I often speak rather disparagingly of the attitudes within the current culture, the way in which nature is seen as a commodity and even human lives treated as having no value. But there are of course Peoples living upon the Earth who know better than that, Indigenous folk who have not lost their connection to the land and to all that lives and breathes upon it. Labelled as primitive by so-called Modern Man they have much deeper understanding of this world which is so much more than just the physical tangible dimension.
Blame it on the Byron Bay Donuts! Actually no, it was the raw chocolate raspberry cake that brought me to the Songlines venue as Kinnie Starr was doing her set, I needed to sit down and consume my delightful treat and it was the nearest place with shade on a hot day at the Woodford Folk Festival. She was doing a mixture of rock and hip hop and the songs that she writes are full of the language of social and environmental activism, I finished my cake and stayed to hear the rest of her set and there was one particular song that has stayed with me ever since.
Kinnie Starr.
It is about what is happening in Canada, where she was born, she is vocal about many issues but this one is about fracking, a big issue here in Australia too, and bitumen mining. I still find it completely bewildering that anyone would knowingly contaminate our water basin in the name of short-term profits, and when renewable energy could easily be producing not only cleaner energy but more going into the community too.
This song has the feeling of a chant about it, you could imagine Kinnie’s Mohawk ancestors singing like this in sacred ceremony. It is a plea really to see what is being done to the waters of the planet, and a reminder that those waters are all connected, just as we are to everything around us.
Enjoy this beautiful invocation to save the waters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAx7YDSTon8
Through the Vortex 