Music is a wise and ever present healer. It is a dear friend, a distant memory, a soul salve, a humble teacher, a thought provoker, a truth seeker, a story teller, an expression of culture, and a manifestation of human evolution. Most importantly, music is a divine force that brings people together and brings us home to ourselves.

Singing is the most natural form of music making. We begin exploring voiced sound from the moment we exit our mother’s womb. We coo, we wail, we gurgle, we echo, and we eventually begin to weave little songs into the world. Songs spill out of us as children, helping us make sense of the world around and to tell the story of who we are becoming.

Our voice is the sound of our unique and evolving essence. Making music with our voice connects us to the spiritual, emotional, thinking, and physical aspects of our humanness all at the same time. When our voice sounds in harmony with others, we are able to sense the other in a way that surpasses language or reason. We build empathy, gain understanding, share pain, incite joy, and grow seeds of love. It has even been proven that those who sing together breath together and have synchronized heartbeats!

Melanie is a song leader, composer, and music educator in Western Massachusetts. She is a mom of two, director of the Spirit Song Singers, facilitator of various music share events in the Pioneer Valley, and oversees the music program at the Hartsbrook Waldorf School in Hadley, MA. Creating, sharing, leading, and harvesting songs brings her unmatchable joy. In a time when it is so easy to distance, misunderstand, and polarize she feels compelled to use the healing power of music to bring health back into our communities and ourselves.