Hello, April into May, with two more songs, a trip to a monastery in Germany for some harmonica and a sharing with Kareem Ghandour from Peace Sounds 2.
The apples turn this month to bloom in our co house garden, the bees are doing what they do best*. my love to those who came by for my birthday/gardening day this month and donated to Help Refugees (Choose Love)** you can find out more about their projects in the link below. Our Co-house also had it’s first community gardening day – if you’d like to visit do send a mail. Our plan is to continue to make it a peace garden for all with more days through the Summer – growing, singing, tea drinking and trampolining… all in the name of peace!
First song this post is called ‘A Little Love’ one I’ve had around for a few years and began recording in Plum Village – guitar, bass, mandolin, drums and organ with help from friends Tom and Ben there. The vocals came in recent recording at All Saints.
The story goes a few years ago sat around a table with some friends, and one said the chorus just like that, ‘Love, a little love (is what we need) to bring you round’. We were talking over the ups and downs of life – sharing the movement of emotions and by a Rumi poem and Bjork’s ‘All is full of love’ we wondered whether maybe you are ever that far from feeling alright again really if you can just ‘get yourself in touch with some of the good stuff and give that to others’ I wrote the chorus the next day.
(stars above)
*(Friends of the Earth are running again their bee cause campaign at the moment – for a few pounds they send out a bee kit for your garden you can add yourself to the map, ‘the bee generation’)
** Help Refugees projects are here helprefugees.org.uk
A litte more from current own recordings – this little bit of an intro to ‘Human-all’- posting with appreciation to Walther Glaubitt who shared his beautiful playing with me during my stay at Plum Village. We got together in April at the PV centre in Germany – lovely 24 hours I spent there, hiking, meeting old and new friends and recording some of this.
They have retreats and courses through the year – an hour or so from Cologne. https://www.eiab.eu
The third Peace Sounds sharing piece is from multi instrumentalist, mindfulness teacher and cat lover Kareem Ghandour. For those who have heard Peace Sounds 2 will know Kareem’s ‘Opening Up Pan Jam’ a play with song ‘We are opening up our hearts and minds’ for hand pan, percussion and hand claps. We spoke about Kareem growing up in Jordan, musical journeys and what it means to work for peace.
love
Joe
Joe Holtaway 