Gratitude #8,791

Ok, so I have not done 8,790 other blog posts about  feeling gratitude that I probably should have, but I felt it in my heart and soul.

Yesterday I sent off the master for a new CD I've been working on for...well, a long time. At first I was going to write that it has been in process for 2-3 years, but two of the songs I wrote and recorded back in the early 1990s.  The songs, titled Joy in the Light  and Place in the Kin-dom (originally Place in the Kingdom before I adopted a practice of gender neutral language) were just never a good fit for my recording projects until now. So I guess you could say that this one has been a labor of love for 20 years!

The CD is titled Blessings of the Universe.  I thought it was in the vein of contemplative, meditative music, but my dear friend, wise woman (and marketing wiz) Rita G decided after listening that it was more brain and heart stimulating, so she encouraged me to describe it as "Songs for the foreground and background of your days."  That just made my day!  Since then I have pictured YOU (my beloved listeners) listening as you drive, or weave (but NOT as you drive!) or garden or cook or type or plan, as listening to these 13 songs of prayers and blessings, and I feel so grateful to know that we can connect through time and space with music.

I often hear from my listeners who express their responses to the live or recorded songs. Like Rita,
they see and hear things that sometimes surprise me.  When I'm composing, perhaps I get stuck in the emotion or psychic place I exist in while writing, then the music takes on its own energy, not unlike the original flaring forth of the Universe. After all, sound, music is physics, energy and it circulates in the curious, mysterious ways of the Big U.

This will be my 10th recording (9th as Earth Mama®) and it carries the same love, joy, care, concern and prayers for our Amazing Earth, but with a new deepening.  Another post in the future will share the source of inspiration for these blessing songs for water, women, gathering, children, peace, solar energy and more.

This photo is my personal alter where I meditate. It is a locally turned wooden bowl by artisan Terry Clark, filled with some of my favorite simple gifts from the Universe—stones, fossil, wild flowers, an elephant, feather and  bowl of sacred water (Sister Water). These things remind me daily of my gratitude, my soul felt appreation of beauty and fragility of the Web of Life.

Buy Local Music, Song of Community!

Another way to Buy Local...

Ten to twenty thousand dollars to produce, record, and manufacture a CD.  Yup, your favorite local band or singer-songwriter finds a way to scrape together the money for studio time or very expensive equipment, hire a graphic designer, and order a thousand units, just so their fans can buy a CD, to play in the car, at a party, on their computer.

Buy their CD, you get the songs, liner notes and musician credits, artwork, the songs playing in an order designed to build for your enjoyment. All this for $15!

The musician gets to use the proceeds from the sale to pay for the project and to keep making music for you. Or you can buy a song by download on iTunes or Amazon and the artist will get paid anywhere between 4¢ and 65¢.  Hear it via a streaming service and musicians get paid  .000007.  Burn a copy of the music for yourself or a friend and you break a musician’s heart.  Creators of music have come to refer to services such as Spotify or Pandora as “digital parasites”  because the service makes millions, artists and musicians now make —this is
 really the term on our statements—micro-pennies.

So, if you want to hear music in your community, and support local economies, please support your local musicians.  If you like their songs, please buy the CD.  If they are using social media, connect and share them in your network. If they are connected to a rising indie label, check out the other artists on the label. The photo in this post is my dear friend, Jim Stoltz, or Walkin' Jim as he is often called. He walked thousands of miles across the United States, performing and supporting environmental activism in communities where people came together to raise money AND for music!

We all have these generous souls in our communities.These are the same musicians and bands that show up and donate their time and talent (and equipment and gas) for every good cause and fund raiser in the community.  Please show them a little love and appreciation and buy their CD.  For yourself, or for a friend.

Music, the universal language. Support it locally. Thank you.