Singing to the soul of the earth

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Drawing from nature and her inner self, singer and songwriter Samara Jade explores natural beauty through music.

“I tend to write songs that are deeply inspired by nature and the landscape that I am in, and a cross section of the landscape, and the land around me and my own personal journey and personal narrative,” she said.

Jade will sing “Where My Soul Meets the Soul of the Earth” during the upcoming PT Songlines choir concert in Port Townsend. The concert begins at 7 p.m. Jan. 19 at the Cotton Building, 607 Water St. in Port Townsend.

PT Songlines was founded by Laurence Cole in 2006 and is co-directed by Gretchen Sleicher. It welcomes all voices; no audition is required.

“I am from North Carolina, but I moved out here this summer, and I have had a number of songs come to me since I have come here, including one that Gretchen and Laurence really liked,” Jade said. “They had an idea that I should do an arrangement of it for the songline choir. I love to make up harmonies and arrange things, but this is the first time I am doing a choral arrangement, specifically.”

Jade, who usually sings solo, said she enjoys the added power of being backed by a full choir.

“It sounds awesome,” she said. “It is definitely a work in progress, but hopefully it will all come together by the (time of the) concert. It is powerful because I definitely have not heard my songs sung in that rich harmony with that many people before. It is a real treat to get to do that, an honor.”

Jade said she will perform as many as three of her original tunes during the concert, and she  also will play guitar.

For the rest of the concert, the only backing instrument will be a djembe drum Cole will play.

“I have been beating on all kinds of drums, including school desks and things like that, ever since my kindergarten teacher told me I had no sense of rhythm,” Cole said. “My life has been devoted to standing up to that particular shameful message,” he joked.

Cole said he uses a djembe as a conducting tool, a different take on the traditional piano led choir.

“I am not an African-trained drummer, but … the drums have been a natural method in helping the whole group sing together for many years,” he said. “We don’t tend to have piano accompaniment other than a learning and training tool. Then we run through it a capella with nothing but a little light tapping from me on the drum.”

Singing with only drums as accompaniment gets down to the roots of music, Cole said.

“That is really part of the vision of our work, to have an absolutely terrific time making meaning and beauty with nothing more than our hearts, our voices, our spirits and our capacity to make big sound together. An animal skin and a piece of a tree are about as natural and ancient as you can get. That is why I like to do it. It is pretty primal.”

The concert also will feature the poems and words of Mary Oliver.

PT Songlines was founded to bring people together, said Cole, who studies anthropology.  

“In some indigenous communities, the earth was seen as being crossed by lines of energy, referred to as ‘songlines,’ that were revitalized by passionate, joyous, singing embedded in the ethic of reciprocity and the recognition that all flourishing is mutual,” he said in a news release. “Such singing was not only seen as vital to maintaining the earth in her full aliveness, but as a ‘technology of belonging’ that reweaves a group of people into the awakened experience of being a (united) people in deeply connected relationship to each other and all their other kin in the more than human world.”

Cole promised the upcoming concert will be unlike traditional choral performances, especially because the audience will be invited to sing.

“While we sing some more elaborate choral arrangements as performance pieces, we also teach easily learned songs in layered harmonies to the whole assembled throng, creating a richly soaring tapestry of sound and meaning that feeds our souls and leaves the atmosphere shimmering with connection and a shared love and commitment to our place on this astonishing planet,” Cole said.

Allowing everyone present to participate in song brings together those present in an undefinable manner, Sleicher said.

“Many of the songs the choir and audience will sing together at the concert speak to the longing we have for more connection with the whole living world and the motivation to extend our hearts and hands to repair parts of that living world that need our attention and help.”

Proceeds from donations gathered during the concert will benefit Global Earth Repair Network, an environmental activist group founded by Michael Pilarski and headquartered at Fort Worden.

In May, the organization will host the Global Earth Repair conference, which will bring about 500 participants together to talk about ecosystem restoration at the local, regional, state, national and international levels, the group’s website states.

“The conference will bring together activists and experts from around the world and locally to address local and regional earth repair projects we can all take part in,” Pilarski stated in a news release.

Pilarski will be present at the concert to discuss environmental issues in the Salish Sea.

Entry is by donation, although no one will be turned away. For more information, call Sleicher at 360-643-1595 or email gsleicher@igc.org.