A traditional mbira chakwi piece arranged for marimba. Played with a fiery driving warrior energy -a deep trance majic work – live on Beale Street with dancing crowds under the Elvis Statue during Memphis in May, Memphis Tennessee by our band of Bliss Gypsys. Featuring the drumming of the late Tim Hauth.
Linda “Mai Chi” Nemarundwe Maraire – who supported and guided many of the early mbira travelers between Turtle Island and Zimbabwe rooted this song in our lives. We developed a version together in Kubatana II. She asked Steven Golovnin and me to play this song for her after her passing which we did on mbira. Many have been witness to her spirit with this song and we always give thanks for the strength of hunting in the world, for what our spirits need, that she taught and modeled so well in her living.
Best enjoyed with dancing…
Tree Oathe - Fresh Ancients of Cascadia & Beyond.... 
Dancing to a blog post……works for me! And what a relevant treat to find this blog ahappenin’, Treothe. Good on ya. It touches and provokes deep feeling….and wondering how to get ‘there’ from ‘here’, other than mostly in my mind. Know what I mean? I feel much of (my) life is colonized and other than even my own indigenous self.
Okay, enough for one comment. Thanks.
Thanks Ari! You got me laughing… Gonna set up my desk so I can stand and dance while writing and reading today… I know what you mean about the level at which access to our relationships with the elementals and nourishments of the earth is mediated by corporate / nation state controlled access points – even at our peoples coops and farmers markets – clothing, media, transport tend to be much more that way – I originally started on the decolonize piece from a completely different set of angles – one of which is how the idea of self may in part be a legacy / artifact of the colonial / imperial mindset. We have never, are never, alone or solitary – our very bodies are dependent on an ever-changing host of symbiotic organisms in order to function. It seems collective imaginative trance inertias of the mind stand between us and the emergence of a renewed indigenous in-habitation …. I am witness to you reconfiguring and liberating us from these trances in your amazing paintings… gardenings… dancings… :)
I hope you’ve gotten your set up danceable! Good to read your reply, Treothe, and feel understood and seen – thanks for witnessing my offerings such, helps me to appreciate my path too. Yes, perhaps self is is part of a legacy, the ‘imagined’ result of lots of conditioning…off with our heads! Even the words are tricky……and is it ironic or what that these computing instruments seemingly both bring us closer and drag us farther astray from the elemental and each other. I feel hung up in a net, though it is sparkling with dew.
Thanks for asking Ari – hadn’t yet – til after you asked – excited to have a standing – dancing place to work – tweaking the best angles … Yes I have an unresolved relationship to this whole technological bit – have read some alarming work on the eco impacts recently – sense that it is perhaps a transitional phase in enabling collective break throughs of consciousness – certainly love the way it has democratized our capacity to share our arts… like to imagine the way this is light rhythms – passing the light between us all… and yes while the ;modern concept of self enables directions of freedom in personal destiny I wonder about the dissociative affects that have enabled the moralities of colonial processes… and the way that the context of many personal choices are degrees of freedom tangential to our full dignity as beings… thank goodness for the momentums of ancient agreements that hold all of this…
P.S. something said about this week a download of music birthed under a willow tree?
lol … there is a beautiful willow tree that has branches so lateral they have been given supports on the NW side of the fountain at the Seattle Center – old gathering grounds that became the site for Folklife – the largest free folk festival on Turtle Island last weekend of May every year… Bliss Gypsys set up under that tree busker style several years before a permanent stage was set up there…. Irene Chigamba met us and joined in there and Paul was there… and I figured out how to give folks the option to download these tracks from soundcloud
What a gift to listen to this. Thank you. And to think, I was just interested in a way to read poetry… This is more, poetry somehow in sound, light (for I see it), movement, rhythm (we feel it)… beautiful. I passed it on to share with my son, Forrest. I was going to suggest you share your post above with Amy of Soul Dipper tomorrow, for those are words that need to be shared. And now this… it would be a gift to share both if you would.
If only I could free myself to dance to this… How? How does one let go and live when we’re so wrapped up in what we’re “supposed” to be…?
Wonderful to hear the way the music lit you up… makes us smile… and yes please feel free to share the music and words… encouraging each other in good living….
One of the teachings from the coast here is that we are always all the stages of life – babe – child – adult – elder … gives permission to laugh at our primary role position and step out to play in new ways… follow the shapes in the music – ehh!
Gratitudes!