We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ari Pluznik. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ari below.
Hi Ari , thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is also the most recent – Ari and the Buffalo King’s sophomore album, In The All Together. I began Ari and the Buffalo Kings in 2019 as a way to share my songwriting, and while I started out performing only solo guitar and voice, I always had the dream of having a large, multicultural band with lush compositions and a big sound. Having just moved to Baltimore, it took me some time to meet the right people who would make up the band. I had a big leg up in the game – my dear friend Gino Hannah from St. Mary’s College of Maryland lived in Baltimore, and so did his dad, the Picasso of Percussion himself, Jim Hannah, and the two of them formed our earliest rhythm section. A chance encounter with multi-instrumentalist Danielle Williams at a Brazilian Dance Party at Creative Alliance sealed the deal, and our first ensemble was born. We played for a while as a quartet, and even recorded our first self-titled album, calling in friends from all over the country to add instrumentals to achieve that big sound I was looking for. This was a lovely experience and I was so grateful to everyone that came together to make our first album a possibility, namely classical trumpeter Zach Silberschlag, jazz violinist Daisy Castro, and saxophonist Vince Szynborski.
We released our first album, titled Ari and the Buffalo Kings, in 2021, right when the pandemic was cooling off and we could gather once again to have a release party at Creative Alliance in Baltimore. It was an amazing experience celebrating with our dear friends and supporters, and with that energy, we got together to write and compose more songs. By 2022, I felt I had grown exponentially as a songwriter and performer, and I was ready for the band to perform new material to new audiences, as kind of an experimental method to see what lands best our listeners. This new wave of creativity was met with a serendipitous unfolding of events where Ari and the Buffalo Kings became the band of the likes I’ve always dreamed. In early 2022, Samantha Flores, from Tijuana, Mexico, joined the band as our cellist, giving us lovely deep string textures and even writing a song to perform with us in Spanish called “Llena de Luz”. Gabe Bustos, a Catonsville local with Argentinian roots, filled in for Gino and eventually became our principal bassist and killer harmonic player, adding a level of musicality that lifted up the entire band. Gino would eventually return as our guitarist, adding a beautiful range living textures and Americana guitar solos. Danielle Williams, who usually played only flute and ukulele, began to add piano to her repertoire with us, giving our compositions a sensitivity and level of refinement that usually isn’t heard in an indie folk band. The cherry on top is when Snehesh Nag of Kolkata, India, came to my house looking for a room to rent, and three days later was on stage with us playing his marvelous Hindustani Sitar and Tabla.
With cello, flute, piano, sitar, tabla, a chorus of voices, and roots form around the world, Ari and the Buffalo Kings finally became the band I had always hoped it would be. Our new compositions on our sophomore album, to be released Summer of 2023, are wide ranging in scope, from foot-tapping Americana to vibey meditation music, and all are touched by the deep relationships we have built with one another – radiating with love and interconnectedness. I am also very proud, as a songwriter, of the poetry of the album, and I feel I am able to transmit inner messages of clear-seeing and understanding in the face of difficulty and joy in a way I’ve never been able to do before. As a dear fan said after one of our concerts, “your songs brought up a lot for me, but I felt it was okay, because I was there with Ari and the band, and I could be with it. It was almost like therapy.” This is the kind of healing vibe I wish for my music, with beauty, honesty, and humor, and I am so excited to share it with the world.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Ari Pluznik, and I am a singer-songwriter, mindfulness teacher-in-training, community artist, and linguist based in Baltimore, MD, currently in Brazil for a 6-week artist & teaching residency at Lagarto na Banana Hostel. I’ve always been a creative, though it took me a while to be comfortable with my creative voice and to invest the time into building the skills that would make me an effective artist. I studied Biology and Spanish in college, and then joined the Peace Corps to serve in Mozambique for two years teaching high school Biology and engaging in loads and loads of cultural exchange. When I returned to Baltimore in 2019, I was ready to further explore my creativity. I got a job as Community Arts Manager at Creative Alliance, a non-profit community arts center in Baltimore, MD, and began the long process of becoming a professional singer-songwriter – writing, performing, and collaborating with incredibly genuine musicians in Baltimore and around the world. I had a lot of help along the way, supporting and collaborating with several Baltimore based performers and groups such as Micah E. Wood, Peach Face, Tidal Shifts, Lady Ro, and more, many of whom I still work with today. I also became more savvy with what it takes to be an independent artists, learning the business side of running a band, marketing shows, developing and vending merchandise, not to mention how to include all of this in your taxes. In any case, it was all worth it, and my band Ari and the Buffalo Kings is now preparing to release our sophomore album, In The All Together, in Summer of 2023.
A thorough line in my life in addition to my journey as a singer-songwriter and artist has also been my journey as a meditation practitioner and teacher-in-training. Mindfulness meditation, most specifically in the Insight Meditation and Vipassana traditions, is a huge part of what I do now, both as an artist and teacher-in-training. I had always been interested in meditation since childhood, mostly because I loved Star Wars and wanted desperately to be a Jedi. Imagine my dismay when I realized you couldn’t actually do that. Still, there was something special about the interconnection these fictional warrior-monks felt, and I was especially moved by the peace they carried in the face of difficulty. I didn’t know how to meditate, and didn’t have anyone close to teach me. Still, I remember going to the beach as a kid and sitting on the rocks, watching the rocks getting hit by wave after wave, calming, widening my view, seeing how much I could see. This was a precursor to meditation, and when I was taught Vipassana in college course I felt I was finally learning something that would stay with me for the rest of my life. I continued to practice seriously in college, though I practiced much less during the difficulties of Peace Corps (though I wish I had). Upon returning to Baltimore, I decided to dive back in, and began to attend Insight Meditation classes with local teacher Stan Eisenstein. After a few silent meditation retreats, I felt so moved by the practice and the openings I had experienced through it that I decided to join Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certificate Program, a two-year teacher training program which I will graduate from in early 2023, so that I could deepen my practice even further and learn how to share this powerful medicine. Through these meditative experiences, plus exploring my Jewish spirituality in addition to learning about world wisdom traditions, I am feeling more and more grateful for the ability to connect with others and to connect with that which is most important to us, for the growth and healing of ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, and the whole world.
I am most proud of how I integrate these aspects of my life –– mindfulness practice and teaching, songwriting, performing, human being-ing. I of course make mistakes every day and am no perfect teacher, guru, or spiritual leader, but I am proud of my honesty, genuineness , and ability to connect with others no matter who they are or where they come from. I’m experiencing that distinctly now in my residency at Lagarto na Banana Hostel in Praia de Pipa, Brazil, where I’m teaching meditation three times a week, performing here and there, and working on the production of our second Ari and the Buffalo Kings album. It’s lovely to meet folks from all around the world and to connect through meditation and music, and I am so excited to keep doing so, no matter where life’s unfolding takes me.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Being a creative, especially a creative that produces some sort of work that is available for folks to consume, is not a linear process. It’s also totally unnecessary to produce professional level work to consider one’s self a creative person. Everyone is creative in some way, and even artists exhibit a wide range of features and behaviors. Some of us hold day jobs to pay the bills, some of us don’t. Some of us have our entire lives consumed by the creative process, locked in our studios for hours, completely absorbed by our work, and some of us do so more sparingly in our free time, as a sort of reprieve and personal reconnection, working the creative process in to the rhythm of our daily lives. Some of us are creatives for a living, deriving all our money from our creative work. Some of us make no money, perhaps are even in the red with our projects, but do so anyways in the dance of our lives because we don’t have a choice – the creativity simply flows. All forms of this are valid, and all of it warrants the title of “a creative”. What non-creatives might not understand is what I previously mentioned – creativity is not a choice. If I were to give up song-writing, stop playing guitar, stop writing at all, I would be emotionally stopped up and stunted and the result wouldn’t be good for myself or anyone around me. I create because I need to, because I am a creative person, through which ideas and emotions flow, and I feel most centered and secure when I let the creativity flow without judgement and without seeking any sort of result. “Do you make a living off of your art” therefore, makes no sense to me, because it absolutely doesn’t matter –– I would be creating art anyways, and always will be, whether or not there’s a paycheck associated. It’s also why I can’t easily choose another path, perhaps one that’s more lucrative yet takes up more of my time, as I will always need to have a balance in my life between my creative practice and what I do to make a living for myself. So, life isn’t always easy for a creative, but it’s not really a choice – our minds, bodies, and spirits were born this way, and all we ask for is your support.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
My mission in my creative journey is to always be true to myself. If I can’t be true to what I feel, there’s no way for me to be true to others. Of course, I am interested in multiculturalism and the ways global folk music can intersect to create beautiful moments of connection and transcendence. I’m also interested in music’s role in helping us connect to our inner lives and to our bigger sense of self, a greater sense of interconnection that includes all other living beings and the flow of natural life on this planet. Still, none of this makes any sense if I don’t feel genuinely connected to the art I am creating right here, right now. When I write a song, I am always asking myself if it’s true. Not true in the sense of “true or false” but true in the sense of “is this genuinely connected with some aspect of my experience, something I have personally lived, or something that I personally feel?”. This helps me make sure the art that I share through performances and released music is genuine and honest, and has the capacity to touch the hearts of others who also value truth and openness. Often times, these ideas of connection and transcendence are difficult to explain, and are best understood through music, art, or moments of deep inner knowing. My goal always in my creative process is to open myself to this receptive field, and to feel integrated with what I’m creating, with the hope that it helps others to connect and transcend as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: ariandthebuffalokings.com
- Instagram: @ari_buffalokings
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ariandthebuffalokings/
- Twitter: @ari_bkings
- Youtube: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwji596FosD7AhUWDrkGHUjoBXcQtwJ6BAgWEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fchannel%2FUCwWjwXnBzwhQCINmd8SRHzA&usg=AOvVaw2YLzNlh_EVmr_dNjWEBYnO
Image Credits
Micah E. Wood , Sihan, Michael Schwartz