“One song, one heart, one mind, one person at a time.” Songs have the power to change the world, says songwriter Mary Gauthier.
Growing up, I was immersed in a melting pot of Danish folk music, soul, jazz and blues music from the US. “British Invasion” music also made its mark, as did Irish, Canadian, South African, Australian, and Scandinavian singers and songwriters.
Emancipatory songs, from Guthrie, to Seeger, and from Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to Bill Withers and Muddy Waters (to name a few) helped shape my voice and beginning songwriting from when I was around 15. Then other singers and songwriters added their touch to the mix.
Today my voice is my own. But it is also something shaped by all of the above – an interconnected mix of nationalities, styles, genres, and songs.
The songs of the singers, songwriters and musicians that shaped me as a singer were songs of resistance, redemption, love, and the pursuit of some level of happiness in the midst of often bleak prospects.
The “logic” is: If I can feel your pain, your doubts, your happiness, your elation through the music, it means I can feel you. And this can lead to reflection on my own life.
Many such songs ultimately work from an ethics of care for past, present and future generations. Songs tie things together in a meaning-making process designed to make the present livable enough that we dare carry a torch into the future and carve a space where we may dwell.
In times when some dismiss empathy as a kind of trickery of the “weak,” many songwriters past and present would denounce such vilification – empathy is arguably our most important human faculty.
Rather than let divisive speech from leaders and their henchmen drive us apart, the future deserves that we hold steadfast to our ethics and continue to do work for the common good of humanity.
In this endeavor a song may seem just a drop in big pond, a “whisper on the breeze.” But sometimes a song is all we need, all we have to give, and the last thing anyone can take away from us.
Songwriting is a deeply humanizing activity. A great many songwriters, like me, have felt carried during dark times by having this craft, and they have been lifted by feeling that a song connected with others.
The least we can do is try to share the practice.