Music Connects Strangers

I am not a sports fan and so I haven’t experienced firsthand how sports events bring people together but I am told that it is very powerful.  However, I recently had several experiences of groups of people connecting through music and I got to feel the power of that.

Leonard Cohen

Last weekend, I attended Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia, ON.  There, I had several experiences of feeling connected to hundreds of people that I didn’t even know.  One of these was at a workshop called Dear Leonard, where musicians celebrated the music of Leonard Cohen who recently passed away.  It was great to hear his music through the voices of other musicians.  The final song was Cohen’s iconic Hallelujah which everyone sang along to on the chorus.  Together we sang hallelujah over and over again using Leonard’s own song to give thanks for his voice and his words and his music.  It was an experience of shared love, sorrow and gratitude that connected us all.  I was deeply touched.

Stuart McLean

Another experience came in the very next workshop which was a celebration of the life of Stuart McLean.  Musicians that had worked with Stuart on the radio show Vinyl Café shared songs and stories about the much loved broadcaster who also passed away this year.  Hundreds of people filled all the grassy spaces that were available.  We were all there because we loved Stuart McLean.  That connected us and as the stories were shared, we remembered our own stories which was appropriate because he was such a great storyteller.  I imagined him telling the story of the workshop we were at.  I could hear his laconic voice in my head.¸

Matt Anderson

But the magic came in the very last song.  Blues singer Matt Anderson who Stuart had helped along in his career sang the mournful song Feel Like Going Home.  The words “going home” have many meanings and the song allowed us to feel the sadness of losing our storyteller and also the safety of home.  Matt’s huge voice created a space that connected us all in our sadness and gratitude.  On the last “home” he held the word for what felt like minutes.  The space for all of us in the word “home” grew and grew.  For those moments, we were all in this home together, joined by the sound of Matt’s voice. (You can hear one rendition of Matt singing this song here.)  To me, it felt like our hearts were beating together in that space.  And then the song ended, we all stood and applauded and then went on our way.  But I don`t think any of us walked away the same person as we were walking in.

Gordon Lightfoot

Later on in the evening, Gordon Lightfoot came on stage as he often does, to sing a few songs while they set up for the next band.  I have experienced this phenomenon in previous years as well.  When he comes on stage, people stand to greet him – thousands of people.  And when he starts to sing with his aged, thin voice, there is almost total silence.  His voice is weak and so everyone is reverently quiet so that they can hear him.  We are connected by respect for this folk singer, for all his songs have meant to many of us throughout the years and for the fact that he comes to Mariposa because it is in his home town and because he loves being there.

Buffy Sainte-Marie

The week before the festival, I was fortunate enough to hear Buffy Sainte-Marie perform in Midland in a small venue of about 300 people.  The audience was made up of  the young and old, women and men.  Buffy started strong and continued that way for 75 minutes.  She sang old songs and a brand new one.  She spoke from the heart, from her truth and smiled her beautiful smile.  But once she started to sing, I noticed that a lot of the women, including myself, were singing along with her.  We knew all the words.  When she sang the words from powwow songs with a voice strong and pure, we sang right along feeling just as strong.  I can’t remember ever being in an audience where the women’s voices were the ones that you heard – where women sang from their depths with free voices.  Buffy gave us all permission to do that just by being herself.  The young women wore Buffy t-shirts, the older women stood a little taller, felt a lot stronger and proud to be women.  We left the concert empowered.

That is the power of music.  It creates a collective space where we can gather, united and feel safe, feel like ourselves, express emotions that we keep inside most of the time and experience community.  I will always remember singing Starwalker along with Buffy Sainte-Marie, singing Hallelujah with the people at Mariposa and being held and lifted up by Matt Anderson`s Feel Like Going Home.  These are the experiences that enrich my life, that feed my spirit and that keep me going. They become part of my story. But these are not just my stories.  They are the stories of all the people I shared them with.  We are now a part of each other stories.  We are always building new stories and those stories will define who we are and who we become.  That is the power of stories.

Richard Wagamese

And so I'd like to end with a quote from one of my favourite storytellers, Richard Wagamese who also passed away this year.  This is from his last book Embers (p. 46) "This human family we are part of, this singular voice that is the accumulations of all voices raised together in praise of all Creation, this one heartbeat, this one drum, this one immaculate love that put us here together so that we could learn its primary teaching -- that love is the energy of Creation, that it takes love to create love."