Song Blog

Songs for our Journey 62

2/3/2025

My birthday in the fall of 2024 was the day before the presidential election. As a gift to myself that day, I sat down at the piano, and did something I do not remember ever doing when writing a song. I asked, or prayed for a birthday gift that would be about what was there with me in that room which would still be with me as the votes were counted, and would still be with me no matter the results of the election.

The song below wrote itself, and was finished before the votes were counted. For me it truly is a gift, orienting me over and over to the stillness of the heart. We in the US, and around the world, are collectively going through the most challenging time I can remember.

Still....there’s something here that never leaves. I hope this song is a support for you as it has been for me and the choristas I sing with.

I wish for us all that we not only root in our hearts, but that the actions we take to support and create a culture that respects all our non human as well as human relations arise from that Heart that we share with all beings. Namasté dear friends. K

There's Something Here
© K Hannan 11/4/24

There’s something here
That we can’t see
It is so close
Yet seems so far away
Elusive light, between the clouds
Always now, now, now

A rising song
A falling star
A crescent moon
That finds you where you are
A brilliant light inside it all
Here right now, now, now

It has no name, it has no name
We give it names, then we argue about the names
It has no name, it never had a name

We give it names
There’s something here

It’s how we learn, when troubles come
It is a teacher, the friend in our heart
It’s how we know, that during this confusion
There is no end, no end to love

There's something here
There's something here

There’s something here
That never leaves
It is our home
In every breath we breathe
It's who we are, it's why we sing

It's here right now, now, now
Always now, now, now
Love is now, now, now

2 Comments

Songs for our Journey 61

10/19/2024

1 Comment

The first part of this song: "Then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone." is a quote from George Fox, one of the Quaker founders. I saw it in the Durham, NC Friends Meetinghouse years ago on a beautiful plaque over the water fountain, and loved it at first glance. Back then, maybe 15 years ago now, I started to make up a melody for the quote, thinking I'd create a Dances of Universal Peace dance for it. But I never did totally land on the melody, I never sang it or mentioned it to anyone, and then I forgot about it for all these many years.

Still, that rough sketch of a song was in my sheet music program, not in a hurry to be heard, just sitting there for years like an openhearted, very grounded meditator.

Then in May this year, I was working on a theme for my chorus inspired by a beautiful quote from the Qu'ran: "Everywhere you turn, there is the face of God."

Searching my sheet music files for dances which might fit that theme, I couldn't find a particular dance I was seeking. Instead, what appeared was that long-ago-lost beginning of a song to George Fox's words!

You'll hear in the sound file what happened next...George Fox's words that came to him out of the silence and the words that Mohammad wrote down as he heard them from God seemed very naturally to belong together, and so the song was born. From there came a brand new Dances of Universal Peace dance, which I brought to our Durham DUP community this week for the first time. It is quite a joyful song, and I fell in love with the looks on people's faces as they spin and then return to face the circle, throwing out their arms, and singing, like a little child seeing her mom, or dad or grandparent or best friend arriving: "There is God's face!"

Some of the dancers asked me if I had a sound file of the song and I said yes, and that I'd post it here. Eventually I will make sheet music and dance instructions and post them here as well.

Everywhere You Turn
music & dance © 2024 K Hannan
lyrics George Fox and the Qu'ran

Then you will come to walk
Cheerfully over the world
Answering that of God
In everyone

Then you will come to walk
Cheerfully over the world
Answering that of God
In everyone

Everywhere you turn
Everywhere you turn
Everywhere you turn
There is God's face!

Everywhere you turn
Everywhere you turn
Everywhere you turn
There is God's face!

Everywhere You Turn sheet music w chords
File Size:	117 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

Everywhere You Turn chords & dance instructions
File Size:	77 kb
File Type:	docx

Download File

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Songs for Our Journey 60

3/30/2024

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I wrote the song Lovin' Ourselves Into Love in 1986, and this recording was released on my 1993 album Somethin's Been Missing. I'm playing piano and singing, and my dear friend Ariana Lightningstorm is singing it beautifully with me.

When a friend asked about the song recently, I realized I hadn't ever posted it on this blog, although I feel it is still quite relevant these days. In fact, listening to it this week, I found that the song has a broader meaning to me now than it did back when I wrote it.

Since it has come to mean so many things to me, and since I'd like you to have your own experience of it, I'm going to say no more, and let the song speak for itself.

And I'd love to hear what it means for you, so please comment below if you'd like to let me know. Thank you! Love, Kathleen

Loving Ourselves Into Love / The Fat Song
© Kathleen Hannan 1986

This is a song for the two fat women
Standing in the grocery store aisle
"You know I dropped three pounds this week", one says with a smile
How many pounds would she have to lose
for her beauty to be seen through the eyes of her world?

Tell me
Oh, when will we stop tryin' to starve our way into love?

This is a song, for a friend of yours
With beautiful sparklin' eyes
Born with a body that was never made to fit a fashionable size
She's tried every diet, but still never seems
To look like those women in the fashion magazines

Tell me
Oh, when will we stop tryin' to starve our way into love?

This is a song for the slender daughter
She's taken the message to heart
Learned to control her young body
She's mastered the art
But lately she seems so much thinner
And now she refuses to come down to dinner

And oh
When will she stop tryin' to starve her way into love?

This is a song for an ancient Goddess
At home everywhere on this Earth
She promises comfort and love
She's a giver of birth
Big, round, beautiful and strong
But she's gone out of style
Don't you feel somethin's wrong?

Tell me oh, when will we stop, tryin' to starve our way into love?

This is a song for American women
Caught in the grip of self hate
Wasting our talent and energy
Forever losing weight
Teaching and speaking so much hatred
Of our own bodies, so wondrous
So beautiful, so powerful

And oh, when will we stop trying to starve our way into love?

Now I will sing to the Goddess inside me
The Goddess inside everyone
She who is calling us on, calling us to Love
She shines in our mirrors, she teaches us this tune
We are soft, we are strong, we are round as the moon

And now oh
Now we will start
Lovin' ourselves into Love
Now we will start
Lovin' ourselves into Love
Now we will start
Lovin' ourselves, into Love

2 Comments

Songs for Our Journey

11/1/2023

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Songs for our Journey 59

3/25/2023

1 Comment

This song began when I laughed out loud at a quote I found in a book I dropped while packing things for moving out of the cabin I've lived in for 25 years. I had been in a rather hurried/harried "end gaining" state of mind, and when I read Ramana Maharrshi saying that the search for peace outside ourselves is: "an impossible quest, and causes all this trouble," it seemed completely hilarious to me. All my trouble, and all the world's troubles, come from that one trick of the ego's misdirection. The spell was broken and I started to sing: "It is an impossible quest, that causes all this trouble. All this trouble, it causes all this trouble." The melody, someone in my chorus said, sounds a bit Disney, and I totally agree. A goofy little tune that came out of the humor of that moment.

Here's the entire Ramana quote that became the lyrics to the song:

”For health is our nature. Likewise peace is our nature.
Indeed, we are peace. Forgetting that,
we seek peace from external sources.

It is an impossible quest, and causes all this trouble.

The moment you withdraw your mind
from external objects and turn inwards,
you taste real peace and feel happy.”
Ramana Maharshi

I continued singing the song while packing and carrying things. I was just carrying boxes of books, and they were getting into my car somehow. I was with myself along the way, enjoying the strength to carry boxes of books and laughing at the succinct way in which Ramana had cut through my pushing and brought me to a "chop wood, carry water" state of not trying to get anywhere. Like dancing with boxes of books, with quietness inside and all around me.

Impossible Quest
© K Hannan

It is an impossible quest
and causes all this trouble
All this trouble
It causes all this trouble

For health is our nature
Likewise peace is our nature
Indeed we are peace
Indeed we are peace
Indeed we are peace
Indeed we are peace
Indeed we are peace

Indeed I am peace
Stop the search

Indeed you are peace
Look inside your heart

Indeed we are peace

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Songs for Our Journey 58

2/21/2023

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The man in the foreground of the photo above is the brilliant, visionary and kind master drummer Khalid Abdul N'Faley Saleem. That picture is from the 1990's, probably in Durham, NC, where I met Khalid when we both lived on Burch Avenue. Not long after I recorded this song Khalid moved from Durham to teach at Stoney Brook University, New York, where he wroked and played until recently. I learned this month that Khalid is currently teaching at Appalachian State in Boone, NC. You can read about about his connection to this song in my post below the lyrics.

Drummers on the recording are Beverly Bottsford, Robin Burdulis, Karen Kelley, Jaqui MacMillan, Beth Shulman, and Sonya Stewart. Other musicians: Toddie Stewart on bass, me on piano, Ariana Lightningstorm, Diana Sunday, Rachel Ann Cross, and myself on vocals.

Redemption Song (excerpt)
© Bob Marley
I made a few small changes to sing it as a white person: "Africa was made strong" rather than "my hands were made strong" etc.

All pirates yes they robbed her
Sold her to the merchant ship
Minutes after they took her
From the bottomless pit
Oh but Africa was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty
She followed in this generation, triumphant

Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever had redemption songs
Won't you help to sing these songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever had redemption songs
Redemption songs, redemption songs, redemption songs

Drums of Africa
© K Hannan 1997

White man brought the Africans in chains across the water
White man swore he'd make a brand new world upon this shore
White man drank the whiskey, to try to drown his shame
He swore the drums of Africa would be heard no more

'Cause the drums could tell a story across the night time sky
The drums could play a freedom that would make an angel cry!

And the white man feared the power made a people move that way
So he tried to stop the drumming
He could not stop the drumming!
But he swore he'd stop the drumming
He made made it a crime to play

'Cause Africa was made strong, Africa was made strong
Africa was made strong
The drums of the Almighty carried Africa along

And the drums were in the fields, the drums were in the street,
The drums were in the tapping of a thousand dancing feet
The drums were in the churches, the drums were in the jive
Every pulse of every heart beat kept the drums alive

'Cause Africa was made strong., Africa was made strong
Africa was made strong
The drums of the Almighty carried Africa along

And it wasn't just Aretha, or just Malcom, or just King
In a thousand little churches, you could hear the drummers sing

Singin' Africa was made strong....

The story of Drums of Africa begins way before the 1990's of course, but the direct inspiration for the Drums of Africa song was in 1996 when Khalid Saleem led a two hundred person drum circle for a Unity In The Community Earth Day Celebration in a parking lot near Duke University. I was astounded in joy to hear the drum rhythms thundering out, to see that huge circle of African American men, women and children along with people of other races, playing and dancing the powerful and joyful music of Africa.

In Durham, as in all corners of our country, slavery, segregation and oppression have left a trail of injury and injustice that still affects us all today. And yet, in my heart that day in 1996, I felt that the sounds and sights of the music and movement were an expression of freedom itself, pure and simple, a freedom that is untouched by time or the savagery of history. Music can do that! And African American music in particular, forged in the crucible of terrible cruelty and suffering, feels to me particularly liberating because of the miracle of its beauty and improvisatory freedom arising despite centuries of oppression. There is in the human heart/soul something indestructible, and it was shining out in Durham, in a state where for centuries Black and Indigenous people had been forced to work in bondage, and where the "NC "1715 Code" prevented enslaved people from gathering in groups for any reason, including religious worship, and required white people to help capture escaped freedom-seeking enslaved people. "

I went home that Earth Day deeply inspired by Khalid's powerful and gentle leadership, and his commitment to community music. And Bob Marley's Redemption Song started humming in my mind... "Africa was made strong by the hand of the almighty. We followed in this generation, triumphant." That's what that Unity In The Community drum circle felt like to me, triumphantly free. the Drums of Africa was born shortly afterwards in deep gratitude for the inspiration and joy I felt that day.

I'm posting this in honor of Khalid and the other musicians and dancers who inspired me so deeply that day, and in honor of all the singers and musicians who powered the Civil Rights movement in the US.

And I dedicate the song today also to the young people In Florida and around the country who in February of 2023 are standing up to injustice once again, in the form of suppression of African American history.

I feel certain that as hard as humans may try, we cannot keep freedom down because it is what we all are at our core. So in the middle of oppression everywhere around the world, freedom rises, and rises, and rises again. And musical/artistic freedom, political freedom and spiritual freedom intertwine, elucidate and strengthen each other.

During his 27 years in South Africa's prisons, Nelson Mandela spent a lot of time contemplating freedom, and he discovered, as many people do who dedicate themselves to justice, the spiritual freedom at the very core of our human desire for personal, cultural and political freedom. The freedom to be aware of being Love itself.

President Mandela beautifully expressed his discovery:

"The hunger for my own freedom became
the greater hunger for the freedom of my people.

The chains on any one of my people
were the chains on all of my people.

It was during those long lonely years that my hunger
for the freedom of my own people became a hunger
for the freedom of all people, white and black.
I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor
must be liberated as surely as the oppressed.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission,
to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor, both."
Nelson Mandela in Long Walk To Freedom

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Songs for Our Journey 57

1/29/2023

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I wrote this while living on Terry Road in Hillsborough, NC. There was a long red clay driveway through woods that I loved, although in the rain or snow it sometimes was very slidey! Sadly, I did not have a camera then to take pictures of the crows that I wrote about in the song. The photo above is from the internet with my clumsy photoshopping the road a bit. Sorry I don't know who to credit for the photo, but my guess is that she or he had an experience something like mine. The vividness of the crows against the red clay, and in fact, the vividness of crows in general, woke us up to the beauty of the day.

Blue Black Crows
© K Hannan 1995

Blue black crows on a red clay road
Oh the morning sun
Blue black crows on a red clay road
Oh the morning sun
Blue black crows on a red clay road
Oh the morning sun....
I took my trouble to the riverside
I had nowhere else to run

Blue black crows on a red clay road
Shine in the morning sun
Blue black crows on a red clay road
Shine in the morning sun
Blue black crows on a red clay road
Shine in the morning sun....
I lost my lover but I found my Love
See what the Earth has done

She twirled me high on a bluebird's wing
See what the Earth has done
She called my name in a whipoorwill's song
See what the Earth has done
She showed my face in the midnight moon
See what the Earth has done
Now my heart is full of the colors of the world
My life has just begun
My... life has just begun!

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Songs for Our Journey 56

1/27/2022

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Bismillah Er Rahman Er Rahim
Those words are the first verse of the first chapter of the Quran, encouraging humans to bring our awareness to God/Love/Compassion/Mercy before we begin anything.

The translation for these words that I have learned in the Dances of Universal Peace is: "We begin in the name of Allah, most Merciful and Compassionate."

This week I came across Neil Douglas Klotz's translation widened my sense of the Bismillah, and I did my best to express that experience in this new song that came through. I believe the word remembering is not about remembering with our minds, but re-membering in our bodies and spirits what we know in our core.... that the essence of the One is in us and in all things. Here is Mr. Klotz's beautiful translation:

We begin by remembering
the sound and the feeling
of the One Being, the wellspring of Love
We affirm that the next thing we experience
shimmers with the light of the whole universe

We Begin by Remembering
melody © K Hannan 2022
words based on Neil Douglas Klotz's translation of the Bismillah

We begin by remembering
the sound and the feeling
of the One being
the wellspring of Love
the wellspring of One Love
your Love my Love

Bismillah Er Rachman Er Rahim
Bismillah Er Rachman Er Rahim

everything is shimmering
everything is shimmering
everything shimmers with
the light of your Heart

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Songs for Our Journey 55

5/26/2021

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In the early 1990's I wrote this song after reading about Guara Devi and the other brave women who stood up to loggers who had come to cut down forests nearby their town. The Chipko movement went on to spread across India and around the world.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the day when the villagers hugged the trees and saved their forest: Gaura Devi came to notice in 1974 when she was told by a young girl that local loggers were cutting the trees on 25 March. The men of Reni village had been tricked out of the village by news that the government was going to pay out compensation for land used by the army. And, on this situation, Gaura Devi and 27 other women decided to tackle the loggers. She confronted and challenged the men to shoot her instead of cutting down the trees and she described the forest as "Vandevta" (God of Jungle) and her maika (mother's house). Finally, with the help of other women they managed to halt the work of loggers by hugging the trees despite the abuse and threats of the armed loggers. The women of village and Gaura Devi kept guard of the trees that night and over the next three or four days other villages and villagers joined the action. The loggers left leaving the trees. After this incident, the Uttar Pradesh Government established a committee of experts to investigate the issue of felling of trees, and the lumber company withdrew its men from Reni. The committee stated that the Reni forest was an ecologically sensitive area and that no trees should be felled there. Thereafter the government of Uttar Pradesh placed a 10-year ban on all tree-felling in an area of over 1150 km

Chipko Andolan
© K Hannan 1991

In the town of Gopeshwar, in the north of India
The lumber company came, came to cut the forest down
When word got around, the people of the town, called a meeting right away
They said we will go, put our arms around the trees
They will not take these trees today

Chorus
Chipko Andolan
Don't cut this forest down
Living trees give us clean water and air
Living roots grow deep in the hills
And hold the soil there
Living roots grow deep in the hills
And hold the soil there

The lumber company men had brought with them a gun
They aimed it at the crowd, tried to frighten everyone
They said, "Foolish people, you do not understand
All the money that this forest will bring."
The people were scared, but they held on to the trees
And all together they began to sing

Chorus

One of the women there, very brave and very wise (Guara Devi)
She stepped up to the gun, she had fire in her eyes
She said, "You may call us fools, but we live upon this land
And we know what a forest is worth
And when your money's gone, these trees will still live on
Reaching up into the sky and down into the earth
Reaching up into the sky and down into the earth

Chorus

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Songs for Our Journey 54

12/24/2020

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Lal Ded is a beloved saint/mystic of North India who lived in the 14th Century. She sang her poems in the streets and I have read that sometimes she left her clothing behind, hence she's sometimes known as Crazy Lalla. She was loved during her time, and she is loved today in India and around the world, because her beautiful poems speak directly and simply from her heart. This song is based on the lyrics of several translations of her poems.

We danced this song at my CD release in 2013 and a friend took the picture above. I do not remember who that was, sorry to say! The lyrics are by the North Indian 14th Century woman mystic poet named Lal Ded Thanks so much to the band and singers on this cut who really brought it alive:

vocals - Billy Coleman, Donovan Zimmerman, Jude Casseday,
Lauren Martell, Lea Clayton, Nick Alam, Ron Moss, Sheila Fleming
electric guitar lead - Raymond Smith;
bass - Xopher Thurston; dumbec - Jude Casseday;
tamborine - Donovan Zimmerman;
acoustic guitar and lead vocal- Kathleen Hannan

The Soul Is New
song, music and dance © Kathleen Hannan
lyrics from poetry of Lal Ded, beloved 14th century woman saint from North India from translations/interpretations by C. Barks, N. Kotru, R. Nagar & K. Hannan

The soul is new and ever new again
Like the moon, like the moon
The soul is new and ever new again
Like the moon, like the moon

My teacher said just one thing,
"Live in the soul!"
When that was so I left my clothing by the road
And began to dance
clap: X X XX X X XX

The soul is new and ever new again
Like the moon, like the moon
The soul is new and ever new again
Like the moon, like the moon

And I have seen the ocean always creating
When I look deep into the truth of my own heart
Even I am new!!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Feel free to use the dance instructions
and sheet music below to share this dance.