A Philosopher’s Monologue — Nojen Ra

Why These Songs / Why Now?

Side 1:

Fly Me to the Moon opens this album. It honors my father, who loved Sinatra’s voice and swagger and shared the latter. A Night in Tunisia feels chaotic but connected (and cool). I love feeling this way when I play this song.

In Memory of Elizabeth Reed is performed as a memory of a country boy named Earle. Out of pure kindness, Earle and a friend came to my house and showed me how to play Allman Brothers–style double harmonies on guitar. I was 13 years old. It forever changed my life. You can’t even imagine the good we create when we are kind.

Rikki Don’t Lose That Number appears as a shoutout to a dear friend who says this to me every time we get together. Friendship is such a gift.

Georgia on My Mind was the first song I ever played as a solo guitar piece. Every journey has a first step. This was mine.

The side closes with The Wind Cries Mary. Every note that Jimi Hendrix played felt magical to me. When I play a Hendrix song, I feel like I am praying—but also receiving a message. I search for wu wei and mushin in these moments, and intermittently succeed and fail (and learn).

Side 2:

The second side opens with Coltrane’s Giant Steps. In music school, students are taught to blaze through this composition as a rite of passage. At Berklee College of Music, I struggled with Giant Steps (and small steps as well). Life is filled with difficult passages and performative angst. This song teaches me to reject expectations, especially when things seem hard, and find myself in the challenge.

When Sunny Gets Blue is a romantic ballad that makes me feel like it’s 3 a.m. whenever I play it (true love is complicated). What follows is Crazy on You—the lustful side of Sunny, with Heart.

I return to Jimi with a Third Stone From the Sun / Voodoo Chile medley. Something within me comes alive when I interpret a Hendrix song—and it’s different every time.

As the album begins to draw to a close, I perform a medley of Concierto de Aranjuez (Adagio) and Spain. At Berklee, I was not ready to perform Spain. Progress cannot be rushed.

The album closes with Layla, a song that emotionally impacts me deeply. Love is found, and love is lost. Everything is impermanent. Looking back, we may see things differently at different times. Performing this beautiful piece makes me feel so many things (and nothing at all).

Credits:

• Guitar: Nojen Ra
• Recording Engineer: Nojen Ra
• Mix & Mastering Engineer: Randy Roos
• Recorded at Studio 11 (Boston, MA)
• Mixed & Mastered at Squam Sound Studios by Randy Roos (Ashland, NH)

©2025 Nojen Ra • Artist Contact: nojenra.441@gmail.com
Favrit Records • 31 Nicholas Road, Suite 3343 • Framingham, MA 01701

Limited Edition Vinyl: This is a limited run of 300 vinyl albums. No more will be pressed or sold. When this run ends, this release will end. Each record is opened, numbered, and signed before shipping.

About the Artist: Nojen Ra is a human artist who remains deliberately unplatformed. No genre tags. No persona. No streaming. No identity to follow. This is not content. This is music. A Philosopher’s Monologue is a solo jazz guitar album and the first release from Nojen Ra. It will serve as the basis for membership consideration in the Recording Academy.

Because Nojen Ra does not participate in the performative machinery of social media or mass-tech distribution, some may assume this is a product of AI. To the contrary, Nojen Ra is deeply human—and deeply disillusioned by the idea that one must surrender to platform visibility to reach others.

This musical release resists that bargain. It was not made to chase followers or feed algorithms or entertain for eleven seconds. It was made to restore the possibility of deep listening—of presence without noise, tone without branding, feeling without spectacle.

Why Vinyl: This album is intimate and unadorned: one human, one guitar, one listener. The ritual matters. Dropping the needle. Sitting with what unfolds. Flipping the record halfway through—a natural intermission in the journey.

Modern streaming has reduced listening to background noise—infinitely available, instantly forgettable. This vinyl-only release restores the act of listening to its rightful place: as connection between artist and listener—and through that, to the greater field of energy that joins us all.

What You Will Hear: Each track is an instrumental reinterpretation of songs that have carried decades of meaning. Now rendered through tone, silence, and intention. Music for deep listening, free from spectacle.