World Singing Day 2022

Happy #worldsingingday ! 🎉🎊🎉👄🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵👄🎤💜♥️♥️♥️♥️ 

"I don't sing because I'm happy, I'm happy because I sing" — William James

This quote is from the philosopher (and early psychologist) William James. I like this quote because it's so true. People have been singing since the beginning of time, especially together when doing an activity, celebrating something, socializing generally and including liturgy at places of worship and school assemblies. Indeed, people sing together whenever, wherever, as we saw in Spain and Italy during lockdown when they sang folk songs together from their balconies - I found that very emotional, very touching. Here they clearly were not singing about being happy in lockdown (who would be!) but singing raised their spirits and made them happier, despite the situation. Long live song! 🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵

For World Singing Day 2022 I've dropped a new track in my World Music playlist on SoundCloud. You can listen to it here.

It's the traditional Czech Folk song 'Cerne Oci, Jdete Spat' that my mother sang to me as a baby, from a few days old (I have a Czech background on my mother's side). I've sung it unaccompanied because, although it's a standard folk song, I've sung it in the style of a lullaby - mothers can't hold the baby and play an instrument at the same time! I chose it for today because mothers singing lullabies to their babies is probably the most fundamental form of singing which then evolved into folk songs and is common throughout the world irrespective of whether you think of western cultures or indigenous peoples and so on. 

🧑‍🍼👩🏻‍🍼🧑🏾‍🍼👩🏿‍🍼 🎵🎶🎵🎶

Although I'm a British singer, I'm also Canadian (through my mother, and her family) so I have a special interest in Native American culture on that continent, in Canada, the USA and South America. I love Native American music (singing and instrumental) which I find very soulful, intuitive and emotional to listen to, whether it's on a CD or on YouTube. However, it's a genre of world music and singing that is mostly neglected and underappreciated, and the clips of music I've seen/heard for World Music Day 2022 have not included their voices. So I'm sharing a link so you can hear the ancestral singing and chanting of Native Americans here. Elsewhere on this YouTube channel, 'Ancestral Way Music', which is dedicated to providing us with indigenous ancestral music, you can hear many more examples, both singing and instrumental, of Native American music, as well as Indigenous music from other places around the world. 

🌎🤗🎶🎵🎶🎵