Spirit in Action
Magpie's Song for the Earth - Greg Artzner - Part 1
Greg Artzner is half of Magpie, a duo aimed directly at calling the world to consciousness in terms of peace, justice, equality and care for the Earth. They work on stage and in the classroom, providing a too-seldom used window into a more honest and helpful way of seeing our history & future.
- Broadcast on:
- 29 Jan 2011
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ I'm pleased to welcome Greg Artsner of Magpie to Spirit in Action today. Magpie produces music that calls people to deeper connection to the earth and a life of activism and healing on a range of issues. Peace, justice, equality, racism, and especially something that is often called environmentalism. Greg and Terry of Magpie use their music to rouse the masses, benefit worthy causes, and delight discerning listeners, but they also do a lot of work in schools, planting fertile seeds in young minds to help steer us to a better future. Greg Artsner of Magpie joins us today from his home in Upstate New York. Greg, welcome to Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me. Tell me again, what's the small town area where you guys live? Terry and I, we live in Upstate New York, just outside of a town called Middleburg, in the northern Catskills, actually north of the boundary of the Catskill Park. You're from Ohio originally, you lived in Washington, D.C. Do you like the country versus living in Washington, D.C.? Do you miss the big town? Not really. We don't miss the city at all. I guess occasionally we might say that we miss our friends down there, and we miss a few of our friends, but we, we're still spending a lot of time down there. We're still traveling down there to do residency work, so we're still there, staying with friends now instead of living in our own apartment. Now is actually, I actually turned out to be a pretty good thing as far as seeing friends. In some ways, we're seeing more of old friends that we had down there than we did when we lived there. You know, when we'd come in off the road, we'd tend to be hiding out, we'd be at Hermit in our little apartment. Now we go down and we stay with them, you know, so it's a whole different thing. But no, we don't miss the city at all. In fact, getting up here, living up here is just a wonderful thing. We just wonder why we waited so long, because it's so beautiful here. It's just every window you look out of our houses. It's just a gorgeous place to see and gorgeous place to be. How hard did Sunny Oaks have to twist your arm to get you to move up there? Well, I guess you've been sort of twisting our arm gently for years, even after we bought our place back in the '90s. We've been paying it off, little by little, open to get it, perhaps paid off before we actually relocated up here. And she was just always encouraging us to move up here and deal with that later, you know. What happened was that the apartment we were living in. Second floor of a commercial building there in Tacoma Park, Maryland, and our friend who owned the music store downstairs sold the whole building. And so we were faced with this dilemma of do we go out and try and find a new apartment, which would undoubtedly cost us at least twice what we were paying and rent, or should we just move to the house and we just said, well, let's move to the house, you know. So it was a great idea. You know, in the quicker world we have this phrase, "way will open," but sometimes the way that you end up going forward into your new adventures that you have the door shut behind you sounds like that's what you had. I guess you might say that. It was sort of at least one door that closed behind us, but there seemed to be another door that was slightly still ajar. Or maybe we still have our foot in it or something, so we're actually able to go back. How much of your work, your music, is income producing versus doing benefits? I have the sense, and the reason I have you here for spirit and action is because so much of your music has a point to it, wants to bring about a positive change in the world. Do you do a lot of benefits, or are you just a low-paid focusing or all the time? Well, we are pretty much, you know, low-paid folk singers all the time, and we also do a lot of benefits. So it's sort of both. The number of benefits that we do, I suppose, varies from year to year, but we're pretty much focused on making sure that everything that we do in our work has some socially redeeming purpose, whether it's a benefit or whether it's a protest or whether it's educational. There's always something. But yeah, benefits are certainly a large part of what we do. We tend to try to focus our benefit energies on things that we feel strongly about so that we don't end up just doing benefit after benefit and diffusing and diminishing our own energy. So give me an idea of this past year, and we're now launched into 2011. 2010, give me an overview of how much time you spent touring, what kind of benefits or movements or protests or whatever you did in 2010. We spent a lot of time on the road. It's kind of difficult to turn it down. I guess you'd say that during the summer we spent a lot of time traveling from gig to gig, folk festival to folk festival. During the school year we spent a lot of time traveling from school to school, and we do a fair amount of residency work down in Washington, D.C. area, so sometimes we'll be going down there and staying for a week for the time, doing our residencies. Benefits? Last year we probably did at least several. I'm not exactly clear to be honest how many. It was quite a few. Like where would you do a benefit or what kind of protest or whatever, those kind of settings, where would you have been? We do benefits for various organizations that are working on whatever educational goals, trying to raise money for peace groups. We did some work last year with our friend Nadine, and trying to put together an arts-based response to the ongoing war in Iraq. But at the same time last year was a political year, so we did some work for political people that we supported. Our educational work is probably what takes most of our energy as far as that goes. We do a lot of work in teaching history, cultural history, particularly cultural history, relative to struggles of people to achieve peace and justice. We do a lot of work dealing with the history of liberation struggle in America in the 19th century, the Underground Railroad story of the antebellum era, abolition movement. We do a lot of work in the inner city in Washington, D.C. doing teacher training, showing teachers how to use music effectively as a teaching tool. We've been doing that for 30 years. Is this all happening in public schools or private schools? I mean, do they let insurrectionists like you into public schools? Yes, they do. You know, obviously when we're programmed, when we're booked to play in a school, they're not looking as in as insurrectionists. But yeah, basically what we do is we teach history from a specific perspective, but it is history. And as far as the other stuff is concerned, it's really its proactive work and the aim that improving teaching in general. You know, last year we did, and we're doing a little bit more this year. We do a lot of work for the Smithsonian Institution where we show teachers how to use music effectively to teach history. We've done specialty programs in history on the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, the Revolutionary War, World War I, and whenever we do those kinds of programs, we're taking it from the perspective of the people who are facing the struggle. Even World War I, for example, we did the whole whole program on World War I, and we did some of the songs that are commonly associated with World War I. But then we also went ahead and said, "Well, there were other perspectives upon World War I, some of which came later." And then we do some of the anti-war stuff that was written in the years after World War I, and tie it in with one of the relatively popular songs of the war itself called "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier." One of the first genuine popular Tin Pan Alley anti-war songs. You know, we always try to give that perspective in addition to teaching the history of the way that the people got what these historical events were willing around them. As a way of enlightening both teachers and students about that old adage of if you don't know your history, you will be forever condemned to repeat it. And if you don't know about the mistakes in our past, we will be forever condemned to repeating the mistakes. And we feel that one of the best ways of perhaps changing the future of our planet in terms of conflagration and conflict is to point out where conflagration and conflict have been problems in past. And how did people deal with it? It sounds to me a little bit like you're bringing in some of like Howard Zinn's "People's History." You talk about doing this in the area of Washington, D.C., where you live. Do you do it elsewhere? I'm trying to imagine you coming out to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where I live and doing it in the schools. I think it would be absolutely wonderful if that was set up. But are you mainly a Washington, D.C. institution? No. In fact, we do it on the road. We actually do these kinds of programs in schools all over the country. Obviously, we do the more in the Eastern United States than we do in the Midwest or in the West. But that's mostly just an issue of connections and contacts. We have a lot of connections and contacts in the East and networks here. So we tend to do them in the East, but even Washington, D.C. It's not just Washington, D.C. itself, but the whole surrounding region, the whole mid-Atlantic region. We actually have an agency in Washington area that does a lot of the bookings for us down there. And then for the rest of the country, we pretty much do it on our own. So, yeah, we travel all over the place. Our fact is we're going out to Kansas in September to perform a lot of our work on the story of John Brown out there in September. We do hit the road and go out and usually try to set up tours. So if there are people in Wisconsin who would be interested in having us come to do historical programs, we would certainly encourage them to do that and contact us through our website. And our website, of course, has descriptions of the school programs that we have prepared. There are others that we can prepare. There are musical clips and everything there. And that site is magpiemusic.com? And you are John Brown, right? I perform as John Brown. I've been doing John Brown for ten years now. Terry, of course, plays the role of Mary Brown, our play. Well, that's great stuff. Well, let's expose people to some of your music, and which is also, I think, integral to your music is this world view and I think spiritual view that you bring to it. Let's start out with some music. What would you like to expose some people to? I think the best place to start is with the song that is kind of a personal manifesto for us, and it's a song called "Before the Morning Sun." This is "Before the Morning Sun." By magpie, we have Greg Artsner of magpie here with us today. [Music] I stand before the morning sun. Dark night close behind. Another day to live the hope. No longer running blind. I've seen the storm clouds coming. I've felt the cold heart rain, but when loving friends stand by me, I can rise up once again. I stand before the morning sun. Land that bathed in your light. Sparkling rivers and high mountains. On birds, winds, my soul takes flight. I'll lend a hand to all I can, try to leave this world a better place. See all as my relations beyond the human race, beyond the human race. [Music] [Music] I stand before the morning sun, in a land of promise born. The lives of stolen power. I do the hope with scorn. I bow to no master. My false piety. My faith is in the living earth, that each day gives birth to me. Each day gives birth to me. We stand before the morning sun, with others hand in hand. Our journey now has just begun. At the crossroads now we stand, turning away from full treasure. Each one to do our part. We find the world that matters. Each other's heart is in each other's heart. [Music] That's magpie before the morning sun. And Greg, that song referred to it as kind of your manifesto. What parts of it make it your manifesto? Why is that specifically emblematic of what you and Terry and magpie are about? Well, I think it pretty much sets forth what we believe. It also sets forth at least to a certain extent what we don't believe. And it sets forth, I guess, what we believe is important about our work. What we do with what we do to achieve some of the things that we believe in. One of the lines I like best in there is where you refer to seeing all things as your relations. Which, of course, I connect that with Native American expression of that. They'd say all my relations. Is that where you took it from? Do you have a certain amount of exposure to Native American or First Nation process? Indeed. Terry and I have both sort of gone through a whole spiritual exploratory journey in the years that we've been together. In the early 90s we had a number of experiences that were all rooted in that. What is called the Red Road. We basically were practitioners of the Lakota, Nakota, Dakota tradition of the pipe and the sweat lodge. We came pipe carriers, sweat lodge leaders, and even went out to South Dakota and participated in Humbalecia, or in the case of our friends who were the Dakotas who were taking us out there on. But atia, the vision quest where we fasted great on top of parabute. The concept of all my relations, metakoyasian, is even today to me a very poignant concept. The idea that we as living creatures are related to all the other living creatures on our planet. We share this planet with them. And we all are of the planet. And of course in the Native tradition, it doesn't just mean what we commonly refer to as living things. But it also refers to things that aren't living in that sense that they are living tissues that replicate. We are also related to the rocks and to the water, to the air. And I see that as a kind of a guiding principle for a lot of things that we do. The other things that we believe, particularly in terms of the way we treat the planet, the way we treat our Earth. I guess a lot of your songs have what some people might call an environmental edge to them. It's this bigger connection and we have to be concerned about the other beings, all our relations on the planet. The language that I've learned since Earth Day in 1970, people start referring to environmental. But I don't particularly like that. I like terms of care for creation. Because environmental is talking what's around us and that makes us centric to it. Whereas when we're talking about creation, we're part of it. And I think that's in common with the way you treat it. Yeah, I guess I have a similar kind of disdain for the term environment. I tend to think in terms of the planet, the Earth, my woods, the woods around me. For the land around me, I handle my relations. But yes, and in fact it's true there's a whole tremendous amount of energy that we've focused on. Environment, the environment, environmental causes for the entire journey of our career thus far. It kind of came to a head, I guess you might say, or it came to fruition artistically in the late 80s. When we were coming up on the 20th anniversary of Earth Day and we decided to put together a collection of songs dedicated to environmental themes. All songs about the Earth and we looked around and we found that there really were no such records. Nobody in those days in the late 80s by the time that late 80s. No one had really done that. There were precious few. Pete Seager had recorded one back in the early 70s and that was about it. So we found that we were in some ways we were kind of on our own and it was right around that same time that we began to explore the Earth-based spiritual underpinnings of the red road and sweat lodges. That really helped us as far as focusing our energies and making sure that what we were singing about was true, true in the big sense. Not just true to the facts and true to the science but also true to the heart, true to us. And of course ever since then there's been a lot of our energy focused on the Earth. We're usually very busy throughout the entire year but particularly during the spring months when people are beginning to focus on Earth Day. And of course these last several years there's been such a growing emphasis on finally growing emphasis on these concerns with various different organizations going green. So we find ourselves going in there and saying yeah it's about time. Yeah it is about time. Well how about we share some more music that's in this vein that expresses this kind of experience. It sounds like you've had a wide variety of experiences. Is there something you could pick out that would be relevant? Yeah well of course now we've got our major Earth Anthem the one that we wrote some years back when we belonged to the Earth. There's a song on our feet on the Prairie album which we recorded back in '93 right at the height of this entire thing. We were really focusing on Earth themes and we had just returned from a trip to England and Scotland, one of our many tours over there. On one of our trips over there we did I guess you'd sort of call it the Megalithic tour. We went around and in between the gigs we were doing we went to visit all the ancient sites, the ancient stone circles. This was a way for us of connecting our Earth consciousness that we had been working on and developing over here with the Red Road and the pipe and honoring the Earth. It's a way of connecting that with the ancient Earth based traditions over there. So visiting a couple of the ancient stone circles we had some absolutely amazing and downright mystical experiences which we decided to recount in that song. And that song is kind of an amalgamation of experiences that we had in the stone circle up in the lake district called Castle Rig. And an experience that we had a close encounter that I had with our namesake, a wild magpie. When we were visiting a stone circle at Avebury in the south of England, that song is a pretty good place to start. This song is Circle of Stone by Magpie. [music] There's the black rock soaring in silent dreaming. In a sun wide circle that starts in the west. From stone to stone, it's meandering journey. Deeds to the north stone, they're grass. [music] In a high green medal on a misty morning. We follow that path, touching every stone. And beyond that ring, another circle. Mountains that rise up, one by one. [music] And the wind whistles through with the floria raindrops. Chasing a chair that cuts straight to the bone. But you can't really say who's sending that shirt. Stinging all the mist for the Circle of Stone. Circle of Stone, Circle of Power. Circle of Time and History. Long have you stood and watched our seasons. Circle of Magic and History. [music] And sisters call home in a dreamtime vision. Bringing the giant, one by one. With beasts and bronze, their circles building. Seeking the power of standing stones. A place to pray, a place for dancing. One place to watch the season turn. The wisdom of the silent centuries. Lessons of the wheeled blood. Circle of Stone, Circle of Power. Circle of Time and History. Long have you stood and watched our seasons. Circle of Magic and History. [music] Gave it back to me again. And then she gave it to me a pebble. Warning me to look around. And in my shoe she tucked it safe. Dread with care on sacred ground. [music] We have with us here today for Spirit in Action Greg Artsner. He is one of the two members of Magpie. And as you heard in that song, Circle of Stone, there is the reference to the Magpie. I assume you had the name Magpie before you actually had that encounter with the Magpie. Why did you pick the name? The way that we actually got the name was rather silly thing. It's almost not even worth saying how we got it. But it just happened one evening. We were having a practice session with our banjo player playing with us at the time back in 1970, late fall 1973. But what happened, of course, was that once you choose a name like that, a lot of times, if you're open to it, things sort of descend upon you. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy to have a name like that. So we became Magpie. We became the Magpies. The old children's nursery rhyme that's been turned into songs about Magpies as his old rhyme. This is ones for sorrow and twos for joy and trees for girl and forest for a boy. Well, you know, we're the twos for joy, so that's us. And then there were all these other things that happened and on blocks of different experiences relative to Magpies that became part of our history. I guess our duo psyche, in a sense. When we were in England, one of the things that occurred there was sort of poetically described in the song. When we were at Avery, we had just pulled into the parking lot of a stone circle there. Early in the morning, we were second or third car into the parking lot. Just as we pulled in, we saw there was a woman standing there throwing little bits of bread to this Magpie, and it was getting very close to her, closer than we had ever seen a wild Magpie get to a human being. They tend to be very skittish birds like other birds are, you know. But she was getting really close. It was getting really close to her. So we jumped out of the car and we ran over there and was getting all set to take pictures. And she handed us the bread. She was going to go on in and hang out with her husband there and leave us there. He'd the Magpie. So Terry fed the Magpie, and it was getting really, really close to her. And then she took the camera, handed the bread off to me, and I was getting pretty low. I was down to the last couple of bits of bread, and the bird was getting really, really close to me. He flew over and landed on the top of the car. So I walked over onto the rear end of the car, and I just stood there with the last piece of bread. And I held that bread. I was determined that Magpie was going to eat out of my hand. And sure enough, the Magpie hopped down onto the trunk of the car and came over and took that little piece of bread right out of my hand. But it didn't swallow the bread, didn't eat the bread. What it did instead was, it came over and I had a fanny pack on. And it came over and it took that little piece of bread and it pushed it up under the flap over the zipper on the front of my fanny pack. And it were a good place where the bread could get wedged in there under the flap. And it let the flap fall back down and then it pounded on it just to make sure that that bread was tucked in there good and tight. And I was just completely awe-struck. Just thumb-struck, really. And the bird jumped back up onto the roof of the car and I walked away a few feet. But it wasn't finished. It flew down off of the car, hopped over to me on the ground, and picked up a little pebble off of the ground. And then it hopped over and took that pebble and tucked it under the lacing flap at the bottom of my converse all-stars. And then it pounded down the stone to make sure that it was in place and then hopped right up on my foot. And then after that it was gone. Moments later we were getting ready to go into this stone circle and I was just absolutely freaking out, you know, this had happened, you know. So I went to have a look, I pulled the bread out, you know, and had a look, sure enough, the little zipper compartment on the front of the fanny pack was hanging open and it was empty. And that's where I've been keeping the rental car keys. I said, oh no, what's going on here? What happened to the rental car keys? Did I drop them on the ground, you know, or what? We went back to the car and sure enough, in my haste to get out of the car, I had to left the keys hanging in the door lock with all of our instruments in the trunk and all of our bags on the back seat. And it would have been a disaster if the magpie had not reminded me. And they hadn't gone to look and see if that compartment was open. We would have lost everything. Good friends to have. Oh yeah, the so-called "steving magpie" was a bird that in this case absolutely overt of the possible theft. Ever since that day I've honored the magpie, you know. And at one time we hadn't experienced not too long after that. We were having a special, very special sweat with a fellow who taught the guy who taught me a Lakota fellow who taught the guy who taught me the sweat lodge. And he was giving us a little bit of a lesson about going on vision quest. And you said, you know, if you're on a vision quest and you look up in the sky and you see an eagle saw an overhead, you know, you shouldn't really think too much of that because that could happen at any time. Or if you see a hawk saw an overhead, he's probably just looking for something to eat. But if on the other hand that hawk flies down and hops into your altar space and then hops right up on you, then that's your medicine. So I figured, well after that, the magpie is definitely my medicine. Great stories, yeah. And great connections with our relations there. Your website is magpiemusic.com. People should check out there if they want to get a hold of the various programs that you can do or find your music, all that kind of thing. You're not a single issue type person, it's not just environmental related things that you do. You mentioned peace earlier. Talk about the wider universe of values that you do music about. Well, yeah, our entire musical career and even before we got together both Terry and I individually have been involved in using music as a tool to make this a better world. I can say that for me personally, this dates back to the '60s, '50s and '60s musically. When I was growing up, we experienced the great topical music of the 1960s and the music of the Civil Rights Movement, the music of movement to end war in Vietnam. That period of time and that music of course has a profound influence on me. I never, my entire life, I've never thought of music as just being, for me anyway, just being in entertainment, I'm happy to be entertaining. Even using music that has a topical theme, political theme, social theme, we want to still be entertaining. But I've never thought of it as just being entertained. I've always felt that music had a greater purpose and I wanted to be there. I wanted to be in that number. So yeah, our entire career has been dedicated to social issues, issues of social justice, issues of stopping war, ending war, freedom, equality, all of these things. Of course, we feel that the earth is one of those issues that has intricately connected with all that. Our experience is working for peace as musicians, dating back to the '60s. I'm one of my very first gigs in front of people. In fact, my very first gig singing in front of an audience, in front of a live audience, was when I was 11 years old and I sang at a civil rights conference in my hometown of Canton, Ohio. When I was in high school and the war in Vietnam was raging, I went and sang at the local demonstrations against the war in October 1969, moratorium against the war. Terry and I together have sung at demonstrations against all the wars over the years. When we lived in Washington, D.C., you could say a rather convenient location for doing that kind of work. You throw your guitar and a gig back and hop on the train and be right down on the wall. So I don't even know how many dozens of demonstrations we've performed at in D.C. All of it tied into the influences of our heroes and purer those who have paved the way for us and did this kind of work. Pete Seeger is now a friend of ours. I have to pinch myself whenever I say that. But because when I was a kid, Pete was just, he was the daddy of them all and still is. He's just been a tremendous influence on me politically and musically all the years and now continues to be. And then in the '60s, it was people like Phil Oakes, Joan Baez, Margina Reynolds, Gene Ritchie, Tom Paxson, Erica Anderson, particularly people like Phil Oakes, who had a tremendous impact on me. As a songwriter and as a person who dedicated himself to whatever cause it was. In the early '60s, he was really focused on the Civil Rights Movement, which of course was a major thing to me because my father worked for the Urban League as a job person, a job development person. And my entire family got involved in the Civil Rights Movement in our small way, in our small town of Canton, Ohio. And then in the late '60s, when it was the war, Phil continued to be a national inspiration to those of us who were engaged in that struggle. And then of course, Kent, and I can't stay to the May of 1970. My partner, Terry, was in the famous demonstration on campus on May 4th in the line of fire with all those other hundreds of students. You know, for me, I keep thinking, you know, there but for fortune, that my partner, Terry, is my partner, Terry, and that she didn't end up like Allison Krauss. Whenever I see Terry, I just say, I'm just a fortunate person that likes somebody who was spared that day, but who has ever since been a dedicated progressive and an activist. We're trying to leave this world a better place than we found it. Well, let's share your song there, but for fortune, of course, it's originally by Phil Lokes here performed by Mac Pie. Show me a prison, show me a jail, show me a prisoner whose face is growing pale. And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why, they're but for fortune, they go you alive. Show me an alley, show me a train, show me a home home who sleeps out in the rain. And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why, they're but for fortune, they go you alive. Show me the whiskey, stains on the floor. Show me a drunken man as he stumbles out the door. And I'll show you a young man with many reasons why, they're but for fortune, they go you alive. Show me an alley, show you a young man with many reasons why, they're but for fortune, they're but for fortune, they go you alive. Show me a country where the bombs had to fall. Show me the ruins of the buildings, what's so tall. I'll show you a young man with many reasons why, they're but for fortune, they go you alive. For I, for I, for I. Magpie's version of there but for fortune, you can find it via their website, MagpieMusic.com, lot more information about them. This is Spirit in Action and my guest today is Greg Artsner. I'm Mark Helpsmeet and our website is NorthernSpiritRadio.org. You can go to the site and find our programs from the last five and a half years archive there and connections to people like Greg and Terry of Magpie. So Greg, you've got such a wealth of music, how many collections out there, CDs, LPs, all of that do you have that either your own or compilations with other people? I am not sure. I think we've got about 11 CDs on our own. We did two albums with Kim and Reggie Harris and we're on several notable collections. Smithsonian's Monumental Collection American Folk Song, 20th Century Revival. We are on all three of the collections of the songs of Pete Seager, one of which seeds, the most recent one, was nominated for a Grammy here a couple of years ago. We are also on singing through the Hard Times, which is the tribute to Utah Phillips, which came out the year before last and it was nominated for a Grammy Award. And we're on Phil Oak's collection, songs performed by various artists called What's That I Hear. There's an organization that was centered out in Montana organized by the late Walken Jim Stolz, a very dear friend of ours, called Musicians United to Sustain the Environment. And they did three or four different collections and we're on all of them. And one of them was one that we put together called Songs for the Earth, which was a tribute to Rachel Carson. We're on a few different collections of civil rights songs that were produced by an organization called the Cultural Center for Social Change. A couple of these collections were actually singing with members of the student nonviolent coordinating committees, Freedom Singers, Matthew Jones and Marshall Jones, Lazir Peacock, Emory Harris. Those were tremendous honor for us to share the stage with those guys who are just, they're the original guys. They're the civil rights singers who were out there in the trenches out there on the front lines of the civil rights movement. For us to share the stage with those gentlemen was a tremendous honor. So yeah, we're on a lot of those different things and so there's lots of recordings. More to come. And people can find them all via magpiemusic.com. I'm sure you're up on iTunes everywhere else. By the way, I was just this morning speaking with Leslie Stoltz, that is to say, "Walking Jim Stoltz's wife." I mean, he passed away this last fall, but I'm arranging a collection of his music as part of Spirit and Action Song of the Soul. And that'll be coming in the next couple of weeks. That's wonderful. What an interesting and wonderful man he was. When you hear Jim talk, his speaking voice sounded almost nothing like his singing voice. He'd hear him talk and he'd sound like a regular guy and then he'd start singing, and that amazing barot coming would come out of him. What an unusual voice. And boy, I'll tell you, I don't think there was ever a more eloquent voice in defense of our mother earth than "Walking Jim Stoltz." And he did it with such beauty and grace, you know, never any bitterness or cynicism that was always just the best. And he wrote some amazing songs, a couple of which Terry and I have in our repertoire that we just love. And boy, Jim is going to be sorely missed. Yes, he will be. So you'll be able to hear some of his music on both Spirit and Action Song and Soul shortly. But let's hear some more of your music now. We've got Magpie. There's so much good music you've produced and all of your recordings and your collaborations. What would you like to do next? Let's go back to that piece of struggle. We've got a song that we've been singing for a number of years. This is a way of paying tribute to our good friend and I guess you'd call him a mentor in a lot of ways he is a mentor to us. He's Pete Seeger. Pete has been singing for peace or justice for the earth. His entire 90-some-odd years here now, I think he's 92 now, I think, or something. But he's still going strong. Back in the 60s, Pete wrote this song. He had become very poignantly aware of the power of women in the peace movement. Not just during the 60s, but dating back to the early part of the 20th century and the women's strike for peace. His thesis, I suppose, in this song was to a certain extent that worldwide women really needed to lead the charge. They needed to lead our world to a peaceful place and that the men needed to listen. As was rather typical of Pete, he sometimes would put his songs into the context of a biblical theme. So Eve becomes the archetype, I suppose you might say, of women struggling for peace. Though his song is an open letter to her, it's called Letter to Eve. ♪ ♪ Oh, Eve, where is Adam? ♪ ♪ Now you're kicked out of the garden ♪ ♪ Oh, Eve, where is Adam? ♪ ♪ Now you're kicked out of the garden ♪ ♪ Been wandering from shawty shore ♪ ♪ Now you find that there's no more ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Don't you wish love ♪ ♪ Only love could save this world from disaster ♪ ♪ Oh love, only love could save this world from disaster ♪ ♪ Don't you wish love could end the confusion ♪ ♪ Or is it just one more illusion? ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ If you want to have great love ♪ ♪ You've got to have great anger ♪ ♪ If you want to have great love ♪ ♪ You've got to have great anger ♪ ♪ When I see innocent folks shut down ♪ ♪ You want me to just shake my head and frown ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Now if you want to hit the target square ♪ ♪ You'd better not have blind anger ♪ ♪ If you want to hit the target square ♪ ♪ You'd better not have blind anger ♪ ♪ Or it'll just be one more time ♪ ♪ A correction creates another crime ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ If music could only bring peace ♪ ♪ I'd only be a musician ♪ ♪ If music could only bring peace ♪ ♪ I'd only be a musician ♪ ♪ If songs could do more than all the pain ♪ ♪ If melodies could only break these chains ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Oh, we've got to build a new garden ♪ ♪ Oh, we've got to build a new garden ♪ ♪ We've got to build a new garden ♪ ♪ We've got to get workin' on a building ♪ ♪ A decent home for all of our children ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Oh, we've you tell at 'em ♪ ♪ The next time he asks you ♪ ♪ Oh, we've you tell at 'em ♪ ♪ The next time he asks you ♪ ♪ He'll say, "Baby, it's cold outside." ♪ ♪ What's the password to come inside?" ♪ ♪ You say, "Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ 4,000 languages in this world ♪ ♪ Means the same thing to every boy and girl ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ ♪ Oh, Pachim in terrace ♪ ♪ Mir shanti salami wa ♪ Letter to Eve, written by Pete Seeger, performed here by Magpie from their Living Planet album. Find it via magpiemusic.com. I love that jazzy, bluesy type of music and look forward to more musical riches next week as we continue our spirit and action interview with Greg Artsner of Magpie. See you all next week. The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World," performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit and action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is "Spirit in Action." ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]