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Slavin'

2/4/2017

There's not much to say about this, friends. The pictures say most of it. I wrote it in 2013 after a particularly enlightening work experience. I'm posting the lyrics as the Musings. The mouth harp player is my dear friend, and wonderful visual artist, Chard Chenier.

Musings

Slavin'
music and lyrics by B. Glenn Copeland
© B.Glenn-Copeland SOCAN 2013

You grind your life at the wheel
to sweeten the corporate deal
The only jobs they make
will chain you to the stake

Slash the funds for the poor
Who are crawlin’ to your door
They need another fool
And you can’t afford to send your children to school

              Slavin’ for the slavers
               Pimpin’ for the power

               Ave Maria

You’ve got a family of four
tellin’ you they all need more
You just can’t make ends meet
Watch the tube and go to sleep

Your daddy’s been long gone
Your mama's in an old folks' home
Soon will be your turn
Your kids they watch, they learn

           Slavin’ for the slavers
           Pimpin’ for the power

Long hours for your pay
There’s less of it everyday
Somewhere around the world
A woman makes a penny for a whole day’s toil

Need some land to drill
Rape and burn and kill
Drive folks from their home
Then give ’em a job and give ‘em a loan

           Slavin’ for the slavers
           Pimpin’ for the power

               Ave Maria

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Seven Gardens

1/29/2017

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Seven Gardens came to me one day in the midst of last winter. Pastoral and peaceful, it is has the unusual time signature of seven beats to the bar.

Musings

What, I sometimes wonder, is the purpose of art? What does the spirit to create want?

That's a question with a thousand answers. Pick a moment and chose one. Music has lulled fretful babies, and marched men to war. Paintings have inspired spiritual devotion, and paraded patron egos. Poetry has kindled a sense of limitlessness, and vilified and degraded. Dance has been prayer, and a threatening warning. We watch films that ignite wonder, and those that promote nightmares.

I am having to check myself in my desire to judge. I'd like it all to be some version I deem to be beautiful and encouraging. Perhaps what seem to me to be so difficult, is necessary and must be expressed. Perhaps these troubling times fulfill a primary function of our growth.

Seven Gardens, however, is very calming. I guess I need that.

But when I sit and listen to the spheres - they dance and collide, they build up and break down, they sing and scream hot and cold, endlessly changing, triggering violent eruptions and explosions of life. Life!

But today...we offer something calming, as I said. Check back in with me another day. Who knows?

You can purchase Seven Gardens
if you'd like.

Seven gardens

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Africa Calling

1/16/2017

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'Africa Calling' is part of a new series of songs I am writing that explores rhythm as its first, and most important, aspect.

Spring Flowers in Mamaqualand, South Africa. Courtesy of Panoramio.com

Musings

One day, rather recently, I found myself writing music and vocalizing. There were few understandable words, mostly sounds made by vocal chords and mouth. When I finished the piece, I realized it was imbued with an energy and an emotional outpouring that had no translation except in the sounds themselves, save for a word here or there.

Some songwriters have an outpouring of poetry or lyrics that come first, to which they then write music. Others hear music, and then they write lyrics. Still others work in teams with bits of music and lyrics coming in no specific order.

I have always heard music first, and then struggled to translate it into lyrics. The struggling part has had few exceptions! Thankfully, if I listened long enough, and worked hard enough, the music told me what it was about.

In these pieces that I am now writing, the music has little or nothing more to say. And yet, when this piece was written, I danced, and cried, and threw my hands to the heavens in wonder and praise. Something was conveyed that I could not express in any other way than what you hear here, my friends.

Perhaps that something translated itself to me as just plain awe. Whatever it was, here 'tis, my friends.

While you're here...

... you might enjoy visiting other pages and listening to more music.

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Lakeland Angel

1/11/2017

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Lakeland Angel was originally just called Lakeland. I recorded it in my home studio a few years ago, but today I feel that I should share it, despite not being 'professionally' recorded.

Musings

These days and nights feel very quiet, introspective. Everything seems pulled inward. Though the moon is coming on full, overt action and inspired activity appear retreating to allow the subconscious its reign. Is this the beginning of a new age, now 'officially' launching its dark dawning, storm clouds shrouding the sun?

Today I name it. The unmentionable draws near, as ever it has in cycles long in the making. Quiet desperation permeates our dreams, our conversations, our expectations.

Does this time herald further retreat, or the found courage to never be defeated? What will it be?

We are stardust born. What can we not reveal once roused from our painful dreams, my friends! Let us wake together and hold what we love and value.

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A Little Talk - a video

1/9/2017

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Click to View A Little Talk

Years ago, I found photos from non- professional photographers all over the world. I received permission from each of them to use their work in this video. Using my little home video maker I tried to approximate what I was feeling about the song "A Little Talk" from my Primal Prayer CD. Here 'tis.

Musings on 'A Little Talk'

I have heard the comment that the Primal Prayer CD represents me letting folks in on my unedited life - my joy, pain, awe, fear, belief, confusion. My unanswered and unanswerable questions.

In a fit of creative frenzy over a very short period of time this collection of songs poured out. It was what it was.

And what that was and is, I really have no idea. Life I guess.

Click the button below to see it.

Click to view A little Talk

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Keyboard Fantasies Re-release

1/6/2017

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Well here I am in my dotage (...ok, not quite yet) and energy is swirling about my music from the distant and recent past. To celebrate the January 19th, 2017 the vinyl re-release of 'Keyboard Fantasies' on the Invisible City Editions label, I wrote the following musing. They have published it on their site as a letter from me.

This photo was taken around 1990.

Musings on the Occasion of Keyboard Fantasies' Re-issue

The timing of things is quite beyond our ken, and yet it is said to be tied to our own karmic storehouse - the wonderful, the ordinary, and the not so great results of many past lives showing up here in this one. Okay, so that’s a perspective I share. I’m a practicing SGI Buddhist, chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo like so many millions of others around the globe. The longer I chant (currently going on forty-three years and counting) the more I understand this. And so, I consider it a great blessing that thirty years after producing this music, and still within my lifetime, this little recording has been found, and is being widely shared.

I have always felt that the music I write is sent to me via who knows where from who knows what. A few years ago I read an article by an astrophysicist who said that sound was the basic all pervading principal of the Universe, that it was emitting a tone constantly. What a thought. The Universe sings and we musicians /songwriters/composers/ creative beings of all kinds are able, based on our wonderful differences and life circumstances, to pick up the waves to which we are attuned. Most of my artist friends, no matter what their art form, feel that what they write, or paint, or tell or dance is sent to them in this same way. Perhaps it broadcasts all kinds of wavelengths, and somebody somewhere will pick up and convey a part of it for our human ears, eyes, and hearts. Waves conveying the painful cry of suffering, or the ecstatic sound of joy. Life as we know it.

So, the little bit of the wavelength that I caught back in 1985, I called Keyboard Fantasies. I had recently starting exploring computers to translate what I was hearing. Good thing too, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have remembered a thing about it! My memory is famous, and not for remembering. In fact, when I revisit what I’ve translated, whether years ago or very recently, I can scarcely figure out how to play it even though I studied classical music from childhood on, and as a university student taking a Bachelor of Music degree. Interesting.

I thank you for liking this music enough to purchase it. I thank those of you who told me that you love it. From my perspective, you are loving a tiny bit of what the Universe was singing in that moment. Perhaps Love is essentially what made us, and of what we are essentially made. Who knows. It is a great and wonderful mystery.

Blessings, my friends. And again, thank you.

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Let's Enjoy!

1/3/2017

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To balance the tendency to take myself too seriously, I was born with a deep need to be a clown type comic. Quite by accident I ended up spending almost twenty years on the Mr. Dress-Up Show doing exactly that. I got to put on all types of things from the Tickle Trunk and be really silly. But actually...it's not really silly. It's that part of all of us that just doesn't get to play enough in our oh so serious society. Whoops. Getting serious again.

So...here is an impromptu song that my wife and I made up the other night. It's about enjoying ourselves and includes a few animals enjoying themselves as well. Not meant to be taken seriously, okay? Or, take it seriously, and do something just as zany yourself. We all need to plaaay!

Elizabeth, my dear wife, is the sound effects person for all the different beings as well as singing. She does it with such effortless brilliance too! But then she did spend time touring with Second City.

'Let's Enjoy' - an original song brought to you by the Coocoo Cluck Clan. Wheee....

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Roots

9/20/2016

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Roots and all...

There is an assumption among many of us that we humans can trace our ancestry to one dominant people. Not so, it seems, based on current DNA sampling. Luckily I can trace the dominant ancestors, though not necessarily the specific families.

As an Afro-American (wow! ..it's getting fancier all the time) I can see from old photos, and those I had the good fortune to know in my family, that we are predominantly from West African slaves who managed through sheer determination, good physical stamina, and some 'good' fortune to survive passage in the slave ships. A huge percentage of those peoples were Muslim. Could have been for my line as well. But who knows. They survived. And luckily for me, eventually they thrived.

My fraternal grandmother, however, was part Cherokee and attended Cherokee Nation schools as a child and teenager. She was a central figure in my life who did what only grandparents can do, give an unconditional love based on many years of living and struggling to provide for one's family. I remember how she danced. It was always the two step of First Nations peoples. I never saw her dance in any way, though she did not dance often. Her physical appearance and demeanour was very First Nations. And so I count Cherokee, or Tslagi as the people call themselves, as an important part of who I am.

And then, there were the Irish. Slave owners in the deep south were in large measure Irish. Strange. We never think of the Irish as having had the financial fortune to be owners of large tracks of land, not to mention 'owners' of people. But, alas, I have the stern green eyes, the fair skin and reddish hair of my great grandmother's photo that stared out at me from my grandmother's mantle. She was undoubtedly Irish in her features. She didn't look too Irish in her attitude though. But who would under those circumstances. She was no doubt the daughter of an already mixed race slave and an Irish slave master.

And what has all this to do with me, other than as history. Well, my friends, I believe that we come to this earth over and over, trying to 'grow up' and trying to help the folks of this planet grow up by doing so ourselves. And so I seem to have come with many memories. Some of them are from my African ancestry, some from my Cherokee ancestry, and some from my Irish ancestry.

As a child, I sought out the African drums, though neither of my parents expressed interest in drums of any kind, though they were both very musical. Nor did I hear them on the radio or anywhere else. I am today an African style drummer. Hmmm. My mother, bless her soul, is still wondering how that happened from wherever she is now. I can feel it. :)

And then there are memories I have been flooded with that come from my native ancestors. I remember bursting into tears when I first walked on the land that it turned out was the predominant area that the Sioux peoples crossed over into Canada. I did not know that, but my spirit did.

And finally, I have always seen myself traveling the North Atlantic by boat centuries ago from Northern Africa to reach this beautiful green island where I stayed and fell in love. It turns out that Africans did indeed travel to Ireland many, many centuries ago. And when I was twenty, I heard the pipes, though Scottish, for the first time as a pipe band marched by outside my window. I raced to the window and again, tears fell.

All of this and more have deeply affected my self perception, and my music. And so my friends, I share it with you. These roots that run so deep into the earth, the psyche, the memories - real or imagined - are the roots of my very being. And, it would seem, so is the DNA of so many different peoples - all busily affecting what I write in musical form.

It explains some of myself to me, and perhaps to you.

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September 19th, 2016

9/19/2016

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Getting to know me. Getting to know myself.

Talking about myself on a more personal level is not easy for me. Yet, I have been told that my audience and supporters want to know me. Frankly, I'm on a journey to get to know myself still! But, alas, it has been requested, and so I shall challenge my basic nature to be more open. Most things worth doing are not easy! I've decided that a blog approach will allow me to relax in conversation. Being an only child, I talk to myself incessantly out loud. Ask any other only child you may know; they will tell you.

So...here goes today's bit about Beverly/Glenn/???

To know more about me, other than that I was an only child, you need to know about me and cats. As a three year old, I had a doll carriage, but I never put dolls in the carriage. I only put kittens in the carriage, and would roll them about endlessly. Dolls were mostly reserved for my more aggressive behaviour - perhaps more typical of boys at a certain age, which I certainly considered myself to be - while cats were like my children. Hmmm. Who knows! My family was very loving with me and they certainly weren't cats that I could perceive. Anyway, my mother told me much later in life that when I was still just three, she decided that the kitten that had survived the doll carriage rides should find a new home, which strangely she thought would happen if she abandoned it on a walk in the park!!! She claimed that while she was in the process of dragging me away from my kitty in the midst of this procedure, that I stopped her and said. "Wait a minute. I have something to say..(still true). You are leaving my kitten behind."

And there you have it, friends. I have never left a kitten behind since. They are another part of my spirit family, along with many of you, my wife, my dearest friends and those who have gone on that I loved. Currently I have three cats, all of whom were rescued and given to me.

There, that's a start.

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Forward>>

A Personal Perspective Blog

Slavin'

Seven Gardens

Africa Calling

Lakeland Angel

A Little Talk - a video

Keyboard Fantasies Re-release

Let's Enjoy!

Roots

Roots and all...

September 19th, 2016

Getting to know me. Getting to know myself.

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