Description
MY JOURNEY YOURS
by Elise Witt
arranged by Michael Holmes
© Non Si Sa Mai Music ASCAP
Cantabile Youth Singers of Silicon Valley @ American Choral Directors Association National Conference, Kansas City Elena Sharkova, Artistic & Managing Director
on the CD “A Harvest Home” live NPR broadcast “Thanksgiving with Cantus” © Minnesota Public Radio
My Journey Yours was originally commissioned by a multi-disciplinary arts project of the same name with Refugee Family Services in Clarkston, Georgia. RFS serves more than 2500 refugees each year from countries including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Burma, Burundi, Iraq, Iran, Kurdistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Vietnam. Programs help refugee women and children regain self-sufficiency through education and economic opportunity. The project My Journey Yours served to incorporate arts into the social service work of the agency.
My Journey Yours musically represents the refugees’ harrowing journey from their homelands, through the seemingly unending days, months, and years of surviving in refugee camps, to the challenge of creating a new life as Americans in Clarkston, Georgia.
For the first section of the piece, the RFS staff members – themselves refugees and immmigrants – translated the phrase “my journey, yours” into their native language, and each woman sang me a song she remembered from childhood. I gathered lullabies, children’s songs, and musical games from each of the countries represented. With each language, I took a musical phrase from their song and put the words “my journey yours” in their language over that musical phrase. Then I stacked these musical phrases on top of each other into a multi-lingual, multi-cultural vocal collage. Improvisation over the collage is encouraged and recommended.
Connecting this section to the next are musical phrases in Vietnamese and Somali, calling out the anguish of leaving home, and the intense difficulty of the journey. Many of these people have spent up to 25 years in refugee camps.
The last section of the piece represents the new home, shared by refugees from many lands. It uses a 6/8 Bosnian chord progression, with the words “my journey yours” sung in English. Once this section is established, I recommend vocal improvisation over it, allowing individual voices to speak/sing while the group holds the foundation. Allow this part time to develop and flourish. The piece is especially effective when coupled with dance and body percussion.
The first incarnation of the piece “My Journey Yours” was recorded in June 2004 at Sound and Fury Studio in Pine Lake GA, with my voice on all the vocal parts and a variety of percussion instruments. The recording was used in the exhibition “My Journey Yours” at the Youth Arts Connection in Atlanta, celebrating the culmination of the first segment of the visual arts projects at Refugee Family Services in Clarkston GA. The CD played continuously while visitors viewed art projects of painting, sculpture, sewing, and multi-media works created during the 3 year project at Refugee Family Services with artists from many cultures and disciplines.As I was writing the piece, I workshopped it with members of the Bobby McFerrin “Spontaneous Invention” workshop at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck NY (June 2004), with members of my workshop “Multi-Lingual Songs” at the People’s Music Network Gathering in Woodstock NY (June 2004), and at my “Harmony: An Unorthodox Approach” class at the Swannanoa Gathering at Warren Wilson College in Asheville North Carolina (July 2004).”My Journey Yours” was the centerpiece of a collaborative performance and residency with the Atlanta Young Singers of Callanwolde directed by Paige Mathis and Moving in the Spirit (Coming Up Taller Award of the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities). It has been performed by many choral groups including Not What You Think (Washington DC), Womansong (Asheville NC), Brattleboro Women’s Chorus (Brattleboro VT), Artemis Singers (Chicago IL), Sound Circle (Boulder CO), Singing A_Z (Washington DC), Echoes of Peace Choir (Duluth MN), and Just Voices (Atlanta GA).
And on Thanksgiving 2013, “My Journey Yours” was featured on NPR’s Thanksgiving program with Cantus, one of the premiere men’s vocal ensembles.
