Hello to the folks who’ve joined here in the last few weeks. And my apologies to everyone for my silence. Though it’s been awhile since sharing songs online regularly, I’ve been quite busy sharing and leading songs out in the “real” world in-person. From NYC to Western MA to Texas to Boston and Rhode Island, I’ve been grateful for so many opportunities to share the gift and power of song with so many different groups.
Last month I had a the dreamy opportunity to gather in Texas with nearly one hundred other movement songleaders from across the country for the first national “Songs in the Key of Resistance” gathering. If you’ve been following me for months or years, you’ve likely heard me talk about Songs in the Key of Resistance (SKOR). The Kairos Center has recently been investing more time and resources into developing SKOR in these troubled and trying times because they know that cultural organizing is a key aspect of fighting the moral and spiritual battles that are at the heart of fighting fascism.
I’m so grateful to Kairos and the SKOR leaders for weaving me into this project years ago and to all the fellow facilitators and songleaders from all over the country who made the time to gather. It was especially poignant for me to be gathered as a collective in the Texas hill country, just a few miles from Kerrville where I used to sit around the fires of the Kerrville Folk Festival back in the 2010s and a few hours from Austin where I first began “Finding Our Voice.” To feel the familiarity of that land and those waters holding us was particularly meaningful for me as I reflected on the nearly ten years of being a community songleader and cultural organizer.
There is so much I could say about this gathering - and I imagine I’ll be unpacking and sharing about it for many months to come - but for now I’d like to share one song that was birthed at the gathering by a group of a dozen or so songleaders during a collective songwriting activity that Lu Aya of the Peace Poets facilitated. The story that the group tells about how the song came into being (I was not personally a part of the workshop) goes something like this…. Lu Aya asked, “what do we / our people need songs for in this time?” and the response that resonated the most was “burnout.” From there the lyrics were collectively created and the melody, too. At the end of the workshop, the group brought the song (and one other that was also born concomitantly) to the whole collective. Immediately, we all felt the song’s potency. I’ve been singing it ever since. Here are the lyrics:
You are enough / You are loved
You can slow down / Let your people hold you now.
Take a breath (BREATHE!) / Take it in
It’s okay to rest / To prepare to move again.
What I like about this song most of all is how it embodies the spirit of the collective. It wasn’t written by any one person to whom it is attributed, which is a meaningful antidote to some of the culture of individuality, ownership, and competition that inevitably seeps into nearly every space, no matter how committed to liberation it may be. I could have said a few things about what certain individuals contributed - who said “burnout” and who suggested the taking a breath piece - but I don’t think that’s what’s important here. What matters is that the group wrote it together for one another and our collective.
Lu Aya has been a friend and mentor ever since meeting him at the first SKOR song circle I attended in NYC in 2019 but this gathering was the first time I got to meet two other members of the Peace Poets, Frankie and E. It was a true honor to get to see the three of them in their creative and artistic power as collaborators as they shared a number of their poetic pieces during our time together. Lu spoke beautifully about how their collective effectively undoes some of the narratives and tendencies toward individualism. He said something like, “It’s never just one of us writing or creating. It’s always all of us.” I’m taking that with me as I think about my own relationship to writing, creating, and collaborating.
In song and solidarity,
JHB
