Artist. Musician. Teacher. Performer. Healer. Coach. Facilitator. Speaker
Amber Field is passionate about the art of life/the life of art. She is committed to personal and planetary transformation through breath, sound, rhythm, stories, rooted spirit, and love. Amber’s approach is eclectic and multi-dimensional. She brings years of study in voice and world music; healing arts such as yoga, meditation, reiki, and tai chi; expressive arts including movement, dance, sound, poetry, and drawing; and social activism to all her endeavors. Amber is happy awakening and playing with people on the creative path of transformation.
Born in Seoul, South Korea, Amber Field grew up with her adoptive mother and sister in Korea, Nepal, Liberia, and the United States. She started playing piano when she was five years old. At Pomona College, she studied abroad in India, focusing on Hindi and development studies, and received a B.A. in Indian History.
Always an adventurer and explorer, she left to live in Europe and Asia for two years in 1998. She worked on organic farms, studied permaculture, wrote an ethnography on the Iban (former headhunters of Borneo), and volunteered for various projects supporting indigenous rights and cultures.
Along the way, she came into contact with meditation and yoga, two important practices in her healing journey. During this time, she began playing the didgeridoo, Arabic tambourine, djembe, and tabla. She composed her own songs and discovered the healing effects of expressing her emotions through sound. Amber also started to make didgeridoos out of bamboo, and plays on her own hand-carved didges. Amber moved to India and lived there from 2002-2004 studying tabla and esraj (Indian classical music) in Varanasi and later at Visva Bharati University outside Kolkata.
After a near-death experience with dengue fever in 2004, Amber was inspired more than ever to continue down the path of love and healing. She moved to Korea to learn about her birth culture and share Indian and fusion music with Koreans. She started two band projects, Anokha and Bijly, that performed at festivals all over the country.
Amber moved back to San Francisco in 2006 after many years abroad deepening her spiritual and musical practices. She teaches music at the Fusion (mixed race and transracially adopted youth) and PACT (adoptive families) summer camps as well as expressive arts workshops at mindfulness teen retreats in California.
Her short film "Jagadamba, Mother of the Universe" (2008) has played in film festivals around the world. It explores transracial adoption and her healing journey through music.
Amber incorporates all of her diverse musical influences, styles, and instruments in a fresh, unique, energetic way. The consummate multi-instrumentalist and world traveler, she weaves a beautiful tapestry of Indian, African, Arabian, and Western sounds. Her music reflects that the whole world is her home, and most importantly, home is in her heart.
Amber fully believes that we can all be the change we want to see in the world and that love is the supreme healing energy.
Amber lived in Peru in 2010 and co-founded and co-directed MUSAS Peru, an organization that provides free educational videos and workshops on issues of sexual health, sexuality, and gender. She also opened an expressive arts & healing center in Cusco, Peru, and taught classes on creative expression through writing, sound, voice, drumming, and movement.
Amber moved back to her home base San Francisco in 2011. She teaches music and voice; performs kirtan and live music in yoga classes; facilitates expressive arts workshops; helps people free their voices in sound workshops; and leads new and full moon ritual celebration circles for women. Amber also collaborates with djs; does sound healings with toning and didgeridoo; gives solo didgeridoo and percussion educational performances in schools and universities; entertains at parties and weddings; performs solo and with band projects in fundraisers and other venues; and engages in all sorts of creative merrymaking.
Amber is co-artistic director of Mixed, Blended, and Whole, a collaboration between six Bay Area writers, actors, musicians, dancers, and activist healers who courageously embody the complexity and humor of mixed race identities and blended families while celebrating the nuances of our multi-cultural experiences and rights to exist as whole within the queer community. They will debut at the Queer Arts Festival June 11th and 12th at the Garage.
She is currently studying movement-based expressive arts at Tamalpa Institute.
Please contact her at tabla_queen@yahoo.com if you are interested in any of her services.
Amber speaks about her life in an interview on KPFA's APEX Express February 4, 2010. Her interview begins at 40:45 and goes for about ten minutes. Enjoy!
