Singing into spring
Inside: 3 spots left for summer HeartSong backpacking trip for teen girls, 2 spots left for April 11-13 Song Carrier Training, Musicland dates announced, a really good poem at the bottom!
“Change culture and you change lives. You can also change the course of history” ~Resmaa Menakem
Hello Dear People,
How are you? Are you finding the things that you can care for from where you are? Where are you finding hope?
I find hope in our connections with one another. I like to walk where other people are and make small gestures of greeting. Even just the briefest eye connection is worth so much! And so I find myself upping my already eccentric-seeming ways, looking for any visual clue about someone from which to launch the kind of short exchange that not so long ago was completely normal in our society: “Wow, whatcha gonna do with all those carrots?” “What a beautiful sweater!” “Nice find! What does a person do with a gadget like that?”
Maybe you like to do this too. If not, try it! It’s creative, fun, and a little edgy. It builds muscles for holding a society together. Occasionally people don’t respond and very rarely, as happened to me last night in a grocery store checkout line, someone might say ‘none of your business! I didn’t come here to make friends!’ OK! Don’t let it get you down. Keep going.
Scholar Timothy Snyder wrote a small book called ‘On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the Twentieth Century. Lesson #12 is ‘Make eye contact and small talk.’ He knows what he’s talking about.
I’ve always loved gathering people in my home for food, conversation, singing, or anything else. These days I find myself doing that with a bit of a fervor, a feeling that time spent in-person, breaking through the artificial barrier of private spaces, is another of the most basic but a languishing tool for building peace. My favorite writer about this is Priya Parker, who wrote ‘The Art of Gathering’ and puts out a free newsletter that I am always glad to have read.
Thanks to all of the song makers present and past, we have a lot of songs for singing here and now. And thanks to the community singing movement there are many people ready to help bring them to gatherings, rituals, rallies, and vigils. I recently group-sourced among some other songleader friends a short list of the songs we find ourselves bringing out into our communities these days. If you’re looking for some ideas of songs to carry to your next gathering, you might find one here.
If you’d like to watch an inspiring film about the power of group singing, check out The Singing Revolution, an inspiring account of Estonia’s rebirth when they lifted their voices to overthrow a violent occupation.
Until we meet again~
Liz
Center for Belonging Events
Leading and Listening: A weekend of learning with emerging community song carriers
Dates and time: 6 pm on April 11 until 1 pm on April 13
Location: Center for Belonging Folk School, Decorah, IA
Event details: Are you excited about Community Singing? Would you like to help gather people in your home community to twine voices and hearts in this all-voices-welcomed way? Are you intrigued about the possibility of helping to lead songs yourself?
Consider joining Community Songleader Liz Rog and 8 others for a special weekend for sharing tools for carrying song into your community. We will practice many of the skills involved in successfully getting other folks singing including: picking the right song for the moment, finding a good starting pitch, teaching in a clear call & response style, showing the rhythm and melody in your body, building confidence, and modeling joyful and welcoming humility. Learn more and register here.
Open Hub Singing Club: The Big Sing
Date and time: 3:30-5 pm on March 16th
Location: Pulpit Rock Brewing Company, 207 College Dr, Decorah, IA
Event details: Join is in song for the final celebration of our winter session. All voices are welcome. We’ll share some of our current favorites and invite you to sing along if you’d like! All songs taught by ear, no prior experience or training needed. Come sing for connection and joy!
Donations welcome. 100% will go to the Decorah Food Pantry.
Wider Community Events
WisconSing
Dates: March 21-23, 2025
Location: Bethel Horizons Retreat Center in Dodgeville, WI
Event details: Are you looking for an opportunity to sing with the wider Midwest singing community? Join in for a Singing Water Retreat, March 21-23, 2025 at the beautiful Bethel Horizons Retreat Center in Dodgeville, WI. Here’s what the organizers say about the event:
“We gather to honor the water within ourselves and each other as well as the waters all around us. During this time of Spring Equinox we will commune with the land and nourish community connection in a 2 day singing water ceremony. In the Community Singing model, there is no music to read. In this oral tradition, call & response, “you can’t do it wrong!”
Saturday is also World Water Day, an annual United Nations observance day held on the 22nd of March that highlights the importance of fresh water. The day is used to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. In 2025, the theme is Glacier Preservation.
Diane Littel, also known as Kenew Naewaeqnen in the Menomonee Nation, and Jenny Cain will be our ceremonialists. Diane and Jenny will be guiding our time together, including a co-created communal Water Ceremony Saturday evening.
We will flow together during this singing retreat weekend with Water and honor her in song, art, dance and story.”
Song carriers include Liz Rog from Decorah, Sarah Burgess from Madison, Emma Koeppel from Milwaukee, Megan Eberhardt from Chicago, and Lauren McElroy & Kva Mary Wajer from Viroqua.
Learn more and register here.
Balkan Harmonies - Singing to Welcome Spring
Dates and time: 2-4 pm on Sunday March 30 and Sunday April 6 — attend one or both! and continuing workshop series Sundays April 13 - May 25 (register for all 7 sessions)
Location: Pulpit Rock Brewing Company, 207 College Dr, Decorah, IA
Event details: A workshop introducing the vocal music of the Balkans and beyond. Led by special guest Nicolle Roen and Decorah local Sophie Rog. Sing in the spring with the uniquely beautiful tones and harmonies of songs from Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine, Georgia and beyond. These songs are evocative and vibrant, making for a singing experience that is exhilarating, unique and delicious to the ears and the heart. In opening our voices and ears to new sounds, we can forge fresh connections with ourselves, each other, and the cultures from which these songs come.
We will learn primarily through oral tradition of call and response – no music reading or singing experience required.
Learn more and register here.
Live Music: Nicolle Roen with Sophie Rog
Date and time: 5:30 pm on Sunday, April 6th
Location: Pulpit Rock Brewing Company, 207 College Dr, Decorah, IA
Event Details: Nicolle Neill Roen is a vocalist and multi instrumentalist steeped in the musical traditions of the Balkans. Through her voice, accordion, Macedonian tambura, and frame drum, she will transport you through story and song to Turkey, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and beyond. Nicolle is a native of Winona Minnesota, residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 2003.
Sophie will be joining Nicolle to perform some of the beautiful harmonies from these regions and may perform a few solos as well. If you have delighted in the tight and unusual Balkan harmonies before, this will be a great chance to hear more! If you haven't, please come treat yourself to something new.
HeartSong Backpacking Trip
Dates: June 22nd-29th
Event Details: A Red Oak Outdoor School Event — A backpacking and singing trip for young women 13-16 years old.
Supporting participants to build confidence in their voices, kinship with the land, and connection with each other.
Singing is an ancient form of human connection that helps us to remember on a cellular level that we are not alone. Spending time outside brings our senses alive in ways for which they have been wired for millennia. As we lift our voices under the open sky and tune our ears to the subtle music of the land, we will build relationships with the more-than-human world, remembering that we are a part of the song of the wild.
No formal vocal training or experience is required to attend this camp. However, it is necessary that you can match pitches and sing simple melodies.
Read more about the program and find the link to register here.
Carrying Song as Service: Community song leading as a strengthening act in Washington
Dates: May 10-11, 2025
Location: Olympia, Washington
Event Details: This event is a collaboration between Center for Belonging and the Folk School Alliance. Read more details in this brochure. Registration info coming soon.
Musicland: Save the date!
This year Musicland will be Sept 12-14, 2025. Musicland is a weekend for all ages of singing, playing, and relaxing in the beautiful driftless valley that holds Dream Acres Farm near Spring Valley, MN, hosted by Ida Rotto and me. We’ve got a date set! Registration will come out in late June or July.
My Books
Song Carrier Toolkit
I’m so grateful to the teachers and experiences that have provided me with the tools and confidence to bring songs out into my community and help us to sing them together. I thought I’d write a book to share those learnings with others, and now that book exists!
If you are curious about how to bring group singing into the spaces where your local communities gather, this book offers some tools, connections, and encouragement to begin.
If you have already stepped into leading singing in community, here’s a chance to look at your experiences and questions within the wider scope of this growing movement.
If you are a seasoned song carrier, perhaps this book will support you in sharing these evolving tools with others.
Whether your gift to song and community is through bringing simple singing into your neighborhood or family, or you are leaning toward becoming one of the traveling bards who carry seeds of friendship and music across the land, this is for you.
I wrote three other small books:
“We Are All Enough: One Mother’s Thoughts on Parenting and Wholeness,” ‘We Belong: Tools for Weaving Community Right Where We Are,’ and ‘Kitchen Table Singers: Songs of Comfort, Healing, and Encouragement.’ I love writing your names and envelopes and bringing them to the post office! You can order them here.
On to the poem!
Until Soon,
Liz
A Different Holding Pattern
March 3, 2022 by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
If I am to hold the world in my heart,
then let me hold it the way leaves hold sunshine,
trapping the energy not for the sake of holding it,
but to transform it into nourishment.
Though the process isn’t simple, it’s common.
All around the globe, in every season,
leaves hold and synthesize
whatever the day gives them.
On a day when the energy of the world
seems too much to hold,
let me bid my heart turn
like a leaf to the sun
and make sugar.
The way Rilke turned grief into sonnets.
The way Sibelius turned war into song.
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