Spring 2008: AHN NEWS

This issue of AHN News is dedicated to the 2008 AHN Award Winner, RACHEL BAGBY and the HEALING POWER of VOICE. Each year, the Arts and Healing Network honors an artist who is truly making a difference in the world. This year, we are delighted to celebrate Rachel and her outstanding work using music to catalyze community and heal the earth. 

In this issue, I interview Rachel Bagby and feature a list of resources suggested by Rachel including books like Chorus and Community, and films like The Singing Revolution. The recent Arts & Healing Podcast features Rachel’s insights and vocals.

May this issue inspire you to raise your voice and join the chorus of changemakers in the world.
-Mary Daniel Hobson, Director, Arts & Healing Network

AHN Interview: Rachel Bagby

“heal < O.E. hælan ‘make whole, sound and well.’
Don’t you just love it that ‘make…sound’ is a root of the word ‘heal?’”
-Rachel Bagby

Since 1985, Rachel Bagby has pioneered vibralingual practices that help people form vocal communities for ecological and social healing. A vocal artist, writer, composer, teacher and founder of Choral Earth, Rachel is internationally recognized for inspiring multiple generations to bring their voices to life.

The Arts & Healing Network is very pleased to announce that Rachel is also the 2008 recipient of the AHN Award, which is given annually to an artist who is truly making a difference in the world. Rachel's most recent project, Choral Earth, is an outstanding example of the power of art to catalyze community and heal the earth. To learn more about Rachel’s work and listen to samples, please visit www.SingYourPart.com. 

Mary Daniel Hobson: Tell me about your creative beginnings, Rachel. How did you get started on your creative path?

Rachel Bagby: Working with the vibralingual powers of breath, intention, tone, rhythm and repetition (in the forms of movement, words, voice and larger-than-human nature) is a legacy of being my parents’ daughter. I am a farmer’s daughter -- daughter of daughter of daughter of women who knew what to plant during which growing moon. Singing the music of growing things while working to grow sound communities is one of the many blessings of being my mother’s daughter.   

The following excerpt from “Bringings Up and Comings Round,” published in my book, Divine Daughters, best expresses how being my father’s daughter informs my creativity:

DRUMMER’S DAUGHTER

I am a drummer’s daughter

Daughter of pounding
Daughter of sound of dancing

I am a child of music
Child of movement

She
Who
Has
Learned
To
Be
Quiet 
and still

Mary Daniel: You coined the term “vibralingual.” Tell me about the meaning of this word, and how this term came to you?

Rachel: To be vibralingual is to masterfully sense and express vibrational intelligence. Being vibralingual is akin to being multi-lingual: many “vibes,” many languages. The term arose out of my life-long search for a succinct yet accurate word to describe my expressive relationship with life itself. Others call that expressiveness creativity and “art.” The Ramayana calls it life: “I am all this, all this life. I am all this.”

Stories of vibralingual wisdom abound, from “Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony,” the documentary about how singing played a critical role in winning South Africa’s freedom from apartheid, to news reports about how other-than-human animals caught wind of the coming tsunami in December of 2004 and sought the safety of higher ground days before the lethal waves rolled in.

Being vibralingual means exploring the capacity to read/express potentially life-saving and enhancing “vibes.” There is extraordinary, untapped potential in our ordinary capacities for singing, listening, reading nonverbal cues, scanning the environment, and giving voice to life.
 
You can practice vibralingual mastery of breath, intention, tone, rhythm and repetition in service of being a tuning fork for the healing of urgent social and environmental challenges. Practice makes possible.

Mary Daniel: Could you share a little of how you work with others to encourage their voices?

Rachel: Working with leaders in climate change and social justice efforts often involves encouraging them to use their voices to break through stuck places of their work, where their heads, hearts and hands aren’t yet aligned.

Imagine that you’ve come to me for encouragement with your voice. We’ll work through the five elements of vibralingual wisdom, often with my singing back questions or suggestions in response to your inquiries. Perhaps I’ll actually have you do a hand gesture—a mudra—or movement to help open up your voice. 

Breath, intention, tone, rhythm and repetition serve as diagnostic, expressive and change-conducting tools in my one-on-one and group work with people. Working with vibralingual wisdom allows you to work at a freer level, one not directly identified with your challenges.

I’ll listen for a phrase that expresses a key to your next step. You’ll be encouraged to sing that phrase in different ways, alone and with me, as a way of amplifying your insight. Breakthroughs of new ideas and strategic options for action often follow such explorations. This process is particularly potent in a group of twenty or so leaders from different projects.

Mary Daniel: Your wonderful book, Divine Daughters, addresses the power of women coming into their full voices. Can you explain how voice is a tool for empowerment, especially for women?

Rachel: Two poems from Divine Daughters come to mind in response to your question.

      VOW

Mothers
You gave what
You got.  I shall not

Honey
Hush daughters
God-privilege sons

You gave
What you got
Fathers.  I shall not

      

“Vow” gives compassionate voice to two major sources of daughters’ silencing (please remember that all women are first daughters) while clearly asserting that the silencing stops here. It also issues an implicit invitation to the reader to take the vow as her or his own. In this way, the voice of the poem invites readers to use it as a tool to empower their voices, to heal the social conditioning that fuels much suffering in families and gender relations.

Please note “Vow” is written in a poetic form that I created. Each stanza is comprised of ten syllables, with two syllables in the first line, three in the second and five in the last. The form is a strict and deliberate equation designed to train the tongue and mind to compose easily memorized poems. By strengthening our capacity to create and publish beauty aurally and orally, we’ll make fewer demands on the backs of trees to carry our creations for us.

The second poem is the book’s title poem:

DIVINE DAUGHTERS

missing
the missing members
of our hallowed families

	kin of blessed
	mothers, holy
	fathers, sacred
	sons	

whose tongues
have been unheard

whose names
have been unsung

for thousands
upon thousands of years

divine daughters


				how were you so well hidden
				from us for so long?

				how are we hidden
				from ourselves? 


						 	once we have heard		
							just once
							deeply heard your names
							interior elder sisters
							just once heard all daughters
							hold all the people
							there will ever be
							inside
							before ever breathing a breath
							being pinked out
							learning to be tasty
							and everything nice			
							
							dear divine daughters
							life will for us be different

I wrote Divine Daughters to acknowledge and give voice to daughters’ divinity in a culture that is silent about it. Stories of daughters’ divinity in texts both sacred and secular are largely ignored. The book breaks that silence by its mere existence and encourages readers to do the same. It’s also filled with stories from many traditions about miraculous personal and social healing which has happened when daughters give voice to their creative experiences, insights and impulses for social justice. Divine Daughters empower(s) by example and invitation.

Mary Daniel: You have a strong connection with the natural world. Please say a little about how that connection has supported and inspired your own creativity.

Rachel: My creativity is deeply informed by the singing of the earth. I’ve recently had the privilege of spending time in the pristine rainforest with Ecuador’s Achuar people. By living true to their prophecies and dream practices, the Achuar have thus far successfully protected their ancestral territory from mining and oil exploitation. The night chorus of insects, frogs, and birds in Achuar territory has immeasurably broadened my aural and oral palette. The powerful beauty of what the Achuar and scientists call the “lungs of the earth” inspire me to be artistically and civically creative to protect the source of such beauty.

Mary Daniel: Tell me about your newest project, Choral Earth. Why are choristers so uniquely suited to be change agents in our current climate crisis?

Rachel: Here’s the score on Choral Earth: We commission music and create interactive awareness-raising programs designed to foster choral communities’ (and their audiences’) engagement in sustainability and climate change initiatives.

America’s Performing Art, Chorus America’s defining “Study of Choruses, Choral Singers, and Their Impact” found that choristers are leaders in “civic engagement, community activism, arts education, and preserving community heritage.”

Historically, choruses have proved influential in movements for social change in South Africa, Chile and England as well as the U.S.  America’s Performing Art, estimating that 28 million adults and children regularly sing in a chorus or choir, issues the following challenge: “Consider the power of your numbers, and how you can be a force to mobilize and galvanize positive change in your local communities.”

Choral Earth is devoted to turning this challenge into a resonant reality beginning with communities across North America. Timely changes in millions of singers’ energy habits—from rehearsals to performances, from choristers to audience members joined in ongoing civic engagement—have the potential to play a major role in environmentally-just sustainability and climate change initiatives. People can learn more by visiting www.SingYourPart.com.

Mary Daniel: What advice do you have for someone who wants to get started using his or her voice for healing?

Rachel: Find a nearby stream or creek, some small body of water or a fountain that you can become intimate with throughout the seasons of a year.  Listen to it during and following a rainstorm. Listen to it during dry times. Each time that you visit, pick one tone that you hear and sing that tone back to the water. Practice again and again until your singing with the water sounds like a duet.

At the same time, join a nearby community choir, one that sings songs about personal and community issues that matter to you. Begin by steeping in vocal community with life itself AND other people. Be mindful of the myriad ways life offers you rich opportunities to exercise the healing powers of breath, intention, tone, rhythm and repetition on a regular basis. I’d love to learn what you discover by doing so. Please send your stories to Rachel at ChoralEarth.com.

Mary Daniel: What excites you most right now about your creative work?

Rachel: The opportunity for conscious evolution that global warming and climate change are presenting to our species absolutely thrills me. It is such a joy to participate in the fulfillment of ancient prophecies -- like that of the Achuar people -- pointing to this as a time when the people of spiritual and scientific/material mastery learn to truly respect each other and cooperate for the benefit of life on earth.

My assignment is to listen deeply to the ecotones of this changing time, the vibrant edges of transitional zones where new life forms are born, and inspire the choral community to lend them our collective, resounding voices -- voices that will reverberate out into policies and ways of living that benefit all beings.

To learn more about Rachel’s work and listen to samples, visit www.SingYourPart.com.

FEATURED LINKS & RESOURCES:

Rachel Bagby has been creatively inspired by the following list of books, links, and films.

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony
Directed by Lee Hirsch
A film about the role singing played in bringing an end to apartheid in South Africa. Available on DVD. As the New York Times describes, the film shows “the central role that music - in the streets, on records, in prison and in exile - played in black South Africa's long struggle for liberation from white domination. ‘Amandla’ is the Xhosa word for power, and the film certainly lives up to its name.”
(Lion’s Gate, 2002)

Chorus and Community
Edited by Karen Alquist
A book of thirteen essays about how choruses create dynamic social and musical relationships that offer listeners powerful identities, worldviews and myriad opportunities for social healing. The book includes an accompanying CD that illustrates the traditions and vocal communities discussed in each chapter. (University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2006)

Circle of Stories
An online resource about Native American storytelling. As the web site explains, “In the basket of Native stories, we find legends and history, maps and poems, the teachings of spirit mentors, instructions for ceremony and ritual, observations of worlds, and storehouses of ethno-ecological knowledge. Stories often live in many dimensions, with meanings that reach from the everyday to the divine. Stories imbue places with the power to teach, heal and reflect.”

House of Night: The Lost Creation Songs of the Mohave People
Produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva
with Jim Mckee at Earwax Productions
An NPR radio program that “looks at these creation songs, their meaning to the Mohave, the passing on of the oral tradition within the tribe and how the language, songs and traditions are in danger of extinction in this modern world…. The Mojave, who spoke little English, looked for a way to reclaim their dignity and a way to communicate to new people. They found the solution in the universal language of music.”

The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body
By Steven Mithen
A book that draws upon archaeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and musicology to take the reader on a fascinating exploration of the relationships between vocalized sound and human evolution.
(Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass, 2006)

The Singing Revolution
By James and Maureen Tusty
An inspiring film about how Estonia reclaimed its freedom through the power of singing. As the web site explains, “Most people don’t think about singing when they think about revolutions. But song was the weapon of choice when, between 1987 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. During those years, hundreds of thousands gathered in public to sing forbidden patriotic songs and to rally for independence.”

ARTS & HEALING PODCAST

In addition to the written interview above, Rachel also recorded an audio interview with Mary Daniel Hobson in September of 2007. Tune in to hear Rachel speak and sing about her inspiring work using the voice as a catalyst for positive change.

To listen to the podcast on your computer, please click here.

To download the podcast via iTunes, plese click here.

To learn more about the Arts & Healing Podcast, produced by Britt Bravo, please click here.

READERS RESPOND

We would love to hear from you.
Please click here to send your comments, ideas, and feedback. Thank you.


SIGN UP FOR THE ARTS AND HEALING NETWORK E-MAILING LIST

Become part of our e-mailing list and receive a monthly email with information about what's new at artheals.org. To join the e-mailing list, please click here


AHN NEWS ARCHIVE

Missed a newsletter? Read past issues in the AHN News Archive.


^top

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

© 2008 Healing Arts Network. All rights reserved.