Residing on the west coast of British Columbia, Anilah is the musical art project of composer and vocalist Andrea Drury. For the first 18 years of her life, she lived in a rural village in the mountains of interior BC. Her experience of growing up in the remote wilderness, as well as her love for untamed and wild places, have deeply influenced the way that she approaches songwriting.

From an early age, Andrea has been fascinated with the therapeutic aspects of sound and music. This led her to study psychoacoustic sound design, music therapy, and the healing potential of the voice with mentors such as Silvia Nakkach, Shweta Jhaveri, and the late Ali Akbar Khan. These teachers helped to develop a relationship to music that was less focused on theory, cultivating a more embodied sense of sound, voice, and form. Andrea’s love of melody is her guiding principle when writing music:

“For me, the experience of composing music is akin to weaving a tapestry. The overall structure of the composition is the loom. The vocal melodies are the threads that, layer by layer, create new patterns of experience within the listener. The music is an invitation into a space of remembrance, one that reconnects us to a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves. This “something” is embedded deep within our ancient memory, and music is one way that we can use to return to this sense of interconnectivity. Vibration and sound are threads that can help bring us back into an embodied experience of being woven into the cosmos. Often when we listen to music, we go from feeling separate to feeling like we are part of a larger whole. This is what keeps me coming back to writing music, the process of remembering.”

— Andrea Drury

Since the first days of creating the project of Anilah, Andrea has continued to experiment with an approach to writing music that revolves around the power of the voice and the use of minimalist composition.  Anilah has been featured on season 6 of History Channel “Vikings”, and CBC’s “New Eden” series.

In 2020, Andrea collaborated with “Wavepaths” to record a series of ambient vocal sets to be used in their new app for psychedelic therapy clinicians. Wavepaths crafts customised and evidence-based music compositions for therapeutic use with psychedelic medicines.

Anilah’s newest album “CHRYSALIS” (2021) is now out on all platforms.