Re-Wilding The Voice 2020
An extended program combining Level 2 Vocal Musicianship training with an exploration of vocal improvisation’s application to the inner life, nature connection, groups, healing, ritual and the sacred.
In the mornings we will study chops: rhythm, harmony, melody, and creative integration in vocal improvisation. In the afternoons, we will explore some of the wider and deeper applications of the art form. All the while, we will work on the voice and bring out its authenticity, health, courage, strength, abilities and natural beauty.
@ Coed Hills, Wales | 4 residential weeks: March 24 - 29, June 14 -19, Aug 30 – 4 Sept, and Oct 11-16 2020.
Cost | £3500 | 2 places at £3000 | 2 places at £2500 | 2 assistant places at £2000.
Cost includes all tuition, organic plant-based food (3 daily meals + snacks), board 2-3 to a room (private rooms are available for a little extra), sauna, practice materials and support.
Students need to commit to 2-4 hours practice per week, a monthly group support call, and active buddy-pairs support relationships.
Context
What do we mean by ‘re-wilding the voice’ or ‘wild singing’, the title of most of my teaching?
Wildness has got some bad connotations. Raaaa! Wildness is brash, ugly, uncontrollable, loud, wild, dangerous.
Yet look at the first thing you can perceive that is wild. It may be the air upon your skin; the movement of the clouds above, the wind in the trees.
Wildness can be very still; very delicate.
Wildness is ecological genius.
Wildness is life living, evolving and being shaped by something more than human intelligence.
So when I talk about wild singing, I am talking about stepping out of music that is shaped by human intelligence, and into music that is shaped by more-than-human intelligence.
(This is why some of my students say this is inherently a spiritual practice, and some of my collaborators call it a ‘Jedi training.’)
Entering this state – where were are receptive to the more-than-human intelligence and let it have our voice – we enter, and become more and more able to know and access, a state of deep quiet, listening, and attunement.
In that state, we can hear more.
In this state of deep quiet, listening and attunement;
We can connect with the consciousness, perhaps the wisdom, of trees, rocks and other aspects of nature.
Some can relate with ancestors, and / or future generations.
We can feel and sing the inner lives of others
We can feel and sing our own deep inner truths, and through that, come to know them.
Then we can use this work for healing, ritual, prayer, and ‘therapeutic purposes.’
I put ‘therapeutic processes’ in inverted commas because, really, why did we ever separate singing and dancing from therapy? They’re inherently woven.
In between us as we (probably) are today and the state of deep quiet, can be things that we don’t want to feel.
So using the voice and the body, we have beautiful ways to feel and sing and move into those hard places; the voice and movement become like a river that can dislodge stuck rocks and carry them out to sea.
Rivers are inherently self-healing, self-cleansing.
There is a healing force in the universe and, among all else, we can choose to align ourselves with it.
And in this some choose meditation, some choose shamanism;
I choose voice, and body.
I choose dance, and song.
Some say or feel that it’s dangerous.
Historically, witches and shamans have been persecuted and killed for these capacities.
But, it’s a Thing. It just is, a Thing.
Voice is one of the main ways that led me to this; which is perhaps why some people want to or have been trained to keep their voices quiet; because they fear the depth of the power contained in there.
But it’s safe. Ethics guide us. It’s beautiful. It’s very beautiful indeed.
Here we go.