This is a compilation of songs recorded between 2016 and 2019. They were manifested on the unceded lands of the Duwamish, Coast Salish and Muckleshoot People. These songs are home recorded, in my basement, not mixed, not mastered - just raw - captured moments of healing on my personal journey of reckoning with climate change, sexual violence, decolonization, prison abolition, cultural transformation and deep time. 

The name of the album, “We Remember Witch is Witch” was a working title my daughter and I dreamed up back in 2012 when we were having a conversation about the plant people in a field we were in one day (context: daughter is 4 at the time). We were talking about how we might know who each plant person was and how to work with them had our great grandmothers not been burnt during the burning times. “Which is which mommy,” she said, “like witch is witch, get it?” This album as a whole is an incantation for remembering and reclaiming what has been stolen or meant to be forgotten, ultimately our animist practices and relationship to and as a part of Earth themself. The artwork was done by my sibling Rose Unfolding. 

For more context on each individual song, please click on the song to learn more. 

No money is being made from these songs - if you would like to work in reciprocity with the creations flowing through me - you can become a Patron at: https://www.patreon.com/alexandrablakely

GRATITUDE: I would like to thank all my Patreon supporters who have continuously reminded me to keep making music - much of what you hear monthly wouldn’t happen without your reminders: I owe much of this music to your holdings.  

Big shout outs to Leticia Nieto, Lyndsey Scott, Eliana Scott-Thoennes, Meg O'Hara, Nathanael Mengist, Cristina Lanata, ALOYSIOUS, Alec Connon, David Solnit, Bobby Gordon, E Sulakshana, Nicky Bradford, Leonard Higgins, Shemona Moreno, Becca Deutsch, Lisa Marcus, Clare Heriza and my beloved mamma for sticking with me through the thicks and thins in this musical online mycelial web. 

And nearest and dearest to my heart - my ancestors who most definitely have my back. To the Whale People and Rue People. To my beloved family: Femi, Alec, Pooh Bear, Mamma, Daniel, Bee and Brooke. Thank you. 

I am a descendant of Brooklyn Jews, Polish Jews from Miloslaw and many different places where Jews traveled to before that. My nomadic Jewish ancestors assimilated in the Americas as yet another form of historical and diasporic resilience. I am grateful to my ancestors who stayed Jewish, generation after generation, when it was not strategic or safe to do so and I am here today reclaiming what my most recent ancestors thought would harm me by passing it down to me and my daughter. 

I descend from the lands of northern norway and islands in the baltic sea. I am of the caribou people, the whale people, the rain people, the mycelium people and I come from priestesses, witches, healers and oracles, silversmiths, potters, alchemists and farmers. The Coast Salish lands of salmon, orca, pine, cedar, cold-salt water and fresh wild and feral sweet water rivers are the lands that raised me.

darkness that is the light

firelight (feat. femi magical ramos browne)

petrichor

life givers

heart math

holy questions

the unlearning

witch is witch

message from a descendant

OPEN SENTENCES
(zipper song)
This song is inspired by an exercise that Joanna Macy does in The Work That Reconnects called “Open Sentences” which helps people ground in gratitude and the wondrous world we live in.

lyrics: 
I love being alive because of  _____ (singers yell out nouns)
I love being alive because of _____ 
_____ for the ancestors
_____ for descendants yet to come
_____ for the new stories
_____ for the revolution
I love being alive because of _____

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Open Sentences

DNA
Although not everyone necessarily feels guilt or shame around their whiteness or their ancestors, I have come to witness and personally experience this is more common than not. I remember seeing a sign at a BLM protest during the 2020 civil uprisings of a white young person that read, “FUCK my Ancestors.” I remember feeling both a feeling of sadness and a feeling that I recognized as an earlier version of myself resonating with that sentiment. Yet this work of grieving white supremacy is about acknowledging the legacies that we are left with today that are a direct result of white supremacy and how we are responsible for dismantling them and reckoning with the unearned privilege they have left us with. 
"What we refuse to see, we cannot heal." - Carolyn Griffeth

lyrics:
i acknowledge my blood
i acknowledge this pain
i acknowledge my blood
i acknowledge where i came from
i acknowledge my blood
and i what i push away 
i acknowledge my blood
i acknowledge this shame

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

GRIEF SONG - feat. WREN PEOPLE
This song came through me as I lit a candle at my altar praying for a song to hold our communities in our deepest grief - from pre-covid unmetabolized sorrow to the compacted grief we have been holding in isolation over the past year. 
I can feel my Jewish ancestors on my tongue in these sounds and melody. I sent this song to one of my Jewish mentors asking him about what came through me and to tell me more cause it felt very Jewish. This is what he told me: “Ahlay! This song is a “nigun” (in Hebrew) translated as a “wordless melody.” They are very common in Ashkenazi tradition (which is my lineage) although there are wordless melodies from Jewish traditions all around the world. These songs come from a time in Jewish history when a lot of the people were lacking institutional knowledge and didn’t know the prayers and didn’t speak Hebrew because the institutions had been destroyed in the Cossack uprisings in the 17th century. It was at this time in Poland (where my ancestors are from) when a mystic healer came forward, Baal Shem Tov (the master of the good name) - and taught that the melody of the heart is more potent and more appreciated by spirit than any formal prayers or specific blessings that someone could learn in an institution.” I sat with my mouth wide open in awe for entire moments at everything he had just told me. 
SIDENOTE: In the Nigerian religion Yoruba, Oya is the orisha of winds, lightning, violent storms, death and rebirth - when I listen to this recording I can hear her name. 
And what is grief if not all of the above? Just whoa. 
 
phonetic sounds:
oh ayo
da-da-day-daiya-ya-ya | da-da-day-daiya-ya-ya
ohya
da-da-day-daiya-ya-ya | da-da-day-daiya-ya-ya
Ohya ohya
da-da-day-daiya-ya-ya | da-da-day-daiya-ya-ya

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Grief Song

GROUND WITH SOMEBODY
(tune of Dance with Somebody by Whitney Houston) 
As I sit with the ritual of grieving embodied white supremacy I feel so much anger, sorrow and heaviness. I wanted to bring in a song that would be a shapeshifter of energy - a tool to be used to make people feel silly and giggle and remember their inherent goodness and also their collective capacity to coregulate their nervous systems. 

lyrics:
Ohhhh, I wanna ground with somebody
I wanna feel HERE in my body
Ohhhh, I wanna ground with somebody
With somebody who’ll ANCHOR - ME!

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Ground With Somebody

MENTORS
This song came through about a year after a grief ritual where several of us were grieving lack of mentorship in our lives, lack of in tact culture - a sense of cultural orphans - wishing we were waking up to 30 pairs of eyes on us in our youth - longing for village and connection. And then a friend told me, we have to become the mentors we are seeking for the next generations. And I was like “Pum!”
  
lyrics:
we must become the mentors that we are seeking
is also dreaming us, what it is that we are dreaming

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Mentors

HOW WE DO 
Guidelines for our workings together inspired by Rain Crowe’s temple tending

lyrics:
HOW we do, what we do is as important as the WHAT we do.

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

How We Do

lyrics:
PT I: Sometimes, some things are so badly broken - soften the closed hearts until they open
PT II: and they will never be the same, they will never be the same, 
they will never be the same, let the broken pieces claim
a new beautiful shape
PT III: piece by piece, piece by piece we’re healing - even if our hands, even if our hands are bleeding

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Mosaic

TOGETHER WE REMEMBER
Guidelines for our workings together inspired by Rain Crowe’s temple tending

lyrics:
No one knows everything and together we remember a lot

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Together We Remember

OH LAND
This song came through me as I was wanting to honor and have an embodied experience of my connection to land and the work I am committed to doing in my lifetime. You can sing the verses as an echo or you can have the group hummmmmmm for the verse and have a different person sing each verse (which is what we did). We have also just taught one verse with the chorus and sung it repeatedly. I believe the most potent verse for a land acknowledgement is "oh land, i know, the history here is painful, oh land, you know, your healing’s woven with the peoples"

lyrics:
oh land, upon which i stand - holding me 
i thank you - for all that you hold me through 
i lean back into you, rejuvenate my body anew 
oh land, upon which i stand - holding me 
i feel the gravity, where you meet my feet 
i can hear your heart beat - if i listen carefully 
oh land, upon which i stand - holding me 
oh land, i know, the history here is painful 
oh land, you know, your healing’s woven with the peoples 
oh land, upon which i stand - holding me 
oh Land, we’re here to see the grief and rage and suffering 
take these hearts as offerings, massage you with our feet as we sing 
oh land, upon which i stand - holding me

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Oh Land (Land Acknowledgement Song)

said, "Money is the gasoline
on which these fires burn" (echo)
so we're here to shout it out, here to shout it out
make wall street return (echo)

CHORUS:
the riches to the soil
the riches to the sea
the riches to the children
to our communities (2x)

said, "Money is the faucet
through which these waters flood" (echo)
so we're here to shout it out, here to shout it out
make wall street refund (echo)

CHORUS

said, "Money is the pipeline
through which these storms rage" (echo)
so we're here to shout it out, here to shout it out
make wall street repay (echo)

CHORUS

"Return"

Escuchamos al primer verso de esta cancion tipo mantra/acapela en una grabacion privada y nos movia tanto que creamos unos versos adicionales e instrumentacion. Su origen parece que viene de ceremonia, y como muchas veces asi, canalizada durante el rezo. 

La version en vivo de esta cancion se puede encontrar en youtube como ~"Los Dioses" Petricor~

We heard an intimate recording of the first verse of this song in mantra form/acapella and we were so moved that we added some verses and music to it. Its origins seem to have come from a ceremony and as the songs often are, channeled during the prayer. 

You can find a live video of this song on youtube, ~"Los Dioses" Petricor~

Blakely Brown

Los Dioses

B. O.K. was written the day I realized that the sexual abuse I once lived as a child, no longer was part of my present and that I could let it go. It was such an honor to work with Tiano from Santiago, Chile. Besides a few other artists, I would say he is one who most inspires me to be a better creator myself. Also super grateful for the magnitude of collaborations that came together for this song with my sister Paz Quintana, on of Mexico's best jarana players, Jeronimo Gonzalez from Los Sonex and Dr. Zupreeme from Banda Baston.

"B. O.K." feat. Tiano Bless

Nuevo Single escrito caminando por un proceso de oscuridad cuando un guardian de su vida le dijo, "Quieres ser rebelde? SE FELIZ!" 

Producido por: Jeronimo Gonzalez (Los Sonex)

Sueltalo

Grabado en Amatlan, Morelos. 
Sesion en Vivo.

Sueltalo B - Side- Feat. Lengualerta, Jeronimo Gonzalez (Los Sonex)

California with Azul and Jero. Magic and instant manifestations. Grateful.

En Tus Ojos de Agua Infinita

La Guerita (The White Girl)

Yesterday I was sittn on the curb,  readn up on cuba and the campesinos (peasants) word
soakn up the sun outside a little spot in town, living vicariously through revolution sound and -
All the sudden I had two boys at my side , one on the left. one on the right
Did they know each other? Swear it didn’t matter
I was just the meat they want to eat here on they’re platter
So I -look up from my - literature and smile
How long will this take?? Possibly a while
They barely salute one another acting like a child
Just as I’m about to go, here comes another trial

CHORUS:
Who’s the new girl, who’s the new girl -there she go
whiter than a canvas and her skin like fallen snow
Choose me mami, there’s so much that I could teach ya
Game is on hermano- y se llama la guerita

Im no fool, im no fool, I got two eyes in the back
I’m not new to this game -  your exoticness in fact
Doesn’t play to your advantage like it has in your past
And the smothering’s not flattering or check’n out my a++
Just let me go along, you don’t quite understand
Small talk aggravates me and a challenge for a man
Like you, who thinks we’re just some trophies on his shelf
So if you’ll excuse me now I’d rather touch myself. 


La Guerita

Cover song from Bruno Mansur? Is Bruno the original channeler of this song? I have heard it in so many places, I am not sure who to credit.

Lyrics
Gran espíritu, gran abuela, gran abuelo
como soy me presento ante ti
como soy te pido bendiciones
y agradezco el corazón que has puesto en mi
Cuando vengo no mas vengo, no mas vengo
gran espíritu sabrás a lo que vengo
a entregar mi corazon, mi corazon
corazón que es lo único que tengo
Corazón que es lo único que tengo
Corazón que es lo único que tengo

Corazon Es Lo Unico Que Tengo

This song is called “Blessed Motion.” I learned the songs at Singing Alive and the songstress is Annie Zylstra. I am amazed by the song and the story of the song, which is as follows:

Blessed Motion is a 4-part acknowledgement of the nature of Life as an unpredictable, ever-changing movement toward itself. The melody came squatting on a rock next to a fast moving fork in the Trinity River, where salmon were in their first week of journeying to their spawning sites in northern California. Martin Prechtel said after surviving the Guatemala earthquake of 1976, during which he witnessed the ground beneath him rising up and swallowing people and villages whole, that solid ground is a myth believed by people who live on the earth rather than in it. This idea has stayed with me through the years and provided partial inspiration for this song. This is a big song! It travels through two dimensions, the first, a three or four part set of repeating lines, the second, a layered riff topped with a solo section. 

Thank you Annie. 

I hope you can hear the waves and motion in the voices of the track. It is genius. 

LYRICS

I believed in solid ground until I saw the earth in motion,

in the winds of steady change and in the ever-rolling ocean.

All moves on in perfect, perfect motion.

All is change and ever-rolling ocean.

All is moving, all is change, though I once believed that there

might somehow be something firm beneath my feet, but

All is motion, and all is well for solid ground is just a myth 

for those who never swim in it.

All is moving in blessed change, o the world we know

will come and go and everything will rearrange, so

be the ground beneath that sky,

tumbling round the by and by.

All is change, so am I.

lye lye lye, lye lye lye.

Blessed Motion Cover (Original by Annie Zylstra)

This is a cover song. Original by Meredith Buck

As story has it, this song came through Meredith Beck as she was participating in a women’s wilderness retreat where each participant was blindfolded and then asked to cross a river, following nothing but the sound of a drummer on the other side.

It is pretty magical. And I could sing it for hours. 

Here are the lyrics:

Lay yourself down on the rocks now
Let your body down in the river
Listen for the drumming on the other side
Lose yourself in the meantime
Listen
Let your body be your guide
Let the water decide
Lose yourself in the meantime

Listen (Original by Meredith Buck)

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

Part I
What if what we are doing right now
Ripples out beyond what the eye can see?

Part II
What is this step a part of that's bigger than me?
Bigger than me, bigger than me

Part III
What is happening through me?
Happening, happening, happening through me?

Ripple

to hear more community songs by ahlay, visit: https://www.alexandrablakely.com/songlibrary

The Neuroplasticity Song

Alexandra “ahlay” Blakely is a descendent of Ashkenazi, Scandinavian and British folk. She is a singer-songwriter, grief tender, community organizer, facilitator and ceramicist walking the path of ancestral healing and the reclaiming of lost cultural memories. Her community singing album, Spells from the Unknown encapsulates songs for the community to transform, ask questions, and seek to lead lives that might make us ancestors worth honoring. Her upcoming 2024 community singing album, WAILS: Songs for Grief was recorded in July 2023 with a choir of 200 voices. The album is completely dedicated to grief, inspired by the Whales and Frances Weller’s “the five gates of grief.”

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJiuxVf4FhGSkYT4K0zpGyA/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexandra_blakely/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/alexandrablakely
Website: https://www.healingattheroots.com

Alexandra Blakely

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