Music is Medicine Community Song Circle with David Budd ( The Artful Drummer) & Honey Sweet Harmony

This is also the rain date for the 6th Kirtan Festival. If it rains the 22nd Saturday then this event will be rescheduled for another time.

Rail Trail Cafe guests are invited to join David Budd (The Artful Drummer) and Honey Sweet Harmony for a participatory group practice, the Music Is Medicine Community Song Circle. Come gather together to experience connection, joy, and harmony through singing!

Music Is Medicine song circles are a regenerative timespace for everyone who seeks to connect more deeply with their own innate creativity and their nature neighborhood. Our intention is to share the medicine of these songs with the land, the waters, and any beloved beings in need.

ALL are welcome, whatever your level of confidence, whatever your past experiences with singing. All present in the song circle support the collective equally - "all flourishing is mutual."* All who long to be seen, to be heard, to belong, to contribute, and to feel valued are encouraged to attend!

Rather than professionals performing, in community song circles the songleaders transmit in oral-tradition style, offering simple songs that everyone can easily learn and sing together, often with harmonies or layered parts. Beloved songcatchers practicing this tradition include MaMuse, Ysaye Barnwell (of Sweet Honey in the Rock), Lyndsey Scott, Heather Houston, Melanie DeMore, Laurence Cole, and many more.

*from The Five Needs teachings as transmitted by Banakonda Kennedy-Kish Bell, an Anishaabe (Ojibwe) Elder

About the facilitators:

Honey Sweet Harmony is an interspecies creativity-catalyzing mentorship constellation. Honey Sweet Harmony is committed to helping everyone remember our ancestral regenerative cultural patterns. Deep nature connection mentors and ancestral skills facilitators, kin** specialize in facilitating community gatherings for storytelling and storycatching, music, movement, eco-connective healing arts, nature’s cycle ceremonies, and grief / peace tending. Their training includes Littlebird Community Songleader Flight School, Cultural Emergence Effective Design by Applewood Permaculture, and The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy). For over 30 years kin have taught experiential enrichment programs in a diverse range of nature-based programs, arts programs, spiritual-based organizations, public and private schools, and community centers. Kin have facilitated for the Association for Nature Based Education (ANBE) webinars and in-person workshops, solar holidays and lunar phase celebrations, and many forms of multigenerational community events inspired by nature’s rhythms. Kin also offer private mentoring and eco-healing sessions for individuals, families, and organizations.

honeysweetharmony@proton.me

David Budd (The Artful Drummer) is a visual artist, percussionist, and writer based in the Mid-Hudson Valley who loves sharing his passion for creativity in a way that fosters expression, growth and resiliency in those he mentors. As a professional percussionist he blends traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world, Brazil, Turkey, West Africa, Latin music, American Jazz, Rock, Funk, Reggae, Polka, and Zydeco. He trained extensively with frame drummer/historian Layne Redmond, and studied with drummer/composer/educator Harvey Sorgen. David now serves as a ritual drummer, drawing on his interest in shamanic practices, and celebrates his joy of life as a facilitator in earth-based spiritual communities. In recent years he has begun exploring the world of expressive arts therapy, including trainings with Lucy Barbera in Kingston, NY, bringing together visual arts, music, and writing. David offers lessons and classes for individuals and small groups, plus public playshops and private fine arts commissions.

theartfuldrummer@pm.me

• from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist, author, and former director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY-ESF.

** nature connective pronouns proposed by Robin Wall Kimmerer: ki (singular) and kin (plural) are inspired by many indigenous languages whose pronouns recognize kinship among many forms of being.