Song families

Mantra

Sacred sound

Mantra comes from Sanskrit and is often translated as “a tool for the mind”. Mantras are sacred syllables and phrases from the yogic, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist traditions, repeated to steady the mind and open the heart.

Many are thousands of years old. Every traditional mantra here comes with its meaning and how to say the words, so you can sing it with understanding as well as feeling.

Kirtan and bhajan

Devotional call and response

Kirtan is call and response singing from the bhakti tradition of India, the path of devotion. One voice sings a line and the whole room sings it back, often building in speed and energy and then dropping into silence.

Bhajans are devotional songs sung together. You don’t need to know the meaning to feel it, though knowing it deepens the experience. In the book these sit with the mantras.

Rainbow songs

Songs from the fire

Rainbow songs come from the Rainbow Gatherings, gatherings in nature that began in the United States in 1972 and now happen all over the world. They are simple, repeating songs anyone can learn by ear in a minute, passed from voice to voice around the fire, and many have no known songwriter.

Today people use the name more widely for circle songs in that spirit: songs of the earth, gratitude, belonging and love.

Medicine music

Songs of and from ceremony

Medicine songs are songs sung in ceremony, and songs born from ceremony. Some come from the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, such as the Yawanawá and Huni Kuin of Brazil, whose songs are prayers carried by their communities. Others were written by musicians whose music grew out of ceremony and circle: cacao ceremonies, plant medicine circles, sweat lodges and the fire.

The medicine is the song itself: its prayer, its intention, and what it opens in us when we sing it together. When a song comes from a living Indigenous tradition, sing it with care, learn where it comes from, and support the people it belongs to.

Heart songs

Songs that open the heart

Heart songs is my name for songs that open the heart: simple songs of love, gratitude, longing and devotion, from any tradition and in any language. It’s why my songbook is called HeartSongs.

Global heart songs

Heart songs in many languages

Heart songs in Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Yawanawá, Hawaiian and more. In the book they have their own section, so each song can carry its language, its translation and where it comes from.

Circle songs

Made to be sung together

Any song made to be sung in a circle: short, repeating and easy to learn by ear, so nobody needs a page in their hands for long. Most of the songs here are circle songs, whatever family they also belong to.