasy and substitute intuition, passion, and unrestained joy for the controlled rationality of our everyday consciousness. Jazz, rock-and-roll, drum circles, and electronic dance parties are all born of the ecstasy of Dionysus.

My desire is to bridge the two worlds — to be a composer of narratives that invoke the spirit of ecstatic trance.