🤎 songs for transitions 🤎

Breathe breathe breathe in 
Breathe breathe out

Let it go, let it go, let it go

Trust in what's coming
Trust in your knowing
It's deeper and wider and holy


special thanks to Jess & Dan Pelberg Berlin for lighting the spark to find this song in me

Breathe

Read more here: ￼ https://www.patreon.com/posts/63841347

Written as a musical companion to (and in conversation with) the Dan Jones chapter "Mixed Multitude" in the collection WE CRY JUSTICE (Poor People's Campaign) in 2021 as part of the We Cry Justice Arts Project. The poem "Red Sea" by Aurora Levins Morales also served as inspiration for some of the lyrics. 

May this song continue to be a prayer for collective liberation for the sake of an end to all systemic, state, and militarized violences from prisons to Palestine. 

Words and melody are original.

We Get There Together

i don’t write songs about you

Nishmat Kol Chai - Joey Weisenberg And The Hadar Ensemble

I Will Stay With You

we are good.
we are flawed.
we are the breath of an imperfect god.

returning to self. returning to source.
god is change. god is growth. the process, in all it's beauty and all it's mess, is god.

collage art by Chani Nicholas

we are good we are flawed

Healing Song by Kestrel Feiner-Homer

I wrote this song inspired by this quote from the Apocrypha, Book of Enoch (9:7) “The angels taught the daughters of men incantations, exorcisms, the cutting of roots, and revealed to them healing plants.”

The angels revealed to us healing plants (x2)
The angels taught the daughters the cutting of roots (x2)

Erez v'ezov
Levanah v'rimon
Shaked v'tamar
peygam v'shoom

Cedar and hyssop
frankincense and pomegrante
almond and date palm
rue and garlic

 I love this quote because it speaks to knowledge acquired through direct transmission, through relationship, specifically to “the daughters of men” (which we know means anyone without access to institutional power/gender non-conforming/trans/femmes) –  people who are identified by who they belong to and who are clearly transgressing by hanging out with and learning from angels.  It also suggests that this knowledge is always/still available to us; that even though it can feel like the healing wisdom and practices of our ancestors have been lost or purposely hidden from us,  we can access this knowledge by connecting with “angels.” Who are these angels who reveal and teach this stuff (and can I follow them on instagram and take a workshop?) I don’t know, but in my dreams sometimes they are the trees and flowers themselves, generously sharing their magic and beauty everywhere we look. (fyi, originally, in the Apocrypha, this was not actually a celebration of learning about healing from angels as you can imagine!)

you can read more about jewish plant magic here: https://dorimidnight.com/resources/jewish-plant-magic-rooting-in-resources/?fbclid=IwAR1edzpNKBZMTcivRU6TsePiQuoUGNrzxBMsButomfTNbErAHO2D1aqQc3A

Erez V'ezov

Artist: Unknown
I learned at Adamah (Jewish Farming Fellowship) in 2014. The song was brought to the Isabella Freedman community from Cara Michelle Silverberg who learned it at The Art of Mentoring (a workshop from the Vermont Awareness School). **please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this info!

Sung at a song circle on April 13, 2019 on Chinook land/Portland, OR.

Part 1:
Learn to live your life with all your heart, and
All your soul and all your mind, and
Love all humankind as you would love yourself

Part 2:
Learn to live your life
With all your heart
And all your soul and mind and 
Love all humankind

Part 3:
We've got happy lives to live
We've got open arms to give
We've got hope down deep inside
Because in love we do reside

Learn To Live Your Life (Unknown)

Artist: Miner
I learned this song at Let My People Sing 2019.

Sung at a song circle on September 15, 2019 on Chinook land/Portland, OR.

Part 1:
Let the wave wash over me
Let the wave wash over me
I am already under
Let the wave wash over me

Part 2:
There will be better days

**Photo credit: Sarah Snyder!

Let The Wave (Miner)

'Please bring positivity into my life, everyday. Please bring only joy and peace, and everything that is love.'

www.BeautifulChorus.com
Produced for Beautiful Chorus by DiViNCi of SoS

Positivity

kol ha olam kulu gesher tzar meo'd 
the whole entire world is a very narrow bridge
and the main thing to recall 
is not to fear fear itself

<3

gesher tzar

recorded by Aly Halpert, Sol Weiss & Margot Seigle

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.

from Annie: 
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.

Blessed Motion - Annie Zylstra

for the trans bodies, covid bodies, black & brown bodies, disabled and chronically ill bodies, gloriously fat bodies & all the bodies that have to forge their own beautiful path to wholeness.

this body is the earth that holds my bones
this body is the air that i breathe
this body is the water flowing at the shore
this body is the path that guides me home

this body, this body, this body sets me free

This Body

Origin:
Melody by Nava Tehila
Sung by Batya Levine
Art by Naomi Weintraub & Etai Rogers-Fett

Tishrei Nigun - Nava Tehila

A prayer for renewal
A song for healing
A blessing for life

We draw from the wellsprings of liberation
For one another
For the movement
For our world

Love is liberation is water is life

lyrics
מִמַּעַיְנֵ֖י הַיְשׁוּעָֽה
שְׁאַבְתֶּם מַ֖יִם בְּשָׂשׂ֑וֹן

Mimainei hayeshua
Shavtem mayim b'sason

(Words adapted from Isaiah 12:3)

We will draw water in celebration
From the wellsprings of liberation

Mayim Chayim
מים חיים
credits
released October 21, 2019

Written by Avra Shapiro in collaboration with Yael Schonzeit

Vocals: Avra Shapiro and Yael Schonzeit

Mixing and editting: Dave Rosenfeld and Yael Schonzeit

Percussion: Yael Schonzeit and Dave Rosenfeld

Mimainei

JEWISH COMMUNAL SINGING FOR HEALING AND LIBERATION
Let My People Sing! is a cultural project expanding the ancient and transformative practice of Jewish communal singing. We gather in multi-racial, multicultural and genderful Jewish community, uplifting songs and leaders historically and ongoingly pushed to the margins. Together, we transmit and reclaim diasporic Jewish singing traditions, celebrate original music emerging from our communities, and create heart-centered gatherings where we can all be leaders and learners of song.

I Will Stay With You

Let My People Sing!

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Angel Rose

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