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.

holy questions

Leave Your Troubles at the Water

Oh wind, carry us now, 
Like milkweed silk and send us out,
Oh send us out

It is almost time for the drying milkweed pods to open and send their seed babies on the wind. (I have seen more monarch butterflies on the milkweed this summer than the last few years, hallelujah!) This song came to me many years ago and has been sung by all sorts of folks as we've headed our separate ways after gatherings.

Sung by Caitlin Thurrell and Jason Chandler
Written by Heidi Wilson
https://www.patreon.com/heidiwilson/posts

Oh Wind

All blockages removed by the breath of the fire
flames growing higher, higher, higher
we are inspired
All blockages removed by the breath of the fire
flames growing higher, higher, higher
we are inspired
Rattle my bones, rattles my bones
rattle my bones earth, soil and stone
Rattle my bones, rattle my bones
rattle my bones earth, soil and stone

All blockages removed

Xanthophyll is yellow
Anthocyanin is red
Carotene is orange
but what you see instead
Is chlorophyll so green
But when autumn comes around
All the leaves turn lovely colors and they all fall to the ground
Hey!

Song written by Trevanna Frost Grenfell
Sung by Armonie and Moriah

Xanthophyll is Yellow

Words & melodies by Osprey. Guitar by Rich Glauber. Produced by Geoffrey Mays at SoaringHeart Studio in Eugene, OR.
Copyright 2015 Osprey Melissa Huffsmith and Rich Glauber

04 We Are The Goddess

I wrote this song in the wake of the Nepal earthquake in 2015. I spent time travelling and teaching English in Nepal in 2011 and felt a personal connection to the people and land there.

Words & melodies by Osprey. Guitar by Rich Glauber. Produced by Geoffrey Mays at SoaringHeart Studio in Eugene, OR.

© 2015 Osprey Huffsmith

03 Grief & Praise

Welcome In Songs To Celebrate The Earth

Weave And Spin

Good Morning Earth

Your Heart Knows the Way

HE RETURN, by Geneen Marie Haugen

Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.

Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces

of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.

Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.

If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,

you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.

And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language

to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies

and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear

your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they–like you–must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.

THE RETURN: by Geneen Marie Haugen, music Fabrizio Pigliucci, voice M.J. Hummingway

Songs for Nature Connection with young people

Oh Wind

White Ash Learning Cooperative