At times of crisis, environmental and human challenges and transitions, music is a powerful force that can connect people across borders, touch people’s hearts and build empathy, trust and understanding. Music has an incredible therapeutic power to heal through expression of deep feelings and experiences in the current times of the eco-human crisis. Music is a universal language interwoven in all cultures. It is from this universal heart of music that ‘The Alchemy of Therapeutic Songwriting’ project, initiated by Carrie Herbert, musician and songwriter, was born.
The program enables people to connect and align to the source of their creative flow, the essence of who they are, to create songs that enable a person to express, explore and make sense of life in these challenging times. The program incorporates a holistic weave of meditation and creative reflective practice, integrative arts therapy, ritual, song-writing and song crafting, vibration and sound healing, music, recording and production, performance and song sharing.
‘The Alchemy of Therapeutic Songwriting’ has been developed by Carrie in her PhD research program in Cambodia and the UK, through exploring how creative therapeutic songwriting impacts resilience and wellbeing in times of global crisis and transition.
Brief information about the artist
Carrie Herbert is passionate about creating music in response to real life issues. Her groundbreaking work in therapeutic songwriting with Songkites nurtures creative expression, leadership and community through songwriting, production and performance with young people. Songkites was founded in 2014 by Euan Gray and Carrie Herbert in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (www.Songkites.com). Her initiatives at Songkites resulted in a new movement of original music and soul enriching songs with an unprecedented reach across Cambodia, with many of our artists becoming household names and role models in youth culture.
Carrie is an arts psychotherapist, supervisor, PhD student at the European Graduate School (EGS) in Switzerland, educator and celebrant with over 20 years experience working with people, organisations and communities in post conflict and conflict environments primarily in Asia.
Carrie is also a founder of Alkimia, a UK based community interest company.
Please get in touch for more information: info@carriemusic.com
https://www.facebook.com/carrielherbert
https://www.facebook.com/cariadsong
Whats app: +85512521032
Here is Carrie’s presentation of some songs on this theme
‘The Alchemy of Therapeutic Songwriting’ and ecopoiesis — examples of songs
‘One by one — Facing the 6th Extinction’
‘One by one’ is a song about climate change and animal extinction. It holds a reversal of the story of Noah’s ark and ultimately led me to an existential confrontation with our human existence. ‘One by one’ is also about the response I felt inside and the process of awakening our individual and collective consciousness. It is also about forgiveness and our communion and relationship with our home, with mother earth.
We are living in unprecedented times, crisis layers upon crisis, as I watched the worst fires wreak havoc across Australia in early 2020, in the midst of a climate catastrophe with close friends losing their beloved family heirloom home and millions of animals being killed in already endangered species. I witnessed the heartbreaking reality alongside incredible acts of kindness and heroism. I turn to songwriting as a way of channeling emotions, to try and express and make sense of, to enable me to navigate what felt yet another alarm bell of an already ticking time bomb.
‘When the animals come to us asking for our help, will we know what they are saying? When the plants speak to us in their delicate, beautiful language, will we be able to answer them? When the planet herself sings to us in our dreams, will we be able to wake ourselves and act?’
(Gary Loles – http://armedwithvisions.com/2011/08/08/gary-lawless-when-the-animals-come-to-us/)
One by one
One by one
You fade into the distance
One by one by one
We’ll never see you again
I want to hold you and cry
I poisoned you inside
I wanted more and more
Didn’t see you
Dying
I am listening now
Maybe it’s too late
I wanna clearly see every single way
What it really means to bring back harmony
Can I save you
One by one
I cut you down I took away the sun
One by one by one
I’m waking up to find that you are gone
I wanna kneel down and cry
Under poisoned skies
I wanted more and more
Didn’t see you
Dying
I am listening now
Maybe it’s too late
I wanna clearly see every single way
What it really means to bring back harmony
Can we save you
Can we save you
Oh mother earth
What are we doing to you
One by one by one forgive us
One by one by one forgive us
One by one by one we’ll fade into the distance
‘One by one’ by Carrie (2020)
Produced and arranged by Euan Gray
Featuring Metta Legita on piano
Recorded by Euan Gray at Songkites
Studio, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Artwork by Heshan Gunasekara
Lyric video by Wes Chester
She is in you
‘She is in you’ is about our relationship with nature and the impact of climate change. It holds the sense of us having a living relationship to the grieving process and experience of collective loss as we witness the destruction of our world. It was inspired by an eco-nature immersion run by Wes Chester in 2015 at EGS, Saas Fee, Switzerland. It was written in response to the passion, emotion and vision, Wes embodies and inspires in others for consciousness and a living relationship of care and responsibility with our planet.
She is in you
She surges within you
You honour her life
Surrendering her icy tears
Tipping point of time
Some say she’s dying
Some say it won’t be long
Some hardly seem to notice
Through you she’s breathing
If tears well up, let them fall
She is in you.
In the shadows of moonlight
Caressing her sacred skin
Holding oceans of memories
Through you she’s living
She’s whispering at their windows
They cannot hear her last words
You wait outside and hold her
Through you she’s leaving
Tears well up, grieving her
She is in you, you are in her
I don’t want you to go,
I’ll stay right to the end
In you I have my home
Until the end of time
I am in you and you are in me.
‘She is in you’ by Carrie (2015)
Produced and arranged by Euan Gray
Recorded by Euan Gray at Songkites Studio, Phnom Penh, Cambodia (2019)
Words & music by Carrie Herbert
Carrie Herbert – vocals, guitar
Backing vocals – Euan Gray / Carrie Herbert
Keyboard – Larry Martinez
Bass – Andrey Meshcheryakov
Drums – Toma Willen
Music footage on location in Saas Fee, Switzerland by Wes Chester
Video by paicee (2019)
Great Heart
‘Great Heart’ explores themes of: the empowered creative masculine, channeling of complex emotions and collective energies, communion and relationship with ourselves and nature, the healing capacity of the imagination, the power of courage and vulnerability that enables a perspective of hope and action.
Emotional and creative expression through songs can bind together spirit and body in the song of the soul and connects us to all beings, to each other, the trees, the animals, the planets, the universe and beyond. ‘Great Heart’ is a song that holds a communion between the heart of nature and a human heart. ‘Great Heart’ was created during my PhD research group process at Real World Studios in Bath, UK, by David Moss.
"A song for all trees. ‘The Great Heart’. In memoriam to those felled by human greed, ignorance and vanity, yet also a recognition of faith in the intelligence of these mysterious life-giving beings to outwit their human destroyers" (David Moss)
‘Great Heart’ by David Moss
You are the Great Heart
This will not pass without sorrow
You are the Great Heart
This will not pass without song
You are the Great Heart
This will not pass without rage
You are the Great Heart
The green realms have gathered
in sorrow and song
in grace and protection
to keep to keep the light strong
Time it lies broken
no measure can heal
the mind is wide open
like wood, like wood to the steel
You are the Great Heart
Tonight’s desecration
Will not pass unseen
The green realms have gathered
To be, to be I am here
Here in the Great Heart
I’m going to nowhere
And here is my song
There is only growing
Cut me down make me strong
I am the Great Heart
This will not pass
Words and music by David Moss © 2020
Vocals by David Moss
Bouzouki by David Moss
Backing vocals by David Moss & Carrie Herbert
Soprano saxophone by Carrie Herbert
Recorded by Carrie Herbert at The Rehearsal Room, Real World Studios, Box, Bath UK
Photography by Carrie, lyric video by Carrie & Paicee (2021)