Video: "We thank You" Song

Click here to watch the Video
At the autumn drumming retreat about a month ago, I was given a song by the land and water. I don't mean that to sound overly mystical, I just feel like I didn't make this song up - it came to me intact. Because it was a gift to me and that group, it is also a gift to everyone to learn, to sing, to teach, and to use. One way to let this song loose into the world is to make a video, and that's what a few of us did a few weeks ago. To Percolate Films who shot and edited the video: we thank you, we thank you, we thank you.

The basic words are improvisational and the structure is simple: Someone sings out a praise of something, and the group repeats that praise twice. So you have "Power of the river, we thank you" or "Blessing of the falling leaves we thank you" or "Beauty of the half moon, we thank you." There is also a wordless phrase that can be cycled in: "Hey na-a na na, hey na-na-na, hey na-na, hey na-na, hey na-na-na." The wordless phrase represents all the things we thank that we cannot describe in human language because our tongues are too clumsy and words too small and heavy.

I added a chorus:
Love to the fertile earth
Love to the fruitful sea
Love to the skies of mystery

This chorus is not just a "thank you." It's actually singing these powers into the earth, sea and sky, participating in making them bountiful. It's channeling your love up from inside you, and projecting it into the world as nourishment. It's a form of love-talk to creation; it's a form of healing for the earth. I also added a djembe-based drum rhythm after the chorus, to allow this particular version of the song to become full of motion and ecstatic energy and to give the group an opportunity to enter into Unburdened Wahoo.

Please feel free to spread the song as you wish, forward the video link and this email about it, change it, add, subtract, edit and embellish as you wish. Make your own video and upload it (send me the link-I want to see it!). The only requirement is that it cannot be sold or claimed as your property. This particular video shows a rather ecstatic and loud version, but the song is also very good as a quiet, meditative, personal prayer. Look around (with both your eyes and your heart) at what is beautiful at the moment, and sing praises to it. Let this love rise up out of you, and take shape in song, ending with "we thank you." Let that love speak with your mouth. Let the tears come. Like lovemaking and art-making, the best prayer is something that you open yourself to, become vulnerable to, open up to as totally as you can (the goals: a little more this time than last time) and allow it to do its work on you, and through you.

Yours in reverent Wahoo
Jaime
drummingthesoulawake@gmail.com

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