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"While you are doing that, you are singing the fundamental note and changing the shape of your throat, allowing the resonance to move up into your head and into your sinus cavities."

What is produced is a voice - and body - in harmony with itself, a rich and complex sound that is both compelling and empowering. Imagine a handful of Buddhist monks all holding a sacred "Aum" sound, resonating in harmony with one another - but imagine that coming from just one person.

The sound journeys utilize simple and powerful sounds to transport and mesmerize and to utilize the readily available energy of sound to restore balance and create transformation".

They are done for stress and trauma relief, for personal upliftment and transformation - and for fun. Tokalon also observes that they are gentle and non-denominational, since the language of sound is not a threat to any religious belief systems.

There is a corporate angle to his work too and it sees the "Marvelous Mouth" and the "Sound Man" intersecting to present sound and music driven workshops. "I facilitate interactive musical team building" he says. "We get people to make music together as a metaphor for learning how to work with one another. It's simple and it's fun".

The emphasis is on being playful and spontaneous - he prefers to call them "playshops" rather than "workshops" - and they are guided by his inimitable comic intervention when needed: becoming the shuffling Madiba, contributing a mouth trumpet piece or injecting a funny impersonation or imitation. "As colleagues are made to do silly things", Tokalon writes in his resume, "laughter erupts and a wonderful sense of fun and unity is the end result".

In fact, it is this same sense of fun he uses to start the transformational sound journeys. "I suddenly make a mouth trumpet noise. Everybody laughs and I show them how sound can affect you in different ways; that sound has just transformed them. The rapport is always good from there".

Tokalon discovered his skill at impersonations and imitations as a child. "I went to see this movie ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines', and there was a German Officer strutting up and down imitating a trombone. I tried it and I could do it. Then at a very young age, I imitated a rooster in my Dad's chicken run".

He starts laughing "It had a seizure! A kind of convulsion - it literally fell down for a while and then got up. I think it had never heard another rooster before - it never had any competition until I did this perfect imitation".

The sound journeys use a basic format of sounds that are structured to facilitate a journey. Within the woven sequences of instrumentation, Tokalon is free to improvise. "It's for people who need to relax and de-stress but also for people who are looking to learn how to create balance in their lives by remembering how to use their voices. We learn about energy management and sound combined with breath is a readily available form of energy to be utilized".

Tokalon also plays with ensembles called Soulbird Spiritsounds, doing a world music blend as well as Gypsy Magic; a band that plays Middle Eastern and Balkan music. Here, Tokalon plays saxophone, flute and the hang; a percussive instrument that is a kind of inverted steel-pan drum. 

He plays first tenor sax in Jannie "Hanepoot" van Tonder's Biggish Band. "It's an old connection" he says. "Jannie and me go back to the bad old days of the 80's where we were struggling artists, cut off in many ways from making a living and crossing cultural and race borders with difficulty - and with impunity. But the real reason I'm in the Biggish Band is because we're playing really hip, original South African compositions".

He also does an exiting venture where sound and meditation meets the experience of swimming with dolphins. "I facilitate on holistic getaways in Southern Mozambique, doing an intensive and extensive 3-day sound workshop, showing people how to use sound combined with intention, as a tool for transformation". We go on 3 dolphin launches during this time and people have an opportunity (about 80% of the time) to swim with wild dolphins.  This is done in conjunction with Halo Gaia Holistic Getaways. 

Returning to "Don't Tune Me", he says the show draws on two of his favourite sayings; "If music be the food of love, play on" and "Laughter is the best medicine".

But how does he combine the more serious project of therapy and transformation with a comic show? How do they fit together? "Sometimes spirituality can get really serious and boring. It's good to bring comic relief".