Carrying songs with respect

These are the songs that opened me. They brought me healing, and they brought me into connection with people all over the world. I share them so they can keep doing that, and I want to share them with the utmost respect for where they come from.

Appreciation and appropriation

Appreciation honours where a song comes from. Appropriation takes the song and leaves its people behind. The difference usually lives in small, careful things: knowing a song's story, saying its words with care, naming who it belongs to, and giving something back.

How we carry these songs

• Every song names its source.When I know who wrote a song, their name and their music are on its page. When a song is traditional, I name the tradition and the people it comes from.
• Songwriters keep their words.Songs by living songwriters link to the original. Listen to them, follow them, buy their music.
• Learn the story before you lead it.Every mantra here comes with its meaning. Take time with a song's language, its pronunciation and its history before you bring it to a circle.
• Sacred songs stay sacred.Some of these songs come from ceremony, from Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and from living devotional traditions in India and beyond. Sing them with reverence, and keep them away from settings where they'd become a performance or a product.
• Ask before you perform or record.If you'd like to sing a song at a paid event or record it, reach out to the songwriter first.
• Say where it comes from.When you lead a song, tell the circle whose song it is and where it was born. It takes ten seconds and it changes how a room sings.
• Give back.Support the artists, and where you can, support the communities these songs come from.

I'm still learning

If you belong to a tradition represented here, or you wrote one of these songs, and something doesn't sit right, I'd be truly grateful to hear from you. Your words help me carry these songs better.

Write to me

With love and respect,
Francie