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Celebrity Spotlight: Shawna Carol
Shawna Carol is an internationally recognized singer, recording artist and song healer, and the director of the Way of Song Center in Bedford, MA. Formerally on the core faculty of the Omega Institute, she has taught at many leading conferences nationwide and collaborated with many of today's leading musicians, writers and teachers including Paul Winter, Carolyn Myss, Julia Cameron and Joan Borysenko.
 "Goddess Chant," her latest CD, is a top-selling recording for the Ladyslipper Records label. She is the author of, "The Way of Song: A Guide To Freeing the Voice and Sounding The Spirit" St. Martin’s Press. To learn more about Shawna Carol's workshops and recordings or to download the music for God Bless Our Planet go to http://www.wayofsong.com.
1. Tell us about a time when you were in fear about your creative career journey and you didn't think it would go anywhere...
There was a time when I just couldn’t believe that I could make a living in music. My Father had told me in no uncertain terms that I was being an idiot and to do anything even drive a truck (and I’m a very petite woman) rather than be a musician.
With his words echoing in my ears I enrolled in a Master’s Degree program in Arts Administration part time, while I continued writing music. I was going to school, working part time in administration in New York Theater while at the same time writing my first musical, Solid Gold Baby. Eventually I got my degree and I reluctantly took my first full time job as the Director of Development (i.e. fund raiser) for the Actors Equity Theatre.
Meanwhile I attended my first SpiritSong Class taught by singer, Susan Osborn, and was on fire about it. I was so excited about the SpiritSinging I negotiated Thursday mornings off so I could continue to study with Susan in CT a 3 hour commute. After only 9 months at the job I got a phone call from a friend in Boston who was also on fire about the singing work.
She invited me to be her housemate and to join a New Age Vocal Group in Boston.
“I can’t leave now,” I said, “what about my career,? I just started 9 months ago.”
She asked me, “Do you want that career?”
I thought about it for a moment then said, “No!”, hung up the phone, quit my job and moved to Boston to do music and never looked back.
2. Tell us about a time when you were feeling confident about your creative career journey and you absolutely knew you were going to be okay....
A number of years later, after recording my first CD, I had written the music for a CD called, GODDESS CHANT, chants to the Divine Feminine. I knew it was going to be wonderful because I could hear it in my head, but I didn’t know where to get the money to produce it.
I had been hired to sing at the Body and Soul Conference. It was being held at the Park Plaza hotel. Julia Cameron, author of the Artist’s Way, was also presenting at the Body and Soul Conference we ran into one another in the lobby. She asked me whatever happened to that CD I was always talking about recording. When I told her I hadn’t done it because of money she whipped out her checkbook and wrote me check on the spot.
She said, "Get started, and it's not the money that's stopping you."
She was right, after that nothing could stop me. I raised $20,000 in kind and direct financial support put together a fantastic team of artists, got a record deal with Ladyslipper Records, the largest distributor of women’s music in the United States and most importantly made the album of my dreams.
3. How did you discover your passion?
"We are a people at the full height of our power – this is the place and now is the hour." Author and Earth Activist, Starhawk, joined me on the drum as the entire room, filled with hundreds of people, joined us in singing, "We recognize our sacred worth, We have the power to transform the earth."
"We need songs to sing when facing the police who'll be in full riot gear," Starhawk had said when we had spoken the week before her talk about Global Justice and direct action.
"Have you got anything like that?" she asked. "I'll come up with something," I told her.
I am a child of the sixties. At that time I saw and heard the black civil rights marchers walk directly into police blockades and face brutal beatings and arrest while singing "We shall overcome." Singing these songs gave them courage beyond reason. Ultimately that courage dismantled the segregated south and the racist Jim Crow laws were struck down. It was then that I became convinced of the power of song
I grew up to Bob Dylan's theme song, "The Times They Are A Changin' " and indeed they were. The daughters and sons of World War 2 veterans said "hell no we won't go" to a new and unjustifiable neo-colonial war in Vietnam.
I joined with over 100,000 people in San Francisco taking to the streets to protest the war. The whole movement was fueled by the music. We laughed to Country Joe and the Fish's classic "Well its 1,2,3 what are we fighting for don't ask me I don't give a damn next stop is Vietnam – 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates ain't no time to wonder why whoopee we're all gonna die." We felt righteous indignation to Dylan's Masters of War" and we wept to "The Great Mandela," a song about the imprisonment of a anti- war protestor. "Win or lose now you must choose now and if you lose you're only losing your life."
The music was inseparable from the peace and social justice movements that defined that time. It was there that I learned what an awesome tool songs are to create culture.
It wasn't until 20 years later that the work of Joseph Campbell became popularized and that the power of myth was broadly understood. The sixties was a demonstration of that principle in action. I knew from experiencing thousands of people putting their lives on the line for peace and social justice that joining words with the emotional power of music was a potent brew in creating a new mythology. Songs were a key force in creating nothing less than a new reality.
Another song icon from the sixties, "Come on people now smile on your brother – Everybody get together try to love one another right now" offered a radical reorientation from fear based reality to love based reality. I attended be-ins in Griffith Park (in Los Angeles where I was raised) and the "love-vibe" among perfect strangers was undeniable. And everywhere guitars were playing the sound track of the new culture.
In the 80's while I was living in New York City and singing my songs in such classic venues as "Folk City", I discovered another aspect of the power of song. The power of song to heal.
In 1985 I went to the New York Open Center and attended a workshop with Susan Osborn, then the lead singer with the Paul Winter Consort. She began the workshop by talking about song being essential to our health. She compared the need to sing to the need to eat food. At that point I started crying; she looked over at me and asked the fateful question, "Do you want to sing about it?" There in a circle of 50 people I sang my souls own song without words. In that moment I felt the power and grace of song more than at any other time in my life. Through this simple act of toning with loving witness I released all my pent up feelings and experienced a reunion with Spirit.
That experience led me to co-found the SpiritSong Center and for the last 17 years I have been teaching people to sing in this simple yet profound way.
By the 90's I had found the Goddess. For me this feminine face of God served to undo all the internalized misogyny I was carrying. The new/old story of Goddess brought me to a clear vision of my own divinity and worth as a woman - the Goddess in body.
By that time I had been writing songs for many years and had released my 1st CD. Knowing intimately the power of song, I set about to write songs for a new culture, one that recognized the Goddess as well as God. I wrote a liturgy to the Goddess called "Goddess Chant." After centuries of composers having written songs of praise to the Lord I wrote, "Praise Her", and now this Goddess Gospel rocks the house every time it is performed. After "Goddess Chant" was given its West Coast Premiere at the Women of Wisdom Festival in Seattle many, many women stopped to speak with me and with tears in their eyes said that they felt they had come home.
After September 11th a conversation emerged about how to respond to such a heinous and tragic act of violence. A call for an earth flag was heard and I, as a lifelong songwriter, responded with an earth anthem. I set about writing the global answer to "God Bless America," I composed a song to say that the nation state is a concept of the last century and that in the new millennium we must recognize that the life of an Afghani child is as valuable as the life of an American child.
I am profoundly grateful that I grew up in the sixties. I hold that time not as some quaint period where people had long hair and wore funny "love beads" but as a time that heralded a new consciousness. Where war was not embraced as a solution to conflict; Where social justice was worth giving one's life energy to; where love and peace were seriously being held as the highest values. It was a time when songs inspired millions of people to join together to make the world a better place. I am still walking that path today.
Read other Celebrity Spotlights:
Steven Lane Taylor
Mark Albion
Shawna Carol
Raphael Cushnir
Bonnie Marson
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Various Celebrity Wisdom
Jan Phillips
Scott Cluthe
Tim McCarthy
Rhonda Britten
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