Winter Sing

Winter Sing

“Oh, this looks lovely.”

Becky in our empty room

I smiled, anticipating 70 women filling the two concentric circles of chairs. Sun angled across the floor from the tall windows lining both sides of the room. Dust danced in the beams like the vibrations of song soon to come. I stood in the center of the circle for a moment and breathed in the empty space.
Women began to arrive, bustling about setting up coffee and hot water, tables for snacks, finding their seat. The room began to fill with the spirited pitch of women happy to see each other – a sonic collage of eager greetings, handling of details, and cheerful laughter, the tones rising and falling, the volume lifting as the clock ticked toward 10:00.
“Jamba, jambo sana,” I began to sing. The women sang it back to me. “Jamba, jumbo santa.” I continued, “Habari, tuwa karibisha,” My heart kicks up a bit when a room full of women answers me back in song. Back and forth, call and response, we learned this song from the Congo. It is a song that villagers sing to welcome visitors. I had learned it from three of my singers, who are New Americans originally from the Congo. The words mean, “Hi/hello many times, How are you? I am fine. In our country, there is no problem.” A fitting way to start the Winter Sing, a day for women from three women’s choruses; my chorus – Songweavers, Animaterra, from Keene, and Brattleboro Women’s Chorus, to sing together.
Animaterra and Brattleboro Women’s Chorus are directed by Becky Graber. Becky and I wanted to have fun sharing songs and build relationships between our singers. The day became so much more than that.
We began the morning with warming up the body. “I’m alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic,’ a children’s song with hand and arm gestures that reverse at the end causing confusion and chuckling. Barriers between strangers began to dissolve in communal fumbling and play. We graduated to a simple part song, Together in Song by Sue Ribaudo. Each part learned one line.
“Bring on the voices, bring on the voices, bring on the voices together in song.
My voice and your voice, bring more voices together in song.
Hearts are together and minds are together and we are together, together in song.
Singing in harmony sing, sing, together in song.”
By the end, we are all singing together in song.
As the morning went on, the sound began to work its subterranean magic. Faces smiled. Bodies relaxed. Feet tapped. Just before lunch, Becky taught Legacy by Terry Garthwaite.

Winter Sing from the loft

“I will lay down the burdens of my mother, and carry on the legacy of love.
If I stumble and fall, help me up, one and all. And we will carry on with love.”
I stood in the back watching women wipe their eyes, wiping my own eyes. At lunch, women    mingled from different choruses. For our last song, written by Kate Munger, we sang,
“What light do you shine in the world?
What gift do you give every day?
What comes from your heart and becomes your life’s art?
What light do you shine in the world?”
We sang 23 songs over the course of the day. Some were silly, some were sweet or upbeat. Some were direct, like songs for freedom and songs of protest. Some asked questions. Some offered guidance. Some were prayers and songs of gratitude. None of the songs were about perfection. Rather, the singing opened us all up to a sharing of personal emotions through communal vibration. With each note, in each moment, each now. At 10:00am, we were 70 individual women singing. By mid-morning, individuals had become one indivisible body of sound. It didn’t matter what kind of song it was. At some point, each woman dropped away entirely, transformed through sound into infinite vibration – more tears, more opening, more heart, more connection – sublime.
This is why I sing. Because singing is audible, visceral connection. What I most crave is the tangible experience of real connection- to myself, to others, to Spirit, and to the unity that we all are. In the ringing stillness after a song, I patted my hand over my heart, acknowledging our profound connection.