Song Carrying

The following article comes from a talk Jaya gave at the November 2024 Sound Ceremony Training.

In the Forest Path songbooks, there are songs from all around the world, songs in different languages—Portuguese, Spanish, indigenous dialects—and songs in English as well. There are many songs that we call “medicine songs”. The reason why I started playing music was to play these sorts of healing songs. Medicine songs are not pop music. They’re not necessarily cool. It's not what you see on the stage or on MTV. They’re songs that serve a purpose: to carry a message, to carry wisdom, to reconnect us, to bring us together. Songs that are prayers, songs that sing to nature, songs that sing from our heart to other hearts. 

And it might sound like a lot of these songs are the same, but in our ceremonies you’ll find there are very distinct genres of medicine songs. These distinctions come from different ways of playing the guitar, a different way of holding the maracá (the rattle), different beats, different rhythms coming from different cultures, coming from different continents. And so I always like to give respect and offer perspective, so that we can start to see subtle differences and nuances between these songs. I also want to empower people to start making collections of the songs that they know, songs that you know from your childhood or from your family, or from what you've learned and picked up on the way. 

When I was a teenager, I was really fascinated by shamanism and psychedelics. When I was about 17 years old, I read an article about Amazonian shamanism, and it said that some of the medicine carriers knew up to 200 different songs for any different ailment, particular time, moment, movement, healing path, or psychological journey in a therapeutic/ceremonial context. And I could not believe that. I thought, “No way could somebody know 200 songs for any moment, to bring out at any time.” I remember being baffled while reading that.

And now with our songbooks, I have over 1,200 songs that I know. It's a testament to a very, very old tradition that's unique to our humanity. It’s the tradition of being a medicine carrier. These are the old doctors, the old psychologists. They have medicine for people. They have healing for people; old priests, people who come and give spiritual direction and counsel, who can hold for grief and suffering and transition, marriages, births, and deaths. 

This also relates to the spirit of the Bard. The spirit of the Bard is a very old one—the Irish know it well—it’s the spirit of poetry and it's the spirit of the song carrier. And all across Europe, all across Africa, all across the Americas, in all of these continents there are people who are carrying those torches. It's an impulse, and a perennial impulse in human beings. There will always be people who are going to collect, to document. Now there are academics and anthropologists who go into ancient Irish villages and places in Scotland and Siberia to speak to all of the locals and try to collect all the bits and pieces of the broken lullabies so that they can record them and keep them so that they don't die. 

So I want to introduce and say a word about “song carrying” and what that is, and how beautiful it is to be connected to that in humanity. Because some of us didn't grow up in families that sing. Some of us didn't grow up singing. Some of us did, but it's a gift to us. All of us were like birds in the trees, but some we’re human beings. We got stifled and we got stunted because of what was on MTV, because of auto tune and because of the perfection of the people singing on the stages. We thought that that's how it was, and that's for those people who are good at it, and it's not for everybody else. But if you go to any tribal society and community, everyone does it. You're not exempt from it. And it's not somebody special on the stage. It's the whole community that sings and dances and plays the music and does the prayers and does the ceremony. And so I think it's really important to offer that invitation and transmission for everyone to think about, and to take a part of that flame with you, and to collect some of the songs that you know, even if you can't sing them well, even if you just know one or two or three, but to have them somewhere and know that you have some, and know that you have a small collection, and maybe it will grow. Those songs can be medicine for you to sing when you need to. They can be medicine for others.

I've got several big songbooks, which people from our community study. And some work in hospice, as death doulas, and they say, “I'm so glad that I have your songbook, because I get to sing from it to people when they're dying.” And there are other people who say, “I’m so glad I have this book, because now I go back into my world, and now I'm conducting ceremonies. Now I'm holding singing circles, not because I want to be somebody on a stage, but because I need it, and I know that it's better when I do it with others, and I hope other people need it. I had been waiting for somebody else to start it, but maybe it's me that has to start it, and so I have to start singing.” 

Singing is a different medicine. It's a kind of charity and a service to sing, and to invite other people to sing with us. And even if we don't sing it completely right, even if your voice is not perfect, it's really about the heart and the soul and the message and the transmission. Because the way I see it, every one of these songs have their own unique personality. They come from somewhere. With the medicine songs and the healing hymns, we say they are divinely inspired, like beautiful pieces of poetry or prayer that move us. In one of the traditions I study in, we separate the hymns from songwriting culture in that we don't take credit for the songs. Somebody received the song and it's with their name, but it's for everybody. And so they say it's not by me, but it's through me, and of me. And in that sense, each song can contain a very special frequency, a vibration, a message, a transmission. And each one, if we're paying attention, brings about a different feeling. Some move sadness and grief. Some inspire happiness, some inspire dancing, some inspire deep reflection and prayer. They're all different keys to open different doors. 

And so with the tradition of mantra, for example, in the East, the mantras become like deities. They are said so many times by so many people that the manifestation of the vibration of the song or mantra becomes a living force that when somebody sings it, they tap into it. And when somebody sings it, they're actually making offerings, like flowers to it. They're feeding the being that has been created through a collective energy of people singing to it. The songs, with enough of us singing them, have a life of their own. Then when you learn the song, you become a home for the song to sing through you. So when we start the song, it's not like saying, “I'm going to sing this song.” Rather, it's like this song wants to be sung. And so then you’re an instrument for the song to be present, and it uses your voice to come alive. Being a song carrier is also being a holder of a living tradition of living forces that are hidden in the songs. 

So take that with you. Collect songs, if you must, and learn them. It's never too late to pick up a guitar, a ukulele, a drum, and have a few songs in your backpack. You all have a voice.

We sing to our children every night, because they have become accustomed to it, and they expect it, and they think it's normal, and they don't go to bed without singing, without being sung to. They just think that's what happens. But when we were in Australia last year, my mother put them to bed while we went out one night. And my mother said, “I read them a story, and then they asked me to sing to them. And I said, ‘Oh, I don't sing.’” And Elijah replied, “What do you mean?” And so she immediately sang, “La la la la” in her broken voice, because a child expected her to sing, and she could not say no. What a world it would be if all children had the expectation and the realisation of being sung to every night to go to sleep. What would that world look like if we were all sung to, if we sang to each other, if we sang to the children?