The voice lives inside and outside of our bodies, simultaneously. When you speak, or sing, or hum, you’re moving mass inside of your own body and mass around you. Like colours and smells, different tones and different vowels have specific effects on different parts of our bodies. These are some basic principles that the healing music researcher, flautist, Dianic priestess, teacher and lesbian music pioneer Kay Gardner (1941–2002) outlined so prolifically in her writings and audio recordings, Music as Medicine (1997-8). In this episode of Something Like, we’re going to invoke Gardner to guide us through the potential of our own voices to heal ourselves and others. Meanwhile, we’ll step through vocal and traditional choral traditions and innovations.
- As always, Something Like’s jingle music is by Roger 3000
- The music under my voice this week is Pauline Oliveros’ Accordian and Voice (1982)
- You can find all of Kay Gardner’s Music as Medicine sessions on Youtube, and more information about her research in her 1997 book Sounding the Inner Landscape
- Originally aired on Cashmere Radio and 96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Community Radio
Tracklist
Roomful of Teeth, Partita for 8 Voices Part 4: Passacaglia, Partita for 8 Voices (Caroline Shaw), 2016
Kay Gardner, Session 2: Healing & The Aura, Music as Medicine, The Art & Science of Healing with Sound, 1998
Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Agba’a, Africa Genjoh 1994 (originally Selections of African Folk Music, 1982)
Anonymous (from Orune): Cantu a Tenore Trattu’e Orune
Buffy Sainte Marie, Poppies, Illuminations, 1969
CoH & Cosi Fanni Tutti, Lying, CoH Plays Cosey, 2008
Pamela Z, Obsession, Addiction, and the Aristotelian Curve, Pamela Z: A Delay Is Better, 1993
Kay Gardner, Session 2: Healing & The Aura, Music as Medicine, The Art & Science of Healing with Sound, 1998
Matana Roberts, Jewels of the Sky: Inscription, Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis, 2019
Judith Hamann, Humming Suite III – Harmonics étude for one cello and one voice, Music for Cello and Humming, 2020
Hildegard v. Bingen, O Cohort of the the Army of the Flower, O nobilissima viriditas: The Complete Hildegard von Bingen, Vol. 3, 2004, Celestial Harmonies
Dylan Henner, I Was Reading the News But I Felt So Sad I Had To Stop, The Invention of the Human, 2020
David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir, Multiplying Voices At the Heart of the Body of Sound, Hearing Solar Winds, 1983
Kay Gardner, Session 2: Healing & The Aura, Music as Medicine, The Art & Science of Healing with Sound, 1998
Ustá, GLAS Choral Music of the Soviet Union, 1989 (excerpt)