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Use with care, use with care, use with care.

This song is listed as being generally Native American – which is likely all that the STJ commission could find at the time. A link to the source material, Songs for Earthlings, is now dead.

However, I did a search for the lyrics and discovered that one musician/environmental educator, Hawk Hurst, identified this as being from the Hupa tribe of northern California. There are additional verses in the version he’s printed, including two to grandparents,  and planets and animals showing up too.

The Earth is our Mother, we must take care of her;
The Earth is our Mother, we must take care of her.

Chorus:
heyyunga hoyunga, heyyung yung;
heyyunga hoyunga, heyyung yung

Her sacred ground we walk upon with every step we take;
Her sacred ground we walk upon with every step we take;

Chorus

The Earth is our Mother, she will take care of us;
The Earth is our Mother, she will take care of us;

Chorus

The Sky is our Father, we will take care of him;
the Sky is our Father, we will take care of him.

Chorus

The Sea is our Sister, we will take care of her;
the Sea is our Sister, we will take care of her.

Chorus

The Forest is our Brother, we will take care of him;
the Forest is our Brother, we will take care of him.

Chorus

And I say use with care because the last thing we need to do in our congregations is use this without acknowledging the culture from which it comes. I’ve talked several times throughout this practice about cultural appropriation and the use of music from cultures that are not our own; it’s a danger to just use pieces like this as spectacles – something we drag out once a year – just as it’s a danger to use them without acknowledgement or change the meaning or intent. We do a disservice to these rich cultures that have already been badly treated, and we throw mud in the eye of our first principle. So just… use with care.

Musically, I’m neither here nor there with it. I don’t love this piece, nor do I hate it. It honestly just doesn’t speak to me, despite my high pagan days. I think even then I wasn’t attracted to the native American traditions – I leaned toward the Germanic and Celtic (not surprising, since I’m German and English).  It’s easy to learn and can probably be done in sort of a round style, with the chorus being the second part of the round.

A programming note: tomorrow is the last day of Hymn by Hymn.

I know, right? How did that happen? It seems simultaneously like it was just yesterday and a hundred years ago that I started this spiritual practice. We’ll celebrate our last hymn tomorrow, and I’ll have a wrap up on Thursday, with a preview of what’s next.

—-

Image – ubiquitous view of the coastline of northern California.

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This is the last in our earth chant quodlibet (yes, since relearning the word last week, I’ve rather enjoyed saying it and typing it, especially since it’s appropriate), and it’s been an … interesting side trip. The melodies of the chants are, intentionally, rather simple, and I imagine the complexity builds as you add other chants – especially if you have a strong song leader and an attentive congregation.

But what’s been especially interesting is the question of appropriation. Over these last few days I’ve wondered about (or been called to wonder about) not so much the inclusion of a song from another culture but rather the use of distinctive phrases or lyrics or styles that come from/are reminiscent of the music and spirituality of American Indigenous cultures. And the truth is that for me, I’m not sure today where the line is between inclusion and misappropriation. And…  we can’t know what the discussions were among the compilers of STJ regarding these things – although by the early 2000s they certainly would have been dealing with some of these question, so I expect they chose with care. And, we know that even 12 years on, some things have shifted even more (such an awareness of binary and ableist language). I do know that I sometimes lean on the side of caution, but I would rather be cautious than careless. So… make of this what you will.

The good news, I suppose, is that this last one is rather neutral. It’s a simple tune that could come from anywhere, with language and metaphors that could come from anywhere.  I vaguely remember it from my high pagan days, and knowing that it comes from Circle of Song, I’m not surprised. (That resource was like a hymnal for one pagan group I was involved with.)

Evening breeze, spirit song,
sings to me when the day is done.
Mother earth awakens me
with the heart beat of the sea.

And… that’s it really. A sweet little chant from a great book published in the 1990s that has helped round out STJ’s collection of Sixth Source songs.

And thus endeth the quodlibet.

 

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Way way back on December 16, 2016 – back when this practice was still new – I wrote these words:

I wish I could make sense of this one.  No, seriously. I mean, I get that the lyrics are a rain song, and thus appropriate for a section called The World of Nature. I also get that we want to include voices beyond white men, and thus the hymn led me to learn about Joseph Cotter, Jr, who was an African American playwright and poet who died of tuberculosis at age 24.

But seriously – this too, too simple German tune? … MAYBE this tune sounds okay in a round, but certainly not in a song about dry earth and ancient (I assume native American) drums.

Everything just seems wrong about this.

Well, howdy. I didn’t realize until literally a minute ago that – much like his work on How Sweet the Darkness – had written a much better, much more appropriate tune for these lyrics.

On the dusty earth drum beats the falling rain;
now a whispered murmur, now a louder strain.

Slender, silvery drumsticks on an ancient drum
beat the mellow music bidding life to come.

Chords of life awakened, notes of greening spring,
rise and fall triumphant over everything.

Slender, silvery drumsticks beat the long tattoo —
God, the Great Musician, calling life anew.

The tune that Jason wrote (and which the hymnal commission put together as part of their quodlibet), does echo some of the chant styles we think of as coming from native American tribes, but even without that, the minor key and complexity of the canon works a lot better.

And yet.

I’m not sure even now that I would use it, given the weird conflagration of European American composer, African American lyricist, and sacred imagery that belongs to either (or maybe both?) Native American or African traditions. No offense to Jason, of course – his composition does a whole not more to honor the text than the German-washed-in-the-blood-hymn setting we find in STLT. But even now, I feel uncomfortable as a European American myself considering the use of this without a serious and perhaps belabored content warning.

 

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They say brevity is the source of wit; I can affirm that a stomach flu is the source of brevity.

So I’ll be brief:

The second part of our quodlibet is this chant by Windsong Dianne Martin. As noted on the UUA Song Information page,

This song was written on Spencer’s Butte, Eugene, Oregon in 1985. The composer writes, “I was sitting with my friend David, looking out over the vast view of the Willamette Valley, wondering about the ancient roots of the area, talking about the original native tribes who lived there before the white settlers came. We became quiet and sat in meditation for a long time. I was shifted out of meditation dramatically when I became aware that I was singing the song Mother I Feel You Under My Feet, Mother I Hear Your Heartbeat. I sang it for a long time and was very moved by the experience.”

And here are the lyrics:

Mother I feel you under my feet,
Mother I hear your heart beat,

Chorus:
Heya heya heya ya heya heya ho,
Heya heya heya heya heya ho

Mother I hear you in the river song,
Eternal waters flowing on and on,

Chorus

Father I see you when the eagle flies,
Light of the Spirit, gonna take us higher.

Chorus

I wrestle again, as I always do on these pages, with the exclusively binary language and always wish for “parent” to be one of the verses along with “mother” and “father”… but of course that wasn’t a consideration then, nor is it appropriate to just change a living composer’s lyrics.

Anyway. It’s a good tune and an easy thing to sing – it’s not written as a canon or round but it would certainly work like that if you were not doing the quodlibet thing.

—

Photo of the view from Spencer’s Butte by Tess Freeman/Oregon Daily Emerald.

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Sometimes the universe likes to prepare you in advance for something you will need. In some cases, it’s the impulse buy that comes in handy later that month, or a song you hear that the choir director asks you to sing a week later, or in my case, it’s a conversation on Wednesday that leads to your mentor looking for a different word and stumbling upon Dictionary.com’s word of the day, “quodlibet,” then talking about how it’s probably something I learned in music theory classes when I was young but have forgotten the term for…. and now here we are, a quodlibet set before us.

“But Kimberley, it’s a short chant. How can it be a quodlibet?”

Well, it’s….

“Hate to interrupt, but what the heck is a quodlibet?”

I’m so glad you asked. You see, a quodlibet is “a composition consisting of two or more independent and harmonically complementary melodies, usually quotations of well-known tunes, played or sung together, usually to different texts, in a polyphonic arrangement.” Dictionary.com suggests it is humorous, but I don’t think it has to be – Ysaye Barnwell leads communities of singers in quodlibets of spirituals, and those are quite moving.

Anyway, the whole reason this comes up is that there’s a note at the bottom of this chant – a traditional Navajo prayer – that reads “all of the earth chants, numbers 1069-1072, may be sung at the same time.” And handily, they are all in the same key (C), with the same number of bars (8), and honestly with the same basic theme (connecting to earth, sky, and spirit).

What I love about making a quodlibet out of these songs is that it blends themes from various traditions, along with imagery and language. Not all is gendered – although I totally get why some of it is. Some is true chant in that there are only a few words (like today’s). Others in this set are chant-like but have multiple verses. But all of them are easy to learn and easy to blend.

Today’s is a simple but powerful piece invoking the feminine divine; it’s up to you to decide if it’s about the earth, or about god, or about something else entirely… but it is powerful and beautiful.

Ancient Mother, I hear you calling.
Ancient Mother, I hear your song.
Ancient Mother, I feel your laughter.
Ancient Mother, I taste your tears.

You can hear a version of it by Libana from their album A Circle is Cast here.

Update: In my rush to get to a meeting, I neglected to address the need for care on this piece (thanks to Kristin Grassel Schmidt for noting the oversight):

This chant is from the Navajo tradition, a people who lived in the area we now know as New Mexico. They suffered centuries of colonization and conquest from Europeans, but unlike many native American tribes, they still live for the most part on their ancestral land.

The chant we have above is more than likely part of a much larger religious event called a ‘chantway.’ According to NavajoIndian.net,

The Navajo culture is big into ceremonies and rituals. Their performances are usually four days, two days, or one day. Although some chants could be as long as nine days and require dozens of helpers. The most important ceremonies are the ones for treatment of ills, mental and physical. The Navajo are also very big into nature, so almost every act of their life is a ceremony of nature, including their building of the hogan, or the planting of the crops. All the Navajo culture ceremonies are included with songs and prayers.

In the Navajo culture and traditions there are over 24 different Chantway ceremonies performed by singers, and over twelve hundred different sandpainting designs that are available to the medicine men.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that this chant is distinctive to the Navajo, and that we must use care to not assume a ubiquitous “native American” tradition. Just as the Irish are not the Scottish are not the English, the Navajo are not the Hopi are not the Iroquois.

—

Painting is by Navajo artist Tony Abeyta. Learn more about his artwork here.

 

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One late December day in the mid 1990s, my partner Trish and I got in the car and drove from our home in Durham, NC, to spend Christmas with my family in Round Lake, NY. The drive is long – about 13 hours – and was usually broken up by little side trips to historic places and always the IKEA just south of DC. We always loaded up the car with music and audio books to keep us amused if the conversation lulled.

This particular trip, however, there was no lull. We hadn’t been on the road more than ten minutes when “Money” by Pink Floyd came on the mix.

“This (Dark Side of the Moon) has got to be one of the top five albums of all time,” Trish said. I agreed, and we began trying to pick the other five. Which soon became ten… and twenty-five… and fifty… as our list grew. Rumors. So. Blonde on Blonde. Never mind. Thriller. What’s Going On. Born in the USA. Our list kept growing. Some we argued against, but most we added to our increasingly unmanageable list. We debated and considered through bathroom breaks, meals, stops for gas.

Somewhere around Mahwah, NJ (where we paused to sing “to Mahwah, to Mahwah, I’m going to Mahwah, it’s only a mile away…”) I brought up Paul Simon’s Graceland, annoyed that I hadn’t thought of it sooner.

“Sure, it’s good,” Trish admitted, “but does it really belong on a top … whatever… list?”

My defense of the album included not just the great songwriting of Paul Simon – but of this incredible collaboration with Ladysmith Black Mambazo (especially “Homeless”). You see, the album came out in 1986, which means apartheid was still in force in South Africa. The group, led by today’s hymn composer Joseph Shabalala, had for decades been an incredibly popular and prolific group, so popular, they were the first black group to win a major music award. And while some saw Simon’s collaboration with them as breaking the anti-apartheid boycott, it did in fact help bring more awareness to the problem, and expose the world to the richness of traditional Zulu music, known as isicathamiya. Shabalala loved sharing his culture’s music, and the group continues to travel the world teaching their music and sharing a message of peace and love.

Our song today (I didn’t forget!) is a wonderful gift in that spirit, from Shabalala. It is an easy chant, and is a joy to sing, especially when you know what the Zulu means.

Thula klizeo, nala pase kaya.
Thula klizeo, nala pase kaya.
Hey kaya, nala pase kaya.
Hey kaya, nala pase kaya.

[Translation of Zulu: Be still my heart, even here I am at home.

Of course, use with care. This song is most meaningful when you remember that for a very long time, the indigenous peoples of South Africa were kept from their native lands by European colonialists (sound familiar?). It’s especially worth sharing this information, from the UUA Song Information page:

 A Zulu chant written by Joseph Shabalala on trip to New York City in 1988. He missed his home in South Africa, and with Apartheid still in effect, he did not know if he would ever be allowed to return. He said, “Be still my heart, even here I am at home.” You wouldn’t think that such a short song would have so much meaning behind it, but we’re talking a different paradigm than our paradigm of wordy hymns. The power in chants like Thula Klizeo is in the depth of the meaning, its connection to the traditions of the past and its defiance for a better tomorrow.

The song should be repeated a number of times! It should be performed a cappella with no percussion. Nick Page learned this song from Shabalala by rote, and Nick recommends teaching it by rote. It can be used in a procession as well as a dance.

By the way – while I didn’t know all of the history of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, my pleas for the greatness of this album won over Trish, and Graceland made it onto our imaginary, why didn’t we write this down, 13-hours-to-create list of the top albums of all time.

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Throughout this practice, I’ve happened upon many hymns that were inspired by (or were outright settings of) poetry; that makes sense, as lyric forms seek out one another naturally. But this is the first time I’ve encountered one inspired by paintings.

As noted on the UUA’s Song Information page,

The lyrics of this song come from the French title of a famous oil painting by Paul Gauguin created in Tahiti in 1897 and 1898. It is currently housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA. The three groups of women, read from the right to left, represent the three questions posed in the title of the painting. The women with the child represent the beginning of life “Where Do We Come From?” The middle group, represent the daily existence of adulthood “What Are We?” The old woman facing death is asking, “Where Are We Going?”

Wow.

It’s an amazing painting; the photo I’ve used here doesn’t do it justice, I’m sure. (When am I in Boston next? I have some art to look at…) It is haunting and asks for a meditative encounter, not a quick glance and go. It’s deceptively intricate in its simplicity, and it sticks with you.

Much like this song, which can be sung as a canon, a round, a chant, with about as many permutations as you can imagine. It embodies the questions and mood of the painting in haunting and meditative countermelodies.

 Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?

Where do we come from?

Mystery. Mystery. Life is a riddle and a mystery.

Where do we come from? Where are we going?

And these are questions I’m asking myself a lot lately. As I facilitate a couple of UU Wellspring groups, I have the opportunity to both be present to myself and look back at the pre-seminary me who took this for the first time. The questions I had then aren’t the questions I have now, but I still seek answers as I look to where I have come from. And then more generally, where do we come from and what does it mean to dwell in such a time as this, wondering where we are going and how to be present in those riddles.

This is a small song, taking up only half a page.

But it is actually one of our biggest.

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This is not the chant I thought I knew.

And thank all that’s holy that no one else was around, because I was blissfully singing the chant I know (very similar, but not exact – the version I know includes a verse of “ai-aaaa, ai-oooo”) and did a cartoon screech to a halt when I looked at the hymnal closely. It was somewhat comic and fairly embarrassing, at least in my imagination.

But like mine, this one bubbles up anonymously from the neo-pagan traditions and just exists in the ether.

The earth, the water, the fire, the air,
return, return, return, return.

But what’s great about these chants is that they begin with a simple melody line that invites harmony and improvisation. It invites a cacophony of sound to grow and welcome the elements and then return to center, to calm, to focus.

And it’s that cacophony that I suspect many UUs are afraid of. I rewatched the Decentering Whiteness in Worship webinars in preparation for a workshop I’m leading on Saturday, and I was struck anew by something Julica Hermann de la Fuente said, that we worship an “ethic of control” – from time to energy – and letting ourselves immerse into a chant like this would be scary and uncomfortable. Yet in a properly held container by confident worship leaders, it can be freeing and deeply spiritual. I remember the Amen we sang at GA2016; there is a point at which the sheet music literally stops to invite the singers to improvise off the motifs, and we had to trust our conductor, Glen Thomas Rideout, to hold the space for it and bring us back together. I know that singing it was incredible; I can only imagine how beautiful it felt and looked and sounded to the assembly.

And I need more of this. I have been telling the UU Wellspring groups I am leading that I’m beginning to worry I won’t find a good spiritual practice after finishing this one, but singing this today – even though I started by singing the wrong one – tells me I need more chant in my life. Maybe I need to invite chaos and cacophony into my life…

 

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Ear Worm Alert!

This round is so common in Unitarian Universalist circles it’s hard to remember that in the scheme of things, it’s only about as old as the grey hymnal itself. Yet here it is, a standard welcoming song, even if it’s incomplete.

As my beloved colleague Lynn Ungar originally wrote it, this setting also includes a descant that captures perhaps the most important line of this Rumi verse: “Though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times.” To me, it’s the key to the verse – the chance to start anew. That no matter who we are and what we’ve been though, we can come back to this place, where we can find healing and comfort and inspiration.

Come, come, whoever you are,
wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again come.

I don’t think it’s a mistake that this one came up on Palm Sunday, either. I haven’t thought deeply about the connection yet, but it feels right that on the day we remember Jesus’s coming to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover and ‘poke the bear’ of the institutions, I am singing a song that could in fact be his message too.

Fascinating how the universe works sometimes, eh?

—

“K21 Street” – painting by Jackie Carpenter.

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Gentle readers, I’m in an odd place with this one.

I am certain (and am glad) there are people who draw strength and inspiration from this text, a beloved  (anonymously translated) passage from “Buddha’s Farewell Address” – a passage from the Mahaparinibbana Suttana.

I don’t. I mean, I get what it’s about – it’s all over the place, this idea that it starts within and goes outward. It’s a lot of how we understand our rather individualistic faith.

But this idea doesn’t give me strength or comfort. As an extrovert and a theist, I process externally, with others and the Divine, in order to understand myself. My comfort comes from without, not within. And knowing myself, knowing truth, knowing the divine spark – for me, anyway – is informed and revealed only through my experience with others. I know myself in relation. And when my spark goes out, when I am not confident, when I am unsure what the truth is, well, I can’t be my own lamp if my pilot light is out.

Perhaps its my mood, or the season, or the events of the past few weeks, or the weltschmerz and general malaise of the world, but I feel sadder having sung this one.

Be ye lamps unto yourselves;
be your own confidence;
hold to the truth within yourselves
as to the only lamp.

If it brings you comfort, I am glad. Not every song has to work for every person, just as not every theology has to work for every person. I am certain for those who are internal processors, or non-theists, or just of a different temperament, this one inspires deeply – hurrah for you!

It’s just not my jam.