It's been a while! Humanist Christmas Sing Along

I'm joining hands and voices with Julian Caspari, Diana Gameros and Beatriz Martinez to host a Humanist Christmas Sing-Along/Jam this Thursday December 17th. 

We'll sing some old world carols, songs of the Solstice, and a couple funky Christmas spirituals. All the while, eating my roommate Hilary's stunning
roasted nuts.

When: 7-9 Thursday December 17th, 2015

Where: My house, Oakland, CA 94610 (email me for the address)

Come share your voices and a winter snack.

"Christmas Music?!," you say?
Singing Christmas music each year in Brooklyn was one of my most favorite
things about winter there - and one of my first calls back to making music as an adult. Outside of the clanging repetition of songs heard at checkout counters, I was enchanted by a carols and spirituals woven around the myths and stories of what I hold close in this season of dark dampness.

They are carols to acknowledge the grit and darkness in our world, in the human heart, and call forth the emergence of Light, Wisdom and Justice. Melodies to accompany us as we crane our necks and direction from stars and secret signs, pin pricks in the dark, as we stumble our way back to the road of our hero's path. Songs of reverence to the cycles of living creatures, to a season of fallow fields and quiet reflection that complete and make possible a year of action. An insistence and reminder of the alchemy that emerges as we care for the vulnerable, the imperfect, the people and stories viewed as forgettable.

We'll sing some old world carols, songs of the Solstice, and a couple funky Christmas spirituals. All the while, eating my roommate Hilary's stunning
roasted nuts.

Think:
Right-folla-rolla-too-Ree-lio
Oh come thou Wisdom from on high, 
The rising of the sun and the running of the dear
And the people keep comin but the train done gone.

How proud am I

Odyssey of the Ear, Andrew Benincasa

How proud am I today of my longtime friend, Andrew Benincasa, and his gorgeous works in papercut. A new film of his, visualizing the music by Darlingside, was just featured on NPR, which you can watch and read about below. 

I have such reverence and awe for this art, and the years over which it has bloomed. How I remember us walking around Brooklyn one fall, how he shared he'd start giving papercut a try with a shadow play of The Wizard of Earthsea. I remember his first sketches of figures on black paper in the winter, learning draw shoulders and hips, and years later our conversations over the breakfast table on Austin Kleon's book on Show Your Work. And, most of all, I love how his compositions grow ever more epic, ever more mythic and stunning. 

More at his new website, www.andrewbenincasa.com

My Anthem: "Harvest"

Sometimes when I'm feeling extra excited about stuff I've just done, I like to turn up songs from my Blastoff list. My favorite this summer and fall is Shaina Taub's brilliant Harvest, which you can watch below. I feel this is the anthem for my life, what I long to create in the world, and the work of many of those I love as we weave together a more just and sustainable world. And a call to the role songwriting has in carrying us there with joy.

And geesh, does she ever hit a good Eb.

Some of her lyrics:

"Though I am no preacher, I will bless what we have sown
Though I am no teacher, I will show you all we've known
Though I am no farmer, I will cull what I can find
Though I wear no armor, I will guard all that we've sown and we've planted
We won't take for granted the hours and the grieving
The ceaseless believing in ancient ecology giving us all that we've found

Harvest waiting in the untilled ground
And if I only live to see the planting time
For the harvest waiting in the untilled ground
And I'm long long gone for the feast and wine
For the harvest waiting in the untilled ground
Still you'll hear my roots resound in the harvest in the untilled ground

(you can also visit her website shainataub.com to contribute to her current recording project. Hallelujah.)