Community Songs - Originals

Live in the Rotunda

The words of this song - "love flowers best in openness and freedom" - comes from Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire." It came through me on the final day of a 2-month journey as I was making the final stretch of highway back to my home in Austin, Texas after 9,000 miles of travel. It was the perfect musical medicine for the moment as I grappled with some familiar but unwelcome fear around a newfound love.

Love Flowers Best (Joshua Blaine)

Part I: 
A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in due time. 
Part II:
Hunger for what you most long for. 
Part III:
Your longing is a Divine urgency.

Words inspired by Edward Abby ("A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time")and John O'Donohue ("For Longing").

Melody and arrangement by Josh Blaine

Finding Our Voice

A Great Thirst (Joshua Blaine)

I first heard the expression “many hands make light work” while living and working in Vermont years ago. One of the leaders of the community made a silly pun at the morning meeting with the room’s light switches to demonstrate the expression as we prepared to go out into the snowy, cold forest to collect hundreds and hundreds of buckets of sap by hand. Indeed that work would have been nearly impossible without the entire community’s participation. But this song was inspired more recently by the rather mundane task of helping a friend move. Just a couple of us showing up to help made an immeasurable difference.

The song also honors the sense of humility required to ask for help. "Let me lessen your load, I'll let you lessen mine," acknowledges that it's not always easy to ask for help.  

Part I:
Listen to the lesson, we're running out of time. 
Listen to the lesson, what's mine is yours is mine. 

Part II:
Let me lessen your load, I'll let you lessen mine.

Part III:
Many hands make light work

Many Hands (Joshua Blaine)

This song came through while taking a 1,000 mile detour on a road trip through the mid-west to see a lover. I was feeling vulnerable and uncertain about the risk I was taking and caught this healing song to help me move through my insecurities and arrive more centered and grounded in myself and the beauty of my unique story. It was a moment of epiphany that each of us - with all of our infinitesimally small moments of experience added up over our lifetime - create a singularly unique expression of human life, never to be recreated again.  

Part I:
I am the only me there will ever be for eternity. 

Part II:
Be kind to yourself, be kind to yourself. 

Part III:
Embrace the beauty of your history, mystery.

Be Kind To Yourself (Joshua Blaine)

Paul Barton (Toronto) brought this song with a humble yet powerful presence to the Village Fire 2018 gathering. He explained in the midst of teaching it that he was crafting the harmony parts on the spot. Suffice to say, the 100 or so of us around the fire with him were floored by the beauty of the song.  

This recording is from the Texas State Capitol rotunda, where about thirty of us gathered on the first Monday of the month (as we do - also on the last Monday of the month) lead by community song leader, Josh Blaine, to sing songs of connection and courage.

Song posted with permission of Paul Barton. To hear more of his music, check out: http://www.paulbartonmusic.com/community-songs.html

8.6.18 Rotunda Sing

I Am Me (Paul Barton) - Live in the Rotunda

A bit about the song from the song catcher:

"Written after a night of dancing ecstatically, and while contemplating my conditioning around romantic relationships. This is a song to myself, to my partner(s) and friends, to the universe, and to whoever you feel called to sing it to ❤" -Jesse French (https://soundcloud.com/yetifree)

Recorded live at a Finding Our Voice community sing in the Texas State Capitol rotunda on 1.28.2019.

Slowly (Jesse French) - Live in the Rotunda

This original 3-part layer song by Gillian Spangler came through while she was biking along one of her favorite trails in Austin. She was inspired by some words of Jon Kabat-Zinn that she heard in an On Being podcast episode: "What if we lived as if each moment mattered." The other lines of the song are inspired by how the experience of singing can bring us into an embodied place of presence. 
PartI:
What if we lived as if each moment mattered
We lived as if we were here.
What if we lived as if each moment mattered
We lived as if time was dear.

Part II:
Can you listen to the wind
Can you feel it in your heart?
Do you know how to give in
To the moment as it parts?

Part III:
Be here, be here now
Be here, in this sound. 

When Gillian first taught this song at one of the FOV first/last Monday rotunda sings about a year ago, she stepped into the center of the circle with such confidence and competence, I (and many others) were sure she'd done this before. But in fact it was her first time leading a song! Since then, she's caught and lead many songs in the rotunda and elsewhere. This recording comes from her final (for now) community sing with us in Austin (which she lead as the night's guest song leader) before she launched on a sojourn to travel and farm along the West Coast. You can follow Gillian's adventures on her blog here: https://www.vaguelyveganvoyager.com/

Be Here Now (Gillian Spangler) - Live in the Rotunda

To skip the intro/story: https://soundcloud.com/findingourvoice/gandalfs-blessing-live#t=1:00

This song came through at the outset of a journey of my own, so it's meant to be a traveler's blessing of sorts. The words are Gandalf's from "The Hobbit." He says to the eagles after they've rescued the dwarves and Bilbo from the burning tree tops (wolves and goblins below!), "May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks." 

The third line comes from Lord of the Rings poem, "All That Is Gold Does Not Glitter": 

All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes, a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

This recording is from a community sing at Let My People Sing! 2019 at the Isabella Freedman Center in CT: https://www.letmypeoplesing.org/

I invite those who wish to carry and teach this song to tell the story of Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves in your introduction - let's hear those Gandalf impressions! 

Singing begins at 1:00

Part I:
May the wind, may the wind, may the wind
Under your wings
Bear you where, bear you wear, the sun sails
And the moonwalks. 

Part II:
May the wind, under your wings
The sun sails, and the moon walks. 

Part III:
Not all who wander are lost
Not all who wander are lost.

Gandalf's Blessing (Joshua Blaine) - Live @ LMPS '19

Nanny's Niggun is an ode to the incredible resiliency of my grandmother, "Nanny" Dorothy. A Holocaust survivor, she endured unimaginable horror and summoned untold strength and endurance to survive four different concentration camps over the course of 18 months as a Hungarian Jewish teenager. 

I caught the initial threads of this niggun (Hebrew for a "wordless melody") while singing with/to her about a year before her passing. It's my attempt to honor her story in all of its pain and profound triumph while reminding me to remain committed to ending oppression for all - no matter the creed, gender, sexual orientation, or color. 

"Nanny's Niggun" was one of the last songs I sang to my grandmother at her bedside before she drew her final breaths in mid-October 2019. This is a recording of me teaching it to a group of about thirty-five community singers in the rotunda of the Texas State Capitol on 11.18.2019, a one month after her burial. 

This song is yours to carry if it helps you connect to your own resiliency and your own commitment to fighting the grave injustices of our time.

To read a more in-depth backstory of this song, become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/posts/35685709

Nanny's Niggun (Joshua Blaine) - Live in the Rotunda

Recorded live in the Texas Capitol Rotunda on 9/30/2019. 
 @JoshuaHBlaine leading about 80 people at the bi-monthly Finding Our Voice community sing, including members of the Just Worship conference. 
Song by Abbi Spinner McBride. 

LYRICS:
Sing through my voice
Play through my hands
Let the way
Be open

Let the Way Be Open (Abbi Spinner Mcbride) - Live in the Rotunda

Finding Our Voice is a project created and tended by Joshua Blaine (@joshuahblaine), a community song leader and organizer currently living on Narraganset land along the Atlantic Ocean. His songs are inspired by some of his favorite teachings and landscapes, from John O'Donohue to the Grand Canyon to mystical Jewish wisdom. Pre-COVID, he lead regularly community sings in the glorious domed rotunda of the Texas State Capitol in Austin, TX, where he lived for 8 years. Now, he continues to write and lead song in the virtual realm in service of collective liberation and systemic transformational justice and peace. You can support and follow his work more closely by becoming a patron at http://www.patreon.com/findingourvox and stay in the loop about his virtual song circles and other offerings on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/findingourvoiceproject/ or by joining his newsletter at http://findingourvoice.net