Laraaji (born Edward Larry Gordon) is a musician, mystic and laughter meditation practitioner based in New York City.
He began playing music on the streets in the 1970s, improvising trance-inducing jams on a modified autoharp processed through various electronic effects. Brian Eno saw him playing one night in Washington Square Park and invited him to record an album for his seminal Ambient series (Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance, released 1980). Laraaji went on to release a prolific series of albums for a wide variety of labels, many of which he recorded himself at home and sold as cassettes during his street performances.

In recent years he has been collaborating with a new generation of underground musicians, most notably on the 2011 album he recorded for the acclaimed FRKWYS series with Blues Control (That Healing Feeling). Most recently he has had his career celebrated with the double disc retrospective Celestial Music 1970 – 2011 (one of the 2013 reissues of the year in both The Wire and FACT), had his classic Essence/Universe and Flow Goes The Universe albums reissued, appeared on the acclaimed Light In The Attic compilation of private issue new age music I Am The Center. 2014 saw the release of a vinyl edition of Celestial Music and some specially commissioned remixes by new acolytes Sun Araw, Bee Mask, Ela Orleans and Motion Sickness Of Time Travel. Laraaji also embarked upon a collaborative European tour with Sun Araw entitled The Play Zone.