Location

On unceded Coast Miwok land in Marin County, California, USA

Specialisms

I lead oral-tradition choirs & song circles, with easy-to-learn contemporary community-singing songs

Additional information

My experience of singing with people is an experience of a profound kind of connection, a collective effervescence. In the most magical of moments, veils of history fall away – persona, trauma, self-protection – and my soul meets other souls in a beautiful, mutual giving and receiving, carrying the words and feelings of the songs we are singing through that pure channel of meeting. No matter what the content of the songs is – hope, grief, fear, awe, shame, love, joy – I feel us singing our way into aliveness and I know I have come home.

To me, singing is a crucial part of the social infrastructure of our communities — as important as roads and bridges, for so many of us, for our feelings of connectedness, belonging, and well-being. With all the separations and separateness in our experience — between people, between groups, between us and so much of the more-than-human world — singing together can give us the experience of crossing any divide into an experience of resonant union, poignant interdependence, and what the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh called “interbeing.”

I’m passionate about co-creating singing communities that are safe, welcoming, non-judgmental, anti-perfectionistic, and easy for anyone to join in and feel alive, connected, well held, and uplifted, especially people who are nervous about sharing their voice. And as a straight, white, cis, AMAB (Assigned Male at Birth), I’m committed to using my power, privilege, and platforms in songleading to uplift women, People of the Global Majority (aka BIPOC), LGBTQIA+ folx, and all others who are so often marginalized — and worse — in our society.