Jess Baker

— S I N G E R S O N T H E F R O N T L I N E S —

Singers on the Front Lines is a series of interviews with singers working to promote wellbeing, social justice, and sharing the gift of song with vulnerable communities. Subscribe (below) to receive notifications of future posts.

In this episode, I interview Jess Baker. Jess is a community musician based in West Yorkshire, in the UK. She works across a diverse range of settings including prisons (with people living on the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway), community singing groups, universities and schools. Jess is a board member on the Natural Voice Network and works for Hoot Creative Arts. 

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JESS BAKER LINKS

Jess Baker Sings | Kaninchen on Bandcamp | Hoot Creative Arts

Natural Voice Network | Thula Mama | Swan Song Project

Yellow Goose Band | Prince Tribute Band | Bruce Cole

Jess Baker: musician, singer, songwriter, and Natural Voice practitioner

“Community musicians are a bit like a Swiss Army knife. You have to be a very good musician, and very flexible. You have to have a toolkit ready because you can turn up, and you don’t quite know what you’ve got.”

— Jess Baker

Eduardo Mendonça

— S I N G E R S O N T H E F R O N T L I N E S —

Singers on the Front Lines is a series of interviews with singers working to promote wellbeing, social justice, and sharing the gift of song with vulnerable communities. Subscribe (below) to receive notifications of future posts.

In this episode I speak with Eduardo Mendonça, an award-winning composer, performer and teaching artist known for his warmth and generosity. Eduardo was born and raised in Bahia, an area of Brazil known for its musicality and deep roots in the rhythms of Africa. Eduardo and his family now live in the US, in Washington State, and he’ s the Music Director for IBuildBridges Foundation, a non-profit that brings together youth from diverse backgrounds to explore their own creativity, compose and perform, and build bridges among themselves, and beyond. In this wide-ranging conversation, Eduardo and I talk about the importance of long-term commitments when working with youth, tools and tips for performers who now find themselves teaching online, and how racial and social justice movements can utilize the power of music. 

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Eduardo Mendonca in performance.

“One more layer of my status here, is being an immigrant. At the same [time] I do recognize my privilege to be a man . . . and I still see a lot of injustice. But as an immigrant in this country, there are not many opportunities. . . . I did experience implicit discrimination; we do feel that. This is hard. ”

— Eduardo Mendonça

Eduardo Mendonca working with youth.

Eduardo Mendonca: performer, composer, and Music Director at iBuildBridges Foundation

“As a teaching artist . . . the teachers, they are thinking about education as a tool for transformation. We support and bolster creativity, critical thinking, communication – all these things that help people.”

— Eduardo Mendonça

LINKS

ShowBrazil

iBuildBridges Foundation

Eduardo on Facebook

Eduardo on Instagram

Eduardo on YouTube

Darko on LinkedIn

Darko C

— S I N G E R S O N T H E F R O N T L I N E S —

Singers on the Front Lines is a series of interviews with singers working to promote wellbeing, social justice, and sharing the gift of song with vulnerable communities. Subscribe (below) to receive notifications of future posts.

In this inaugural podcast episode, I interview a creative maverick from Myanmar, Darko C. Darko’s the lead singer for the Indie Rock band, Side Effect, and is also the Director of Turning Tables Myanmar - a global social enterprise working to empower marginalized youth by giving them constructive ways to express themselves through music and film - their hopes, fears and frustrations. Darko and his musical compatriots have lived through massive social changes over the past 15 years, as Myanmar (also known as Burma) has shifted from a military dictatorship to a hybrid model of government with many aspects now turned over to civilian control. Darko shares with us his thoughts on music’s role in culture shift, and the creativity needed to express yourself in a less-than-free environment.

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Voices of the Youth Workshop at Turning Tables (Yangon, Myanmar)

Darko C of Side Effect (Yangon, Myanmar)

Darko C, lead singer for the band, Side Effect, and Director of Turning Tables Myanmar

“It might sound like my religion, because the way I believe in the power of music is not just a form or physical experience. But a spiritual experience, too, because I really, really believe that we are just vibration . . . It’s a human thing, we’re not just wasting our time. I mean, just because it doesn’t create a lot of money or a lot of profit doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable thing. It’s a universal language.”

— Darko C

LINKS

Turning Tables

Side Effect on Facebook

Side Effect on YouTube

Darko on LinkedIn

Click here to see a transcript of this interview.

Elise Witt

— S I N G E R S O N T H E F R O N T L I N E S —

Singers on the Front Lines is a series of interviews with singers working to promote wellbeing, social justice, and sharing the gift of song with vulnerable communities. Subscribe (below) to receive notifications of future posts.

“I know, for me, my job on this planet is about connecting people and singing is how I do that.”

—Elise Witt

Elise Witt is a singer, songwriter, musician, teacher and arts activist with a passion for languages and building bridges through music. The child of survivors of Nazi Germany, Elise uses her music to promote causes of peace, justice, and human dignity in her own community as well as globally. Born in Switzerland, raised in North Carolina, and making her home in Atlanta Georgia US, Elise has served as a cultural ambassador to South Africa, Nicaragua, China, Italy, and Yugoslavia. She is a member of Alternate ROOTS, a coalition of artists based in the Southeastern United States, whose work is at the intersection of arts and activism. A lover of languages, Elise is fluent Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English, and sings in over a dozen languages. Her original songs are wildly eclectic, and she continues to collaborate with musicians form around the world. Since its founding in 2009, Elise has served as Artist-in-Residence and Director of Music Programs at Atlanta’s Global Village Project.

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SonicBloom: Welcome, Elise. Please introduce yourself and say a little bit about what you do.

Elise Witt: Greetings from Pine Lake, Georgia in the United States, just outside of Atlanta! I've been a full-time musician since I started working, and I’ve combined the two passions of my life, which are language and music, into what I do for work. I lead community singing here in Atlanta and on tour.

I also teach in schools and have been an artist-in-residence and traveling artist for many years. I go to communities, anywhere from a week to even months, working with schools and community groups to introduce music from many cultures, and also write songs with students and community members. Recently all of that energy has come to focus on my work at the Global Village Project, a special purpose Middle School for teenage refugee girls with interrupted education, and the girls come from Afghanistan, Burma, Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic. I [also] use American Sign Language to teach English. So, my life’s work has become a marriage of my passion for languages and my passion for music. I was born in Switzerland and my first language is German, but I've been in the United States and at [the age of] four I discovered how interesting languages are, so I decided I wanted to learn all the languages in the world. Of course, I'm far from that goal, because there are more than 1,000 languages just on the continent of Africa! But I'm still working on it, and my students are a big help. 

An Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ workshop at Alternate ROOTS Weekend, Eatonville, Florida, USA. (Photo by Lily Keber)

SB: Well, I think you’ve made an impressive dent in that goal! Where does your love of languages come from? Does it come from living in different countries, that your parents come from different countries, or . . . ?

EW: When we arrived in the United States I was put into nursery school, and all the little children were running around and making weird sounds that I'd never heard before. They were speaking English and it just sounded strange to me, and I didn't know what was going on. I did something which I think is weird, but they say is what a lot of children do, which was that I was silent for six months in school. And then I started speaking English. And what happened for me was that I realized how the two languages I knew, English and German, not only had different sounds, they were like different [kinds of] music. And there were different ways of saying things, different expressions that were untranslatable. And I realized that as you learn a new language, you're really learning a whole new way of expressing yourself, and a whole new vocabulary of sounds. I was just fascinated with language. After that I wanted to learn French, and French led to Spanish in high school. And then in college I got excited about Italian, and started a lifelong love affair with Italy. I've spent a lot of time there and have close friends, and also teach and do concerts. The languages I speak fluently are German, English, French, and Italian. But thanks to my students at the Global Village Project I’m learning bits of Swahili, bits of Karen, bits of Malay, Kinyarwanda, and more.... I [go] to a large farmers market here in Atlanta, and many of the people that work there speak Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea. I have some students from Ethiopia and Eritrea, so I like to surprise them and try out new words. 

SB: I know there have been studies linking language skills and the ability to learn music – there's a connection with how musicians learn to listen. I'm curious to know if your parents were musicians. Did you grow up in a musical house?

EW: Yes, very much. My father was a scientist and farmer, but he also played the cello, and had been playing the cello since he was a boy. He grew up in a very interesting household – his mother’s family was Mendelssohn and they had house concerts there on Sundays. People would come from all over Berlin, for jam sessions like we would have now. Albert Einstein sometimes came and brought his “fiddle.” My father said he wasn’t very good! My father tells the story of how he and his sisters and brothers would watch from the upstairs balcony, and Eleanora Duse, a famous opera singer, would drink a raw egg yolk in a glass of red wine to oil her throat. So, my father grew up in a household very rich [with music]. My mother also grew up in a musical family and loved the piano and singing. Her family lived in Frankfurt, and her father was a dentist. Sometimes he would barter with his patients who couldn't afford to pay him, and one of those patients was Henny Rosenstrauch. She was a student of Jacque Dalcroze, who created a system of teaching music to children [using] movement and rhythm. When we moved to the United States, Henny had also immigrated from Germany, and she told my mother, “You should go back to school and get your teaching degree and become a Dalcroze teacher.” So, after [being a] French teacher when we first arrived, my mother started teaching music.

Both my parents liked to sing duets, and my mom played piano and recorder. They would have jam sessions with their friends, colleagues of my dad, and my sister and I would run through the house trying to escape the classical music.

SB: That's funny, and quite the lineage, quite the heritage, there. I know from listening to your music, I can hear so many influences and I'm curious – what instruments do you play?

EW: I grew up playing piano – I was forced to take lessons until I was 16. I studied cello for one year, but that didn't really stick. I was taught to look at what Pete Seeger calls, “fly specs and hen scratches on the paper,” and learned how to translate that into my fingers to play the piano. But now I wish I had been taught how music works, you know, like, “Oh, look at this – isn't this cool? This is a diminished chord, and it can ascend or descend in a musical progression.” I wish music teachers taught us to look at the whole pattern of music, how it works. That's something I've been learning later in life. I got a guitar for my high school graduation. My voice is my primary instrument, but I do play a lot of guitar to accompany myself and I use the piano for composing. 

There’s a retreat center for artists and scientists here in North Georgia, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. In 2002 I received my first residency there. And when you go there, they give you a cabin and leave you alone. Residents can spend anywhere from two to eight weeks, and four evenings a week we were served dinner at the main house. At dinner I had the opportunity to meet artists and scientists working on a wide variety of projects, but other than that, I was just left alone to work. I was given a cabin with a huge dance floor, a grand piano, a tiny bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. And I thought, “Well, I won’t pick up my guitar for a week and let’s see what happens if I just play the piano, where I can see what music looks like right there in black and white.” I started composing songs on the piano, and a lot of songs that I've written since then have been written on piano.   

Street singing in Little 5 Points, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. (Photo by Jessica Lily)

SB: I can relate to that. I think every instrument teaches us something new about music theory. I started on piano, and it wasn't until I tried to learn guitar that I learned about more about chord theory. Classical piano didn’t teach me about chord theory. 

So, to link your musical past and present, I’d like to ask you about the phrase, ‘singers on the front lines.’ What does that phrase mean to you? 

EW: Well, I've been thinking about it, and it's interesting because I want to immediately deconstruct [the phrase] and turn the line into a circle, and then turn the circle into a spiral because I feel like a line is . . . linear. [Laughs] Singing in community for me is singing in a circle. A circle is a very powerful shape – it’s the way we connect with each other. We don't lose each other with a line going out in either direction, but we're actually connecting around the circle. I often think about singing out my ears instead of out my mouth, because when we're standing in a circle, we’re connecting with the people next to us. What goes on in our brain, in our body, is that we’re learning. If we're singing a song, for example, we're learning words, we're learning rhythms, we're learning melody. All of that happens in our brain. We get that into our body, and then we connect with the other people in our group that are singing the same thing to create perfect union. And to do that we have to create sound waves that exactly match each other. [If you’ve ever had the] experience of singing with someone with who isn’t quite in tune, you can feel the vibrations actually bumping into each other. But when we’re singing in unison, we're literally matching each other’s sound waves and creating sounds in unison. In community singing we're also hearing people on the other side [of the circle], singing a different part. We're creating harmonies and those sound waves are moving together in a “pleasing” sound. “Pleasing” is a really subjective and cultural idea because there are many ways of singing harmony that, for some cultures, sound beautiful and natural, and to other cultures it sounds strange and weird. So, we're creating these harmonies with waves that are intersecting and meeting. It’s not just the individual person and their voice, but actually hearing how all those parts fit together into one sound. 

When I'm teaching and we're in a circle, I often let people take turns stepping into the circle, being quiet and just listening. It's moving your ears from one part to another, almost like going inside the sound, and hearing how it all comes together. There's something so incredibly powerful about that, the act of listening, and the act of hearing how it all comes together. And then coming back in, being able to hold your own part, the part with your group, hearing other people and hearing what you're creating together. I think about Bernice Johnson Reagon [singer, composer, scholar, social activist, and founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock], when she was interviewed by Bill Moyers a long time ago. She talked about how, during the Civil Rights Movement, when they were in a church, knowing the police were coming with their dogs, the KKK was coming, there was danger coming, and they literally changed the molecules in the air by singing. I think that's what singing does. It changes the molecules in our bodies, and it changes the molecules between us, among us and around us. And we create this incredibly powerful sonic environment that has the power to change things.

SB: It's interesting how frequencies influence other frequencies. I recently learned that scientists at MIT have mapped out the frequency of the Coronavirus, turning those frequencies into music, and they're looking for counter frequencies as a way to “neutralize” its harmful frequencies.

EW: Wow, that’s really fascinating. The realm of the musician is the realm of vibration. 

SB: I want to go back to what you were saying about deconstructing the phrase ‘singers on the front line’, and the word, ‘line’ or ‘front line.’ You're right – I picture music as a frequency that does influence what's around it, that pulls you in and draws a circle and spirals around. And also, when I think of the ‘front lines’, there's sometimes a demarcation telling us something's not quite right. Either there's conflict or war. I think about your students, coming to this country at a very tender age - middle school can be such a difficult time. There are so many changes going on for them, within themselves let alone being refugees and having to deal with a whole new culture. And we've got COVID-19 right now, and we're isolated. I feel like the ‘front lines’ are referring to these tension points where music could melt the line, and turn it into a circle and a spiral.

EW: I've actually written a song about that.

SB: Of course you have! 

EW: It's called, Spiral. Would you like to hear a little bit of it?

SB: Yes, please.

EW: It's really about language and music. 

 SB: I love it. I love it. When you said, “revolution,” I thought revolutions per minute, you know, ‘revolution’ to literally go ‘round and ‘round. That’s how language gets used, the associations we have with it.

EW: And if you think about revolutions in history, you know, political revolutions pretty much come right on back to where they started. The minute people get in power, they take power and are corrupted by power. So, it's a sad part of our human history. 

 SB: Right, true. Thank you for that song. So, continuing the theme of ‘front lines,’ what's happening on your front lines right now, and what role does music play? It seems like your music with Global Village Project is educational too, and has a social intention to it, beyond you as a singer-songwriter and performer.

EW: Yeah. When I had just finished college in North Carolina, I got a job at a Greek restaurant that was across the street from the theater department of the university. I was working at the restaurant because I wanted to learn Greek, which didn't really work very well because the guys there only taught me swear words. [Laughs] But all these kids from the theater department would come over and they were super flamboyant – they were just so theatrical and entertaining. Then I read an article about Rebecca Ranson, a playwright who was doing theater at a women’s prison in North Carolina. Joan Little was one of the women being held in that prison and was a cause celebre within the Progressive Movement. Bernice Johnson Reagon wrote a famous song about her as well. At the prison in “Little Washington NC, with Rebecca Ranson, the inmates were creating theater about their lives and their situations, and I had this revelation about how there were two things that were both called ‘theater,’ but they were nothing like each other. One was the theater across the street that was flamboyant, centered around entertainment. And then there was theater that was actually telling the stories of the lives of these incarcerated women. It's so powerful, changing the vibrations in our bodies and in the air around us. That led me to get involved in an organization called Alternate ROOTS, a coalition of artists whose work is at the intersection of arts and activism. I have been a member since 1978, and it became my family of artists. That family has schooled and trained me to be an artist activist. I'm still very involved in Alternate ROOTS. They have a grant program called Partners in Action that funds work in communities to help expand services, and they have supported my work at the Global Village Project.    

A lot of my work now focuses on the Global Village Project, and over the past 11 years we’ve created an arts-integrated curriculum. The underlying goal of the school is for students to learn English. But, of course, hand-in-hand with that, is to help them acclimate and get their feet on the ground in this strange new place that they find themselves. I use singing to teach English, and teach a lot of songs from the global peace and justice repertoire. I also learn songs from the students. We say that “every teacher is a student, and every student is a teacher.” So, I find I learn as much from my students as they learn from me.

We also write a lot of songs. For example, I’ll ask the math teacher what they’re working on in Math Class. If they’re working on fractions, we might write a song about the different rules of fractions. We brainstorm together to come up with a chorus, and then break into small groups to write verses. When you're part of creating something, when you're part of making a song, you will remember it forever. And, you know, we might write a really complicated song that has seven verses, or even 17 verses, but they will remember it forever because they were part of the creation process. We wrote a song about affixes. I didn't even know there was such a thing – affixes are is the collective word for suffixes and prefixes. Now, it's sort of a weird concept to think about, but the students that wrote that song, they're always going to know what suffixes are, and what prefixes are.

SB: Yes, that idea of creating together.

EW: So, we're learning language, but we're also using the language that we learn to make something. And we make it together, and we're making it in community. It's a really fun process, which has now turned into a really strange process because we’re all online. I'm teaching my community singing classes online, and it's really weird, but it's also really powerful because it's still a way of connecting with each other in this time when we can’t be together live and in person. 

I taught my community singing class last night, and it was just so lovely to see the people I've been singing with for years. And Global Village Project is all online as well. The school has done an amazing job of adapting so quickly to this new situation, with all the students at home. Each student has a tablet, they have headphones and microphones. I’m working on a project right now with the girls which is very challenging, to make a video of the girls singing a song that one of our music volunteers, Elliott Ray, wrote called, “I Can Make A Home.” It's a beautiful song and the girls really love it. 

[Elise later noted that there will be a video of it soon! Her friend, Lea Morris, is helping her make it.]

SB: Yes, it's a whole different beast. What I find really interesting is that, on social media, it seems like every second or third post is a choir or music video, or someone in their bedroom singing a song. I’m really fascinated with how we're consuming and creating music in this time. I'm more inclined right now to click on a friend's video from their living room than a slick and highly produced video. It’s less than perfect, but I feel more connected to them, to their humanness. I can relate. I'm curious to know about the girls you're working with, because many of them come from so many different cultures with different musical traditions. What are you observing about your students? Are they turning to music in this time? What are some of the different cultural responses that you're seeing that involve or don't involve music?

EW: Well, that's actually a question that I have posed to them. I asked them to send me a link of a song that has been comforting or powerful for you them in this time. I was hoping I would get a lot of music from their cultures and in their languages, but I’m getting more In English. It's interesting. There are some really beautiful songs that I've been introduced to, which I love. There's an artist I had not heard of before named Tatiana Manaois. Her lyrics are very powerful and very encouraging. One of the girls sent me a video of hers last night, and we decided we would use it in class this afternoon for a dance party. 

One of the things you're asking about is the importance of music in different cultures. All the students love music, no matter what culture they come from. They love singing, they love dancing. Most of them are amazing dancers. One of the most powerful things about our school are is the friendships that are made across cultures. As you said, middle school is such a vulnerable and delicate and scary time for anyone. As a teenage girl, this is probably one of the most important times of their lives. We're now in our 11th year, so we have students who are now graduating from college. But they’re still connected to their friends from Global Village Project. We’ve started an alumni program and it's really taking off. 

Our last day of school we had a “drive-by parade”. The staff went to all the different apartment complexes where the girls live. We decorated the cars, and went by, just to let them know that we’re so sad that there couldn’t be a real graduation. They didn't get to do all the things that you do to mark that that big transition.

Parade for Global Village Project students during COVID-19 to mark the end of the school year. Altanta, Georgia, USA (Photo by Dean Hesse of Decaturish)

SB: Well, the parade sounds wonderful. Sometimes even a small or simple ritual can help mark the end of such an important time in life.

A bit of a technical question – why use music to teach English? You said if they write a song, they'll remember it forever. I don’t know if you've ever read Oliver Sacks or Daniel Levitin, they've both done a lot of research and written a lot about music. For example, music lives in the oldest part of our memory. Alzheimer's patients will remember songs from their childhood long after they've forgotten the names of their children or their spouses.

EW: Yeah. When I was doing a lot of artist-in-residencies, and working at senior centers as a visiting artist, I had a friend who was 95, and there was a woman who was 102. They remembered all these songs. And what's so powerful when you go in somewhere like that, and you start singing songs from their era, there are people there who may be sitting in a wheelchair that have not moved at all. They look like they're not mentally there, and when that song starts you might see a finger start to keep time, you might also hear a voice that starts singing. And, you know, miracles happen with that. It's very, very powerful. 

SB: So, memory seems like an obvious reason to use music for teaching. If there's rhythm and melody, new information will go into that part of our brain where we'll remember it longer. Are you finding other benefits to teaching with language with music? And they’re learning so much more than language. They're learning skills, and how to be in the world, and how to be in this foreign land.

EW: Well, we've heard that music is in certain parts of the brain, but I recently learned that music is actually in every part of the brain. So, no matter what we lose, music is still there. One of the things we do in music class is sing in harmony. When we’re learning our own part, we're learning other parts and how things fit together. But one of the things that the girls love to do is conduct. I teach a lot of rounds because a round is something everybody can learn quickly, and everybody learns the same melody. Then when each group starts at different times, we create instant harmony. Some people think rounds are really boring, but there are amazing rounds that have been written by people like Becky Reardon, Joanne Hammil, and many more. So, when we do a round at the Global Village Project, three students volunteer, very excitedly, to conduct. And when they become the conductors they're very strict. In class, they might be sitting, lounging and, you know, leaning back in their chairs. But when they become the conductor, it’s, “Okay, we're going to stand up!” And the students always follow the conductors – there's no question about that! So, there's this way of being a leader, when it's your turn to conduct, of creating the group. I love being able to step back and let them take the lead. Because every student is a teacher, and every teacher is a student. Also, we use a lot of American Sign Language, which is really beautiful. I use it quite a lot for teaching and it let’s the song become a dance!  

SB: That's very Dalcroze of you. We’ve been talking about the positive ways that music is powerful, and I want to ask you about music as a tool for indoctrination. I think about armies marching in lockstep, or propaganda songs. I know you end classes with the girls reciting some values and principles. You want students to be in sync with each other to create trust and a supportive environment. But I’m wondering how you find a balance between being mindful of the girls and where they’re coming from – culturally, spiritually – and supporting their own development without them feeling pressure to believe in a specific set of principles?

EW: Yeah. It makes me think of the practice you and I share, which is the work of improvisation. We've been studying with our wonderful teacher, Rhiannon, and yes, there's music where we learn songs, and we create harmonies singing together. But there's also the element of Improvisation, and that is, I think, the element of freedom. A lot of times people are scared of improvisation because they think it's just taking a leap into the void, into nothingness. I think that improvisation is that beautiful balance between structure and freedom. And I think that's one of the roles of teaching – to provide structure, to give songs, to provide possibilities. So, we're learning how music can be made. But I've also realized that every song is like a springboard for creativity. In so many traditions, especially for example in the African American tradition, any song can be an invitation to add a creative expression. How do I fit into this song? Where is there a space in the song for my voice? 

SB: So, it's that balance between structure and freedom. I remember visiting your school, and you invited me to teach a song. And I didn’t attribute the song to the right person, and you very politely, and very supportively, corrected me. You knew the history of the song, where it came from. You make sure if you’re presenting a song that’s not your own that you know something about that. I think that integrity and sensitivity go a long way in modeling good leadership.

EW: Yes, well, that's something I've learned along the way. One of my most important teachers is Dr. Ysaye Maria Barnwell, who was the bass singer in Sweet Honey in the Rock, and who's still a force of nature. She grew up singing next to her father in church, who was a bass singer. She learned the bass part, but then she learned every other part as well. And when she teaches, she teaches all the parts from the bottom up, from the foundation. She always emphasizes knowing the music, where it comes from, something about its life. For example, knowing the difference between a Spiritual and Gospel music. I feel it's really important to do your homework and that's what we're here for – for each other. Actually, what's happening now with all of this virtual online singing is we’re helping each other, and learning from each other. I'm finding sources of songs that I didn't know where they came from, which is exciting. And also, it's providing a platform for us to learn songs from young composers. There's so much exciting music happening right now. There's no geography anymore. In my Monday night community class, I have people from Chicago, Florida and North Carolina along with my regular Atlanta folks. And on Saturdays, I’ve been participating in an online community sing led by Maggie Wheeler from the Golden Bridge Community Choir in Los Angeles California. She invites 3 or 4 other song leaders to share music and there are as many as 300 people from all around the world! 

SB: I'm curious, especially in this time of COVID-19, is there someone who's inspiring you right now, who's singing on these front lines, or front spiral?

EW: Yes. I met a singer online from Alexandria, Virginia named Lea Morris. when she and I were invited to co-lead an online community singing circle with Elizabeth Melvin, founder and director of The Freedom Choir in Annapolis Maryland. And I was so taken, with Lea’s style of leading, as well as the songs that she's writing, and the way that she uses traditional songs. I find her so inspiring – her spirit, her composing, and in the way she's embracing technology. She and I are talking about some collaboration!

SB: Wow, fantastic. I look forward to reading up more about her. OK, last question. Is there anything else you want to say about the role of music right now? 

EW: Well, the technology is really challenging me. I'm not someone who really enjoys that part of it. I could have just said, “Let me just pause here and step back and not continue teaching.” But I decided I would continue my local Atlanta class. Which is not only local, because geography no longer matters, but I see how important it is for people. People say, “This is the best part of my week.” And I have to admit, it's also the best part of my week, connecting with people. We're singing together, but we can't all listen to each other at once. It's also a way of exploring what works musically in this strange format. And there are moments where we can leave pauses that other people can fill in. There are ways of looking at the technology, ways that singing with other people can work. I think the bottom line is, we're hungry for connection, and it's providing a way for us to continue to connect. Last night in my class people were so, so grateful to be there. And it's funny, because if you're in a choir or a big group, you can get lost and just kind of follow along with other people. But in this format, you're really hearing yourself and the leader, and people are surprised and enjoying hearing themselves, and playing with harmonies, playing with unison, playing with improvisation. Just getting a chance to be expressive and play and see what happens. There's a lot that we're missing, but there's also a lot to discover. And I think staying connected with each other is what's so important. I know, for me, my job on this planet is about connecting people and singing is how I do that. It's not what I do. It's how I do what I do.

SB: That's beautifully said. Elise, thank you so much. 

Elise Witt: singer, songwriter, musician, teacher and arts activist

“What’s happening now with all of this virtual online singing is we’re helping each other, and learning from each other. . . And also, it’s providing a platform for us to learn songs from young composers. There’s so much exciting music happening right now. There’s no geography anymore.”

— Elise Witt

Maanveer Singh

— S I N G E R S O N T H E F R O N T L I N E S —

Singers on the Front Lines is a series of interviews with singers working to promote wellbeing, social justice, and sharing the gift of song with vulnerable communities. Subscribe (below) to receive notifications of future posts.

“Music is more than an auditory experience. It is also a tactile experience . . . people can sense music through their skin.“

—Maanveer Singh

Maanveer Singh is a passionate coach and trainer as the CEO for Extended DISC India, a psychometric assessment tool that helps people identify their own behavioral style, and harness that understanding to make decisions in their personal development. With a background in sales, Maanveer comes from a culture that highly values the role of music in life, in health and wellbeing. Over the years he has developed his own coaching style to incorporate music therapy principles and Indian classical music. While not formally trained as a singer, Maanveer uses his voice for healing and therapy – using songs, chanting, Tibetan singing bowls when working with clients, as well as Hindu devotional singing which uses specific songs for specific purposes based on their frequencies - different songs for different times of day, different environments, different health issues. He has received training from Kerns University in Vienna, The Indian Association of Sound Healing, Musicians Without Borders, and the Nutrilite Health Institute in the U.S..

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Maanveer has suggested the following Indian ragas [melodies] to listen to during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the tradition of Indian classical music, ragas are intended to be heard at a specific time of day, to create certain frequencies that assist the body to heal itself. For more information about the science behind this, MedicinaNarrativa has an excellent summary titled, Sound Thearpy and Well-Being.

Throat Chakra (6pm - 9pm)
Raga Jaijaiwanti with flute
Raga Jaijaiwanti with vocal

Heart Chakra (6am - 9am)
Raga Ahir Bhairav with flute (6am - 9am)
Raga Durga with vocal (9pm-12am)

Solar Plexus Chakra (stomach and liver)
Raga Malkauns with sitar (12am-3am)
Raga Bhimpalas with vocal (3pm-6pm) 

Sacral Chakra (liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas)
Raga Gujari Todi with vocal (9am-12pm)
Raga Yaman with santoor (6pm-9pm)

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SonicBloom: Tell me about the role that music plays in your life.

Maanveer Singh: In ancient Indian mythology there is the story of Abhimanyu, about a battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas [family names of cousins]. Abhimanyu is said to have learned the secret of how to break into a war formation, called the Chakravyuh, or a concentric formation of circles that creates a war formation His pregnant mother overheard this being discussed, but fell asleep before they finished. So, it is said that he learned [in the womb] how to get into the formation but not how to get out. I think I got interested in music because my mother was learning the sitar when she was expecting me. So, I think I get it from there. Since then, somehow this interest with music, especially Indian classical music, has always been there.  

My mom used to be a regular music goer, she used to be an emcee for many shows and conferences, and I used to accompany her. Usually [I would] go to the last row and fall asleep – just escort her and bring her home. I started staying awake, starting liking what I was hearing. Started appreciating, started moving to the front rows. Then I went backstage and [later] became an organizer. But the love of Indian classical music didn’t end there. Not too much of the technical stuff, but more interesting was the appreciative part of Indian classical music, and the research, that got me and keeps me hooked, even until today. That’s what really keeps me fascinated about the various things that can be done with music, without having too much of a formal or in-depth, you know, learning. I’m not trained in that sense. The teacher who taught me sitar was a very senior student of Pandit Ravi Shankar, and he told me, “My guru taught me one raga for 12 years.” And I said, “Wow. OK, that’s fascinating, to be able to learn one melodic scale for 12 years, and then improvise that.” That’s amazing. That kind of tradition doesn’t exist anymore – we don’t have the time, we don’t have the patience – but that’s an amazing tradition to go through. 

So that’s what kept me, that’s a little bit about how music came into my life, what I did with music, what I do with music. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some audio companies, so I’ve had the chance to record some of these great musicians from Bismillah Kahn, Ravi Shankar, you name it. I’ve produced more than 100 titles of music, been in the studio with these people – recording, editing, listening, working closely with them. Pandit Jasraj, Bhimsen Joshi the vocalist, Gangu Bai Hangal, Mallikarjun Mansour, T N Krishnan. I worked with the seventh generation descendant of Thyagaraja, Maharajapuram Santhanam. It’s amazing to have been in close quarters [with these incredible musicians].

SB: That sounds like a really rich experience. You say there are many ways to use music without a lot of formal training. What are some examples of how you’ve used music?

MS: I use it a lot in behavioral coaching as well as medical cases. About 4.5 years back my father had a stroke. He was normally a very calm and patient person, but when he came out of the hospital he was extremely agitated. He was agitated to the point of almost being violent. He used to throw tantrums, he used to throw his food plate. He used to get very short-tempered, he wouldn’t let anybody come close to him. And that’s possibly the effect of the stroke and the medicines that he had, we don’t know. But he was a very different person when he came out of the hospital, from the person who went into the hospital, the person whom I knew for 50-odd years of my life. And I remembered there was something that he liked to do a lot, and that was listen to devotional music from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the most holy place for the Sikhs. [Every evening] he used to love to listen to the live broadcast of the shabads [hymn or sections of the Holy Text] and the kirtans [call-and-response style song or chant]. Those are very calming. So I moved the television into his bedroom, and told the attendants that for one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening, this must be put on. And mind you, my dad is deaf in one ear, and he hears only 40% in the other ear. But I know that music is more than an auditory experience – it is also a tactile experience. I know that people can sense music through their skin. So, the music was played at a loud volume for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. And in 15 days’ time, he started wanting to change channels, he started wanting to watch the news, he calmed down considerably, he was eating his food. That’s 4.5 years back, and until he passed recently he still had the TV in his room, he still watched Friends and soaps, sitcoms, you name it.

SB: And did he remember that period of time, recovering from the stroke? Was he coherent?

MS: He can’t remember. . .I don’t want to remind him. I have photographs, I have videos, but I don’t want to remind him because that’s not a good place for him to go back to. 

Just before this lockdown, I was helping a person who had a stroke on one side of the brain 10 years back, and in October last year he had a stroke on the other side of the brain. He used to love to play the flute, and he couldn't even coordinate the position of his fingers. So we used song, movement, cognitive rehabilitation, to the extent that [he could play] the flute, His relatives were completely amazed how such a thing has happened, and I've been treating him for only about two and a half months, three times a week, and that's all. We’ve used so much music, we use vibration. I found out that he likes devotional Marathi songs, so I encouraged him to start singing those. Then I got him a set of cymbals and temple bells, and he started singing things like, “Mazhe maahera pandhari, Aiyee bheem a re jaati ri.” So these are Abhang vani and Sant Vani [devotional] songs to Lord Vitthal and other dieties. And he would come and sing those songs, and we would do meditation, prayer, the Tibetan bowls, we would sing together, we would dance together. And then, of course, there's nutrition. So, none of this can work without a good amount of nutritive support. Once you do all these things, you stretch the cells, you expand the cells, you agitate the cells to a level of positive anxiety. And you want them to remain in that state, you want them to be conducting, be working, to be firing, you want the neurons to work, you don't want the neurons to go back into this listless state of existence that he had, after he goes home. I want him to be active. So, we added supplements such as plant proteins, with ashwagandha [Indian ginseng], with tulsi [holy basil], with Omega 3 fatty acids. Those played a phenomenal role in scaffolding and supporting this initiative.

SB: Very interesting. In peacebuilding and development work, there’s this idea of “do no harm” – making sure the intervention takes a community’s cultural context and own empowerment into consideration. You talked about the beauty of music being that it can have a powerful effect even without a lot of formal training. I’m curious to know, what grounds you without this formal training? Is there something that you keep in mind as you do this work? Because you're using powerful tools, so how do you ensure that you ‘do no harm’? 

MS: Well, though I don't have formal training in this, I do a lot of work with psycho-metrics and behavioral coaching. So, I keep that experience in mind. One of the principles of coaching is that when the person leaves, they must leave feeling better than they did when they came in. There is a very powerful line by [Lebanese-American writer] Khalil Gibran, who says that a good teacher is not one who encourages you to enter the depth of his wisdom, but he leads you to the threshold of your own awareness. So, I try and get people to move to the threshold of their awareness. I challenge them with questions, with activities. 

SB: So, it’s not a matter of no formal training – your formal training is in coaching, and you apply that to working with music. Interesting. You’ve talked about a medical setting with your father, and the man who had two strokes. You also mentioned music in behavior coaching. Can you describe a little bit about DISC, and how you’ve linked that to music?

MS: DISC is based on [Jungian] psychological theory that introduced the concept of behavioral continuums. Jung wrote about people’s behavior being easily measurable on continuums of opposites – we can be introvert or extrovert, thinking or feeling, perceiving or judging, sensing or intuitive. Jung and Freud had this fantastic mentor/mentee relationship, and at one point in time there was a flashpoint, when Freud [did not] allow Jung to publish his work. And Jung, in retaliation to that disagreement, went ahead and published what would become the cornerstone of psycho-metric theory. All psycho-metric models being used now are based on Jung’s Psychological Types, in which he [weaves together] philosophy, theology, the concept of archetypes. So, it’s a complex blend of knowledge. William Moulton Marston [later] took these continuums and combined them into an axis, and created a four-quadrant model. The four [quadrants] of DISC are: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance – these are the four styles of behavior. 

One of the fascinating things about the Extended DISC tool is that it [looks at] the expression of emotions and feelings in people. And a couple of years back, I got an idea: why not use the expression of emotions and feelings of people, as prescribed by a psycho-metric assessment (which combines psychology and statistics], and bring in the cultural relevance of Indian classical music in terms of emotions and feelings? We know there are emotions and feelings. We know that Tansen composed [the Raga Megh] Malhar to bring down the rains, we know that he composed the Raga Deepak when he wanted to generate heat. We know that certain ragas influence certain behavior in certain ways – ragas that are good for blood pressure, to calm people down. So why not use all this? And that’s when I started putting [it all] together, and it started to make sense. Even NASA sent The Beatles song, Across the Universe out into space to see if there was life in the cosmos, and whether they could communicate back to us through music. Because [music] is organized frequencies, [so would] those frequencies would make any sense to anyone “out there”?

SB: Are you familiar with the work of either Oliver Sacks or Daniel Levitin? Daniel Levitin has written This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs. Both have so much good information about vibration and frequency and the physical effect of music. Some of the research that's been done is absolutely fascinating. Now we're in this era of COVID-19, and when I originally contacted you about this interview you shared with me a story that I found absolutely fascinating, which was about the “sonification” of the virus. Someone actually turned the frequency of the virus into music. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

MS: Ah, well, I'm not a science guy, but I've been using the solfeggio frequencies with people, [using the frequency of specific notes for healing]. If you look at it on a quantum level, we are all matter, and matter has its own frequency. So, if you're able to find what something beats at, is it a normal frequency, is it a binary frequency? What kind of a beat is this, this little irritant that is creating havoc in the world? If you're able to do that, maybe you could create something in terms of an “echo” or [counter frequency] that could arrest this. I think it's possible. I'm pretty sure the cure or the vaccine will come from something very unconventional. It has to. And music is a good way to approach this.

SB: I find it so interesting, what's happening in the science community. I keep thinking the study of vibration is going to be the next big thing. I wonder why these studies don’t seem to make the mainstream news. Do we have certain assumptions about music? You said earlier, it's a nice word, but we're sort of missing the real “meat” of it.

MS: Yeah, you need somebody with a lot of investment at stake to make this into what we want it to be. Because what is at stake is medicine, and medicine has got a lot of interests in terms of investments. So, they will approach it only from that direction, they will approach it only from the profit [perspective]. Music is something which you cannot . . . I mean, how much can you profit from music? What will you write? You will write a capsule, you will write a code, you write a song, you will write a set of instructions, and it will go viral, and in three weeks’ time the world will be healed. And who's going to make money out of that? Nobody's going to make money. 

SB: Yeah, sad to say. I agree. So, what's next for you in terms of music and how you use music, or the role that music plays in your life? The DISC research sounds very interesting. Are you going to develop that further, or somehow share it in some way? Or is there something else on your horizon?

MS: There are two things. One is, I am trying to link DISC now with the musical intelligences. [Howard Gardner came up with the theory of] nine types of intelligence: [naturalist, musical, logical-mathematical, existential, interpersonal, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, intra-personal, and spatial. I'm trying to link these to musical intelligence and see if there's any correlation. Then I will work out an online assessment to [line up] with DISC styles to get a comprehensive understanding of behavioral preferences in relation to level of musical intelligence. By sending an online questionnaire with links, we're able to try and find out, 

There are tests that are available [for] musical intelligence, but those are very narrow tests in terms of their appeal. They test if you can hear the tone or not hear the tone, whether the sounds sharp or the sounds flat, does it sound nice or does not sound nice? I want to widen the scope out of the nine intelligences. Music is a very strong intelligence. We know how important music is in treatment of things like autism, in terms of conditions like Parkinson’s, dementia, managing schizophrenia. All these things have case studies, we have examples. They’re very clear about this. 

SB: Is there someone who's inspiring you right now? Is there someone who's using music for wellbeing and connection that you look to, or that you follow? 

MS: Yes, there is. There's a very famous Indian musician, Zakir Hussein, a tabla player and percussionist. His crossover work is very good. He's very rooted in tradition and doesn't compromise on tradition, and that's what I like. A lot of people who do crossover work forget their roots. So not only is he very, very rooted and, 

I’m [actually- very close to the family because Zakir’s younger brother, Fazal, was my classmate, and one younger brother was [also at the same] college. So, I've spent a lot of time with the family, in their house [where] we had music gatherings that went on, spontaneous stuff, went on for five, six days. Zakir’s father would call one musician, and another, and we would have three, four nights of music, dance, song just going on and on. A group of about 50, 60 of us, and we were we would be enjoying some of the best musicians in the world, there in the house, a completely informal setting. 

My mother has been a very strong inspiration [as well]. She used to sing very well at one point of time, and she's hosted a lot of events. She was very close to musicians. So, I've benefited a lot from the inspiration that I've got from my mother. But if there’s somebody who's work I appreciate, who’s crisp, who’s clear, who's very focused on what he wants to do with music, is Zakir. He's a great person, and as a musician he's a genius. Everybody knows that. There is no denying, no doubt about it.

SB: And so how would you describe what his intention is for his music, how he's using music?

MS: I heard him in an ensemble last year, and he had students who have learned unconventional percussion instruments like drums, djembe – African instruments, not classical Indian. They had learned Indian compositions, and Zakir said something that was very, very touching, and very powerful. He said, “Our role is not only to be custodians of the music. Yes, we are custodians of the theory, but our role is to be like an ocean, to flow.” And ‘the ocean refuses no river, the sky refuses is no song,’ that's what your SonicBloom tagline says. So, he says, “Our job is to just share and watch it grow as it goes away from us.” When it comes to my shore, it comes in my form, but when it goes to another shore it goes in its own form. And it's good, because everywhere it goes it just touches people. So, he says, “I'm not worried, why is he playing the djembe? It doesn't worry me at all. I'm happy that they've come to learn the Indian system, but then they'll go and they'll do something which is unique to their own styles.” So, I like the kind of thing.

SB: We're talking a lot about the intentional use of music beyond performance – so, music to help with health and wellbeing, and music to inspire and uplift. And for Zakir Hussein, does he have that kind of intention? Is it about the performance for him? Or is there something energetically, something more? A bigger wish or desire that he has when he plays music?

MS: I think the performance part has been achieved long back. I don't think there's anything more he needs in terms of performing. He's played with Shakti and John McLaughlin, he’s played with the orchestras and bands of the world … you name the groups. He's played with the orchestras He's played with the Symphony Orchestra of India. I don't think he needs to achieve anything more in terms of the performance part. Now, the thing is the challenge, “What can I do different? What can I do to integrate this, to integrate that? What can I do to impress this, to express that?” He was recently commissioned to compose a piece for the Symphony Orhcestra of India, called ‘Peshkar’, which was performed recently with 60 musicians using holy words from from three different faith groups: ameen (Islam), amen (Christianity), and shanti (Hinduism). 

SB: Sounds wonderful. Is there anything else that you want to say about the role of music right now in these times, during this this pandemic, and the unknown, that we're looking at in this pause, this moment of potential reflection and introspection in people?

MS: Well, I think everybody knows that [music is] an extremely good accessory. It's good to use music when you're meditating, when you're doing any kind of personal “scaping”, landscaping of your personal spaces. We know these things, but I don't see any of the cure facilities or the containment facilities having anything, or any mention of the word ‘music’ in them. I don't see any of the hospitals. I don't see any of them than having any kind of piped music playing, or music channels where people can choose. Because we know what happens with altered states of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and we know that endorphins, the happy hormones, get released, and what they can do for healing. We know all these things, and yet for some reason, we are not doing these things. And why are we not doing them? I mean, that doesn't cost much if you play music, that doesn't cost much. 

I spoke at an HR convention on music and it impressed one organization so much that they asked me to make a music wall for their HR department, [which had] over 10,000 square feet. We got the copyrights and permissions, and now they have a music wall. The efficiency and productivity have gone up, retention has gone up, resignations have gone down. Happiness has gone up. On Saturdays, people [have the option to] come in to work, and if they don't play the music, people say, “Why is this so quiet to hear? Can we have the music back on?” When we know these things, why can’t we build it into our recovery rooms? Why can't we build it into our rehab facilities? Especially when we know that people need this kind of thing. Music goes in in such a such a non-invasive manner. It goes in so easily, so smoothly. You don't even realize it. 

SB: I can't help but believe that recovery benefits when our stress level is reduced. Panic and stress are terrible for the immune system. 

Maanveer, thank you so, so much for your time. It's really great to talk to you. 

Coach and trainer, Maanveer Singh.

“We know that certain ragas influence certain behavior in certain ways – ragas that are good for blood pressure, to calm people down. So why not use all this?.”

Maanveer Singh leads a body rhythm workshop for HR professionals.

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Majhe Maher Pandhari
Aahe Bhivarechya Tiri 

My mother's home is Pandharpur
Mother's home is very special to her

Baap Aani Aai, 
Majhi Vitthal Rakhumai 

 My father and mother
are my Vitthala Rukhumai 

Pundalik Rahe Bandhu
yachi Khyati Kay Sangu

Pundlik is my brother
What to say of his devotion 

Majhi Bahin Chandrabhaga
Karitase Papbhanga

My sister is Chandrabhaga (River)
She removes sins of those who bath in her 

Eka Janardani Sharan
Kari Maherchi Aathavan

Janardan (Rishi) is the one whose feet I fall to
I remember my mother's home

Shirley Mae Springer Staten

— S I N G E R S O N T H E F R O N T L I N E S —

Singers on the Front Lines is a series of interviews with singers working to promote wellbeing, social justice, and sharing the gift of song with vulnerable communities. Subscribe (below) to receive notifications of future posts.

“As we all are experiencing this distance that has been presented to us, we want to find as many ways as possible to connect to our own humanity. Music can make that connection. Music has the ability to penetrate and touch us in so many ways. “

—Shirley Mae Springer Staten

Shirley Mae Springer Staten is the Executive Director of Keys to Life Alaska, a non-profit organization founded in 2015 to empower, create and strengthen an inclusive community through rich arts and cross-cultural experiences. Keys to Life Alaska runs the Hiland Mountain Lullaby Project which brings together teaching artists and prison inmates to create lullabies for the children of the inmates. Over a span of 13 years, hundreds of teachers benefited from her integral role in coordinating their participation in Alaska Native culture camps for the Alaska Humanities Forum Cross-Cultural Immersion Program. For five years, underprivileged students in the Home Base After School Program (which Shirley Mae envisioned, procured funding for, and directed) found themselves writing and publishing books, learning musical instruments, making professional videos and even traveling to Ghana, Africa. Shirley Mae planned, developed and coordinated over 2,000 Cultural Performances at the 1995 NGO International Conference which 36,000 women attended. The impacts of Shirley Mae’s work in Alaska are far-reaching and long-lasting: from the at-risk student who became a teacher instead of quitting school, to incarcerated mothers who expressed their vulnerabilities and love for their children through music, to scores of travelers who experienced places like Cuba, Africa, and Russia on trips she designed and coordinated. 

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SB: I’d like to start by asking you about the Hiland Mountain Lullaby Project, where you work with women in prison and bring in teaching artists, to create lullabies for the inmate’s children. Tell me more about that.

SMSS: Well, I was listening to the radio on a Saturday morning, as I was waking up,  I heard this woman say, “I can do something for my child, even from prison.” At one point, I thought, “Well, what is this?” The woman was at Reikers Island Prison. The project was being facilitated by Carnegie Weils Institute. Sometime around August,  I cold-called Carnegie and got this young lady on the phone and said, “I’m interested in bringing a lullaby project to Alaska”.  She said, “Well, you have to talk to Manuel, he’s not here right now, he’ll be back . . . ” He was in Spain. When he returned he phoned me. We spoke extensively about the project. I had a relationship with Hiland Mountain Correctional Center since my arrived in Anchorage in 1981. I would perform one-woman shows and storytelling events.  After our conversation Manuel said, “Why don’t you come to New York, and we’ll train you to do this lullaby process?”

So, I went to New York and saw the mechanics of how lullabies were developed. The teaching artists (musicians) brought in a group of women from several homeless shelters. The teaching artists work one-on-one with the women to help develop a lullaby. These women came in making comments like; “I don’t know to write no lullaby.” The teaching artists helped them to craft a song, using the Carnegie Lullaby workbook to develop it. One important component in the lullaby book requires the mothers write a letter to her child.  These mothers were asked to imagine their child finding this letter 20 years into the future, and the question they needed to answer was; What are your hopes, dreams and aspirations? Some of the women had [written] the letter [before] they arrived, and the musicians sat with them to methodically go through the letter. They circled keys words, repeating phases and find a common theme. They started with the melody, saying to the women, “Let’s talk about when you’re sitting with the child, or your child is ready to go to sleep. Do you hum her a tune? And what does that sound like?” I could see the process, [and] the wheels began to turn [seeing] these amazing musicians sitting one-on-one with the mother. At the end of a six- or seven-hour session, they had a chorus. Maybe they had a chorus and a verse. They had a melody. I watched women jumping around the room, because now she’d written a song. At the end of the six-hour process the musician and mother performed their piece of work. They sang together, sometimes with the mother overjoyed with tears. It was just explosive. I was so excited.

I returned to Anchorage with great anticipation. I went to Hiland to explain the project and get approval, and I developed an organization called Keys to Life, a non-profit to host the lullaby project. The first Hiland Mountain Correctional Center Lullaby Project was performed in September 2016. Seventeen musicians were invited to collaborate with seventeen mothers at Hiland. I rewrote the lullaby workbook a little bit because my vision of how it would work in a prison was a little bit different Carnegie model. 

SB: How so?

SMSS: Hiland Lullabies is developed a little different from the Carnegie model.  There is an interview process at Hiland and selecting mothers to participate,  Each year, we actually produce a CD that is mailed to child. There is a community concert at the Correctional Center.  As I began  recruiting inside Hiland two things were important:  Include Alaska Native women who were housed there away from their village.  Mothers from villages come to prison, the children are left behind. I wanted the music to go back to the village, to the child, so that meant that I needed to produce a CD.

Secondly include some long sentencing women who would be at Hiland to help recruit mothers in the upcoming years.

SB: I think the beauty of the CD is that the underlying message to the kids is, ‘You’re not alone. There are other kids like you.’ You know, a whole CD of lullabies written by parents. It’s beautiful. Very powerful.

SBSS: Let’s say if I’m sending it to you and you’re in Selawik, Alaska, which is a small village, that child will get a single CD in addition to this. Only for that child, because, again, when that child puts the CD in, I’ve had the engineer go to the prison, record the mother’s voice, and the mother says, “Hi Jennie, this is mommy. I wrote this song especially for you.” And then it goes into the song. Because the mother is not recording, the musician is recording. So, it’s an individualized CD.

SB: It’s an amazing project. My original thinking about the ‘front lines’, was singers working on the front lines of humanity, sanity, anxiety. To me, this prison project and the community music work you do, is what I would call the ‘front lines’. And so, what does that phrase make you think of, when I first wrote to you about it, or when you first saw it? What does ‘singers on the front lines’ mean to you?

SMSS:  I like the phrase because it feels very present. Music has always been in my life. But as you were talking about music on the front lines – paralleling that with a Biblical scripture about music as soldiers out front – If we think about the civil rights period, which is the period I grew up in, music was the front line. It was a way of galvanizing people, of giving them energy to step into that space [where] they didn’t know what was going to happen. Yet, the music was the driving force to bring them together, and to fight for social justice. In the lullaby project, I can see the [social justice] threads running through it.  The lullabies song aide our community members to see incarcerated mothers and fathers as humans. Again, I can trace music  back to my heritage. In the 60s, let’s  look at how music was used. I can also trace  music back  to slavery, example of Harriet Tubman used music as a way to draw slaves to freedom. Definitely, that was the front line. It galvanized people, and moved them forward – sometimes they didn’t know what they were moving forward to – but they knew that the music would carry them to that next space. They trusted – the part that’s so exciting about it – they trusted the music. That God was in the music and “God will take care of you,” I can almost see how the front line would [parallel] with faith. You’re using faith to step out, music to step out on the front line of faith. 

SB: Yes, that’s beautiful. I also think about the songs that were, that embedded instructions for slaves to go north – Wade in the Water, Follow the Drinking Gourd . . . a lifeline. It was really a lifeline.

SMSS: Yes. In thinking about just that terminology, so many images bubble up for me, in terms of the forefront. You can say front lines, or forefront. 

SB: Coming to more recent movements, and movement building, what do you think happened to the music? Because it doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of Black Lives Matter, or the Me, Too movement. I don’t know, do you see that? That somehow music is not quite in the forefront of these movements.

SMSS: I think it is, but I think it is there in a subtler way.  I’m thinking about  these young women gathered and were singing this song, [I Can’t Keep Quiet. These were young women – 20, 30. And they were all gathered around this particular song, and it became a hit song. I think it’s there. I think we’re not hearing it. I was invited to go and sing for [a women’s] rally two or three years ago, and I sang one of my mother’s songs, “I ‘ain't gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around.” And the audience just came with me because I was inviting them to come with me. I think it’s there, it just doesn’t feel like it’s in the forefront. But I think it’s still there. You know, I sing this song that was sung at the 1996 women’s conference in Beijing, “Keep on Movin’ forward, I’m gonna keep on movin’ forward.” I know a number of women’s groups that have taken that as an anthem to move forward in their journey for equality. I think it feels like we’re not hearing it. And I think maybe I’m hearing it because I want to hear it. [laughs]

·      [insert audio clip of song]

SB: Yeah, interesting. I’m also thinking, again going back to the civil rights movement in the U.S., and the labor movement, the workers movement, and Pete Seeger – there seemed to be a convergence that spanned racial divisions, where the music was coming from different directions and merging. Do you think that’s accurate to say?

SMSS: Yes. Folk music, and music from the civil rights era, it aligned with itself. The strong messages from those music pieces were the same. And so, again, talk about music being on the front lines, I think music is that single unifier. It brings unification on so many levels because it touches people’s heart, and gets them out of their head. Of course, it can be used for other things, like going to war to take another’s life, you know. 

SB: Well, that speaks to the power of music. The fact that it gets used as a propaganda tool, or it gets used to unite armies to be in lockstep to go into battle. So, are you going to use your force for good or for evil? And how we harness that power for the good of all? If we draw this front lines parallel to, not just the lullaby project, but all the work you do, what’s happening on your front lines? And, in general, and in this COVID-19 period? What are you seeing in your work?

SMSS: [Recently] I’ve emailed out 3 different lullaby songs from the 2016 CD.  I stated in the email, I believe there is one fundamental truth that never changes; The power of music to bring comfort in despair and link us to our humanity and the power of music to bring us together. I was taken aback by the immediate response. Within 24 hours, I received 32 comments.  Very surprised, I said,  Oh my God! This was a clear indication to me that music, and certainly this lullaby music, is still connecting people. There were great comments such as: “Well, I’m going to send this on to somebody who lives in Colorado.” The tentacles of their comments spread like tumbleweed, which was exactly what I wanted. People can relate to the music, although it’s written by some woman who’s sitting in a jail cell. They feel the connection to the words. As we all are experiencing this distance that has been presented to us, we want to find as many ways as possible to connect to our own humanity. Music can make that connection. Music has the ability to penetrate and touch us in so many ways. Music, storytelling any of the arts can transcends and brings us back to ourselves.

SB: Beautifully said. Is there someone right now who’s really inspiring you? Another singer on the front lines, or someone you’ve been working with, someone you’ve been watching?

 SMSS: Besides listening to the lullaby music, I am re-inspired by that whole production. So much of the work is taking care of the logistics – writing grants, figuring out what products to develop. It’s the small minutiae, the details . . . I’m not singing! 

SB: Ironic, yes!

SMSS: As I pull up a lullaby song that Marie Meade, an Alaskan Native Yupik, who co-wrote the song with another Alaskan Native, an Inupiat woman from the village of Little Diomede. This mother has been released from Hiland and doing well. These women collaborated on the song, “No one, no one can make me feel the way that you do. I’m sorry that I hurt you. Now I have eyes to see. No matter what happens, in my heart you’ll always be. ‘Cuz no one, no one can make me . .” I can enjoy it.  I’m listening to Marie Meade’s voice. The context of the music is in this small, little prison, but the expansion of the message is  beyond those walls. And that’s very exciting. That’s my front line now. It’s out of the walls of Hiland, out of the walls of Anchorage, and moving out into the world where people hear, “No one, no one can make me feel the way that you do.”

SB: There are so many of us around the world. This energy – I have to believe that if we know about each other, there’s some sort of force field we can create, consciously, that can push, elevate the awareness of music for the power and respect of the power that it really has.

SMSS: I think people know it, but acting on what they know, that becomes a challenge. Last year, I invited long serving sentencing women at Hiland to write lullabies for the newbies coming into the system.  I wanted them to share what they know about life. I wanted them to plant seed to help curve the recidivism. Two years ago, men at Hiland wrote lullabies for their children. I have to think about how this music impacts not only the children, not only the mothers, but how this music impacts our community, too. Approximately 250 individuals attend the concert. This lullaby music is powerful. Audience members have a rare opportunity  to see the inmates a mothers and fathers who love their children.  This is a common dominator that we all share. In our post evaluation audience members respond;  “Oh my God. She loves her children.”

SB: Right, it took that moving experience . . . 

SMSS: I am thinking about developing a community choir to sing lullabies that we’ve already written. We’re into our fifth year. Have [the choir] sing the songs, and then have the women in prison, and bring them together for the concert.  The exposes the project and the power of music goes beyond the prison walls.

SB: That’s so needed, to connect the community.

SMSS: My mantra is, “Open doors and open hearts greets me with kindness everywhere I go.” That’s my mantra. There’s more to do.   I don’t know what the ‘more’ is right now, except it’s coming. It’s greeting me. And I’m open to it.

SB: Is there anything else you want to say about the role of music, especially in these times, these uncertain times we’re in now? 

SMSS: I think ‘these times’ is . . . irrelevant. We can take any time, in terms of the power of music. At the beginning of our conversation, I was speaking about the power of music during the civil rights movement. The power of music as it relates to my culture.  Music that was sang by the slaves as a means of hope. I was in Ghana many years ago. I was standing at a slave castle, looking out at the ocean in the middle of what that called  “Door of No Return.”  As I stood there,  I could imagine my ancestors in the belly of those ships, sailing to a place unknown. I have to believe they sang songs as a measure of strength to endure the hardship. So, I think ‘in these times’ in any time. We take what we know about music, and how music re-claims our souls.   

SB: That’s so, so true. What is it about singing, specifically? And do you think there’s something about the voice, the human voice? 

SMSS: So, I cannot sing. I grew up in a community where black folks could really sing. And I was told, “Sit down, and don’t sing. ‘Cuz you can’t sing.” Because I don’t sound like Aretha Franklin. I am not invited to sing with groups I’m working with now.  I don’t care. Singing to me isn’t about sound great or being a very good singer. It’s about feeling that vibration that’s inside of your body. Feeling that vibration come out into this manifestation of a voice, and that giving you pleasure. That’s singing. It doesn’t make any difference if I’m on key. It doesn’t make any difference if I know the fifth from the third from the second, [music intervals] . . .I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference if somebody is singing to me, and somebody says, “They are tone deaf.” I don’t [often] quote the Bible, but I will quote this – the Bible does not say, “Make a Beyonce noise.” It does not say, “Make an Aretha Franklin noise.” It says, “Make a joyful noise.” And if singing and the vibration that happens in your body while you’re singing bring you joy, sing. I like the sound that I make, and how that feels inside of my body. I can get up in the morning and I’m thinking, ‘Ugh, I gotta’ go to work, I gotta’ go to work.’ And then I will start with one of my mother’s songs, “I’m so glad I’m here. I’m so glad I’m here.” And I feel myself lightening up. “I’m so glad I’m here.” Hey, it changes my mood.

SB: You said the group you’re in doesn’t invite you to sing. But I’m going to invite you to sing. I want people reading this interview to hear your voice. Would you be willing to sing a song for me, for us?

SMSS: Oh yeah. I feel like I want to sing something that my grandmother, [who raised me], or my Uncle Floyd, would have sung because that music grounds me, and it’s where I came from. Let me think of one we would have sung in the fields as I working with my grandmother.

Don’t you wanna go to that land
Don’t you wanna go to that land
Don’t you wanna go to that land
Where I’m bound, where I’m bound 

Don’t you wanna go to that land
Don’t you wanna go to that land
Don’t you wanna go to that land
Where I’m bound. 

Nothin’ but joy in that land
Nothin’ but joy in that land
Nothin’ but joy in that land
Where I’m bound, where I’m bound

“The Bible does not say, “Make a Beyoncé noise.” It does not say, “Make an Aretha Franklin noise.” It says, “Make a joyful noise.” And if singing, and the vibration that happens in your body while you’re singing, brings you joy, sing.”