In the new Octo­ber / Novem­ber 2022 issue, the NAZAR cul­ture mag­a­zine pub­lish­es a spe­cial edi­tion about «10 years Dust of Soul»—their com­plete 10-year inspi­ra­tion sto­ry, about the stroke as a new begin­ning, the song for the Sul­tan of Oman and her future -Vision: Sus­tain­able Music—«Positive Music Pow­er». The NAZAR cul­ture mag­a­zine, now at news­stands through­out Switzerland.

«In this issue we present some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent and spe­cial. To cel­e­brate the 10th anniver­sary of Dust of Soul, we’ve cre­at­ed a spe­cial issue so you can read their sto­ries in more detail and expe­ri­ence them in depth.» The pub­lish­er and founder of the NAZAR cul­ture mag­a­zine, Cemil Baysal, opens with the fore­word “It all began with an end”.

It all start­ed with an end

Cemil Baysal con­tin­ues: «A stroke of fate com­plete­ly changed her life. Sask­ia Stäu­ble, 41, changed her life at the age of 30 and became the singer of the duo “Dust of Soul”. How­ev­er, it all start­ed with an end—the end of Sask­ia Stäuble’s life. A week before her thir­ti­eth birth­day she suf­fered a stroke with hemiplegia.»

Cemil Baysal dis­cov­ered Dust of Soul on social media at the end of 2020 and has been fol­low­ing the course of her career ever since. Fas­ci­nat­ed by their 10-year career, he offers to ded­i­cate a spe­cial issue of the NAZAR cul­ture mag­a­zine to them on the occa­sion of the anniver­sary. This was pub­lished on news­stands through­out Switzer­land on Octo­ber 6, 2022.

The NAZAR cul­ture mag­a­zine founder finds great inspi­ra­tion in the sto­ry of Dust of Soul: «Sask­ia Stäu­ble and Michael Oder­matt have been a music duo for 10 years and trav­el around the world to touch peo­ple with music in their hearts. No apart­ment of their own, no car, no manager—Saskia Stäu­ble and the pianist Michael Oder­matt man­age them­selves as the musi­cian duo “Dust of Soul”. With their mobile stu­dio, they can work any­where. They’ve only brought them­selves with them, but that’s quite a lot because they’re deep peo­ple who real­ly stand behind what they do and how they do it. Her con­vic­tion, charis­ma and ener­gy fas­ci­nates, moves and inspires. Their music sur­pris­es, touch­es and moti­vates to go your own way.

Stroke as a fresh start

Sask­ia Stäu­ble, one half of the Dust of Soul duo, told me about her life as a musi­cian and moti­va­tion­al coach.
Some­times peo­ple have pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive turn­ing points in their lives. The ques­tion I asked in my first con­ver­sa­tion with Sask­ia: «A stroke of fate got the ball rolling. So you have the “Schschlag” to thank for this?” “Yes, that’s right. That’s how I woke up and start­ed to work on myself, both men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. Above all, I final­ly faced myself and start­ed on my per­son­al musi­cal path.”

Even as a lit­tle girl she was enthu­si­as­tic about music. Nev­er­the­less, she did an appren­tice­ship as a cook. When asked if she real­ly want­ed that, she said: “Look­ing back, my cook­ing appren­tice­ship was a down-to-earth start to the pro­fes­sion­al world. This taught me patience and pre­ci­sion when work­ing and, above all, per­se­ver­ance. But to this day I still regret that I didn’t start my music career pro­fes­sion­al­ly after my appren­tice­ship as a cook. I let every­day life stop me and for­got my true core and dream. That’s why I always try to make the best of every­thing, no mat­ter where and when.”
Sask­ia, who describes her­self as the mom­my of “Dust of Soul”, “Human­i­ty First”, “Cof­fee with Sask­ia”, “Dust of Soul Stu­dios” and all her songs, loves music so much that she would give her life for it.

Dust of Soul have done a lot in the last 10 years. But there is still a lot to do. In the com­ing years they will con­tin­ue to touch souls with “Pos­i­tive Music Pow­er”, con­nect­ing coun­tries – not divid­ing them. This will def­i­nite­ly be her path for the next 10 years.”

Song for the Sultan

Dust of Soul are writ­ing a song for the Sul­tan of Oman, Her Majesty Qaboos Bin Said in 2016. Just out of an inspi­ra­tion when they first trav­el to the Ara­bic coun­try. As the first Swiss woman to date, Sask­ia was allowed to appear on Ara­bic break­fast tele­vi­sion in Oman with her song “The Col­or of Oman is Love”.

“I real­ly can’t explain what hap­pened. I felt like there was this strong, over­whelm­ing surge of feel­ings and emo­tions in my soul that was strug­gling to surface.”

— Sask­ia Stäuble

Future vision: sus­tain­able music

Jour­nal­ist Tobias Graden from the “Biel­er Tag­blatt” quot­ed Sask­ia apt­ly on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2021: “Music can do more than just enter­tain,” says the singer, “who­ev­er vis­its our con­certs should feel bet­ter after­wards than before.” Cor­re­spond­ing feed­back from numer­ous shows in dif­fer­ent coun­tries would have encour­aged them.

«Those who vis­it our con­certs should feel bet­ter afterwards»

— Sask­ia Stäuble

“Pos­i­tive Music Pow­er” call Dust of Soul the prin­ci­ple, they want to exude this power.”

Read the whole inspi­ra­tional sto­ry from «10 years of Dust of Soul» in the NAZAR Kul­tur­magazin. Now at the kiosk near you.

• Pho­tos by Dust of Soul Studios
• Pho­to edit­ing by Dust of Soul Studios
• Text by Dust of Soul | Michael Oder­matt