Singer

By conveying the innermost feelings through song, the singer enchants...

Plainsong, ballad, overtone chant, folksong... Each conveys a message, trivial or profound - of love, strength, wonder or mystery.

Harnessing the tones and shades of a sympathetic voice to keep alive the symbolism and beliefs of our ancestors, the singer may share legends, riddles, ceremony, birth and death.

For the bardic singer may use words and sounds to alter consciousness, to transport the listener to the Otherworld.

As words and music stir the imagination and move the heart, the singer and the listener become kindred spirits, lost together within the song..

Singing is a combination of profound concentration and letting go, so that the song may take over and sing itself - to become a great river of sound. If I feel likely to be distracted I simply close my eyes since, for me, this gives a result which is invariably more powerful.

For the singer there is a magic in the subtle energy which comes from the listener - that electrical current that makes the air sparkle is a wonderful boost. In fact no concentration is needed once this has manifested, so that the singer may become lost in the song.

I wonder if perhaps this magical subtle energy prompts the Throat and Heart Chakras to work in resonance (now there's an interesting term, in view of the nature of sound). Perhaps it is no wonder that the listener tunes in (another appropriate term!) at a gut level.

I had a particularly powerful experience of this soon after we came to live in France...

At a rowdy mid-day barbeque party an English friend had asked if I would play Dark Island for him on the dulcimer. It's not a tune that I play well, so I sang it for him instead. The magic was with me that day, despite the difficult conditions, and afterwards a french lady asked me to tell her what the song was about, for she had found it "very poignant" - So I asked her to tell me, first, what she had thought it was about... and, despite knowing not one word of english, she gave me a pretty accurate translation! The actual words had not been necessary in order for the essence of the song to be conveyed at a gut level.

No wonder that music is a universal language

Here are links to some of our favourite songs and singers, as well as singing techniques and a Singer's Bibliography.