October Blog - Creating a Community of Song

October Blog - Creating a Community of Song

One question that has been deeply preoccupying me and will no doubt continue to do so until the end of my days here, is how can I use that which has been given to me to make a contribution to the world - as a singer, how can my song serve?

Asking that question has so far brought me to two passions - a passion for the power of song to bring unity - across religious, cultural, social barriers- and a passion for the power of song restore a healthy connection with the natural world. I have been honoured to witness and experience these two powers of song bringing about about breakthroughs on a personal and collective level.

My own experience of emerging from an intense experience of the evangelical christian church has given me the commitment to promoting inter-faith, cross-spiritual, cross-cultural understanding. Experiencing the deep schism of separation that fundamentalism creates in the individual and collective psyche drove me to find another way.

I feel deeply grateful to evangelical churches for being the houses of devotion where I first encountered and experienced spiritual skydiving in song. The ecstatic fervour that is encouraged in evangelical worship anchored my experience of voice in spiritual expression and allowed me to witness just what a powerful instrument of healing the voice is. What I could never understand is why the love, healing and joy was only available to those who joined the club and why everyone outside the walls of the church was deemed to be destined for the fires of hell.

I excommunicated myself and started communicating with those beyond the walls, travelling, learning and singing with people from all creeds, paths and cultures: buddhists, yogis, pagans, sufis, psychics, spiritualists, sound healers, new agers, folkies, afro-carribean shamans, arabic healers, kabbalists. The songs of all these traditions deepened my devotion and my sense that every path flows like a river towards an indefinable mysterious ocean of unity.

I now lead singing groups and create music that incorporates material from many different global traditions, with a commitment to respectfully articulating their resonances and dissonances. The powerful unity that singing creates has allowed me to witness the dissolution of separation and conflict within myself and others. It has allowed me to honour and celebrate difference, diversity and the joy of uniqueness within the huge symphony of life.

I have begun increasingly to dream of seeing people from all faiths singing peacefully together. This year I saw that dream embodied at A Space for Peace at Winchester Cathedral created by June Boyce-Tillman. Amidst a sea of choirs singing songs from all traditions, a Jewish Rabbi and a Muslim Imam sang a duet from the pulpit and lectern. The harmonies of their melodies soared and danced in the cool cathedral air and seemed to have been destined to sing together. It was a demonstration for me that peace is not only possible, it is natural.
More details about this event which will be held next year on 27th January can be found at:
http://www.winchester.ac.uk/campuscitylife/music/Pages/SpaceforPeace2012.aspx

The unity I began to experience through song extends to the natural world. The experience of singing and camping under the stars at festivals amplified the inspiration I had always drawn from nature. Discovering the world of pagan chant, with its celebration of the cycles of nature gave voice to this in a new way for me and also began to heighten my awareness of the disconnection we have been collectively experiencing.

The illusory separation from the natural world that the capitalist and religious mindset requires is a nonsense. The devastating consequences of conceptualising the planet as a female body who is to be farmed, bred and raped for her resources are now showing themselves. The conception of the planet as a grieving, victimised mother is also off the mark. Nature is beyond our concepts and beyond our command - one small earthquake will demonstrate that amply. We are part of nature ourselves and thus can only project our ideas and opinions from within it. One source of our current crisis lies in the denial of that innate connection and in our innate responsibility towards each other in the mindful sharing and stewarding of resources.

Singing and sounding arises from and articulates our relationship within nature. The first shamans, singers and huntsmen learned to communicate by imitating natural sounds. The first instruments emerged as we discovered the resources of earth could produce incredible sounds - the metal that melted in the first ovens became gongs, reeds became wind instruments, tree barks formed didgeridoos and flutes. The first documented astrologers and philosophers discerned the influences of the musical vibrations of moons, planets and stars.

We live within a vast sea of vibration that is constantly changing. As the study of Cymatics have shown, our sounds influence those of the environment and vice versa. Every sound has the potential to be another Big Bang - to begin and initiate another vast wave of creation - or destruction. Sounding mindfully enables us to return to the awareness of the innate natural power within our song and to return to our natural comm-unity with each other and the world around us.

Singing by the river amidst 800 singers who were all fundraising for Water Aid at The Thames Festival this September amply demonstrated how the community of song can send powerful waves across the world.
http://www.wateraid.org/uk/get_involved/community_groups/sing_for_water/default.asp
I know this is just one of vast numbers of gatherings where people are singing in community for personal, collective and ecological transformation. As the structures and institutions which have reflected our separation begin to collapse, the songs of new forms and ways of being are emerging. I celebrate the power within all of us to honour, respect and unify with each other and our environment through song.

Wishing you the joy of inner and outer unity
Katie Rosex

Forthcoming Events
I am very excited about going to sing with the Tree of Life Community this weekend (22nd October) in Birmingham.
I also look forward to the explosion of sonic events taking place around 11.11.11 - do join me at the Mind Body Spirit Winter Festival
The Garden of Roses will be humming with the songs of Benjamin Brelain and Robin Baldock on November 15th, followed by a Solstice special with Cate Mackenzie and the Love Faires on December 13th.
I am also delighted to be sharing in a day of Sounds of Harmony on 3rd December with Tim Wheater and friends at Haslemere Museum.

October Colours

♥ October Colours
As the trees burst aflame with colour, the quickening nights are brightened by the crispness of autumn starsong. Drawing together to sing and sound enables us to find colour and vibrancy and to release our attachment to that which would make us dull puppets of conformity. The reclamation of the deep voice within is a long process, yet each step towards connection opens up a whole new realm within, making a new world possible without. As our inner flame is kindled our outer flamboyance is liberated, opening up new realms of creative expression.
♥ October EVENTS
September has been a stirring month, with many startling surprises. For me, Equinox is a time where the subtlety of the relationship between light and dark can be perceived and many illusory divisions or preconceptions can be challenged. What excites me immensely at the moment is witnessing and experiencing the movement towards more and more group singing experiences - from the mainstream success of Popchoir to the meditative experience of kirtan, more and more people are gathering together in song. The empowerment that arises from group singing enables individuals to be strengthened and join together to transform our current matrix of reality.
It was absolutely extraordinary to Sing for Water in a choir of 800 at the Thames Festival, and to raise funds for Water Aid. Heartfelt thanks to all who donated and joined me on the day, it was so uplifting and has inspired me to create a very special World Water Day event in March 2012 - watch this space!!
Eliza Kenyon and Cornelius sang to an enraptured Garden of Roses at Inspiral and will be followed this month by the wonderful singer Kath Haling and performance poet Azrael.
I am really enjoying having bubbly, gurgly baby song time at Blissful Babybuds with mothers and babies at Living Water Satisfies - classes continue until October 20th.
I offer you an advance invitation to a Sonic Garden Party with Tim Wheater on 3rd December in Haslemere, where I'll be sharing sound as part of a wonderful array of sonic joy.
Wishing you the radiant rainbow celebration of your hearts note this October xxx
To change one's life: start immediately. Do it flamboyantly - William James

September Blog - Words and Wordlessness

Words and Wordlessness
It has been challenging writing this month’s blog mainly because I encountered some welcome wordlessness and some deep processing within that silence. No words wanted to come and dance on my page. Now, they do. I really appreciate this dance between sound and silence, which underpins my whole experience of music.


I have recently been having encounters which have affirmed for me afresh the value of words and wordlessness. I found myself sitting in silence with a newly met beloved and enjoying the liberation of letting the need for conventional conversation drop away. Then a beloved wrote me such a beautiful affirmation in an email that I was deeply moved to reflect on the power of words. That day, on the wall of the great virtual word-world that is Facebook, this quote emerged:

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions. - Sigmund Freud

It is easy to forget the truly magical power of words in the daily barrage of social chit-chat. Talk is cheap as the old saying goes and there is plenty of it everywhere. But in truth, word is encapsulated intent, containing information and conveyed with energy. The ancients all knew that naming something was a magical act, hence why so many creation mythologies start with a sacred word or big bang. Our name is our sonic tag allowing us to be found in the world and it is the power of naming that enables us to identify and process our experience of reality. When for example we name our shame and release it in therapy, we are liberated by the flow of the energy - emotion - that words constitute. We are also able to attune to any number of frequencies simply by naming them - hence why mantras are full of sacred names of divinities and life-enhancing qualities.

‘Let there be light’ certainly blew the cosmic circuit board and spiritual teachers are constantly reminding us of how we literally command our reality into being with the words we choose. We sculpt our existence by sending our intent out into the world on the sound wave of speech and are shaped by the impact of receiving other people’s words.

For me, the sound sculpture of words is always accompanied and supported by silence. For words are simply gestures towards our reality and as such are not reality itself. Many experiences in life are beyond words and find their expression through sound, shape, colour, light, movement and silence. In the gap between words and the reality they describe is a magical place of possibility where the spoken and unspoken dance. The honesty of silence allows that gap to be felt and experienced and for a deep acknowledgement to occur of the vastness that is beyond words. There is nothing like the silence that falls at the end of a piece of music or a full resonant chant. Deva and Miten Premal say that they sing for the silence. It is pure indescribable nectar for the soul.

Writing this, I have realised that my own journey of voice proceeds from my heritage of sound and silence. My maternal grandmother was quietened at the age of four when she lost her hearing. She married a parson for the deaf, my grandfather, who was the hearing child of deaf parents and was a pioneer for the deaf community. A highly expressive man, he was a great performer who always had a magic trick, joke or story to tell. He used the power of the written word to promote awareness of Sign Language, the silent speech of the deaf world, in his book Please Sign Here. My paternal grandmother was shy, gentle and quietly spoken and my father tells me that he can’t remember his grandmother saying anything. My paternal grandfather was highly artistic and expressive, exploring painting, photography and landscaping an amazing garden which was magical to explore as a child.

This heritage of sound and silence continues to teach me. I have learned to honour and appreciate the quiet gentleness of the unspoken realms and have been lead to work with those who have no voice - from those with different abilities who communicate non-verbally to those who feel they cannot sing. I have experienced deep companionship with those who speak through minimal sounds and have come to realise the value of the sound current in its vastly differing expressions in the world. My artistic and creative heritage has lead me to explore writing, music, chant, mantra, theatre, performance and ritual as mediums of personal and social transformation. The dance continues.

Music is formed from this dance of sound and silence, of the spaces and the resonances and within it that which cannot be spoken is said and that which is spoken is silenced. The deeply restorative wave of musical form is a three dimensional experience - moving as it does through the spoken spaces and silent songs within us. Its rhythmic pulsation liberates breath and life-force enabling our innate creative intelligence to awaken. In Sanskrit the word for the heart chakra - Anahata - means unstruck or unbeaten referring the the unstruck sound that is both soundless and deeply resonant within us. Sound us takes us back to that place, striking chords that return us to the wordless wonder.

In the depth of my heart there is a wordless song - Kahlil Gibran