As a beekeeper, I had this little Bee Chant buzzing around my hive and my imagination. When I discovered the beautiful Wander Poem ascribed to the Buddha, I decided they were made for each other. Then they needed company, so I added the Bird, the Fish, and the Spider. May we all take the essence of life without destroying its beauty or ourselves.
The idea that sound goes on forever, and that any sound we make is in the universe forever, is something to deeply consider in these controversial times.
I was born in Switzerland and came to the US at age 4. I was sent to a nursery school where all the children were communicating with each other in strange sounds that I had never heard.
These videos feature CRANKIES – films on paper – created and sung by students from the Global Village Project, Decatur GA.
Special thanks to Sam Bartlett for Cranky consultation, Pine Street Market for the butcher paper, James Tolmach for the beautifully crafted wooden Cranky, Mick Kinney for original cranky designs and innovations, and Susan Lightcap for artistic guidance!!
Elise and the Global Village Project, along with Ecuadoran/New Orleans performance artist José Torres-Tama,are featured in this article for Public, a Journal of Imagining America, exploring higher education and public engagement.
For the past 40 years, Alternate ROOTS has been a champion of, and resource for, artists, cultural workers, and progressive movement builders in the southern United States. In this article, Nicole Gurgel interviews two longtime ROOTS members—Elise Witt and José Torres-Tama—and explores these artists’ responses to the global challenges the Deep South is facing.
In music, a tuning fork is a classic vibratory instrument providing true pitch, used as a guide to all other tonal relationships. In life, it is Elise Witt.
Born in Switzerland to survivors of Nazi Germany, raised in North Carolina, Elise makes her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Speaking fluent Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English and singing in more than a dozen languages, Elise’s passion for music and language has carried her around the nation and across the seas. “My work and my life are all about sound,” says the multi-instrumentalist and longtime member of the Children’s Music Network.
My friend Masankho Banda told me that in Malawi to greet each other, they say, “I see you with my eyes, I see you with my heart.” At the Global Village Project, this inspired a song weaving a multi-lingual musical collage of greetings from each of our cultures. Here is a performance by the Global Village Chorus at the release concert for my CD We’re All BORN SINGING. We are joined by Brien Engel on Mbira (southern african thumb piano).