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“Rise Mantra” is the opening track on Sacred Paths, by Asia Jazz Project featuring Molina Soleil & Aju (2009). 

Meditation.

Few  people will ever listen to this track in it’s entirety.   It is a jewel for those who have the time.  This is the living word, fused with experimental, improvisational jazz.

This is a mantra for the earth.   The people continue to rise and demand justice for all living things, including our Pachamama.

This week’s post is dedicated to the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, taking place now in Tiquipaya, Bolivia.  One of the key principles of the conference is to establish a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.

EARTH DAY 2010

A.M. SOLEIL, RETROSPECTIVELY is a 52-week blog series in 2010, reflecting on 5 years of independent music by Molina.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, March 8^th, I would like to share a song with my fellow WeMoons that orbit this extremely complex yet extremely beautiful home, our planet Earth, and also to the men that support and nurture humanity’s  most sacred resource: the life givers.

WeMoon is a trance floetics dedication to the divine feminine powers embodied by all mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers, granddaughters, cousins, aunties, nieces and roots. It is a song to all the women that have fought, danced, worked, sang, organized, loved, and planted seeds of all forms for the rights of women, for the rights of all humans, for the rights of our animal-relations, for the rights of the environment — for justice, respect, equality and for the joy of living.

The title “WeMoon” was inspired by (did you guess it? Yes,) the beautifully intuitive We’Moon Lunar calendars published by Mother Tongue Ink. It was fresh to discover the semantical twist they took on in redefining the word(s) used to describe we’moons, or “women.”

Instead of defining ourselves in relation to men (i.e. women, females), this “we’moon” describes our innate relationship that we have to the moon, whose gravity moves the tides of the planet, cycles the blood and fluids of our bodies, creates change, gives birth, renews life. Language is culture, and therefore it is vital that we are conscious of the life we breathe into reality through our words.

Be your breath, be girl, just be.

We are mirrors of our exterior universe. This song mirrors the wisdom and inspiration that flows within the cosmology of the divine feminine and celebrates the common pulse that all womyn share in relationship to the natural sources of cosmic flow – the moon, the sun, the stars, the planets, planet earth, and of course, we cannot forget our divine gravitational pulls and dances with each other. If this song were a dance, it would be a womyn’s circle of capoeira, playing on a beach, under a full moon around a huge fire of wisdom, singing to the stars.

Waves of vision – turn it up – talk now walk I brave the line – let’s turn them up: our dreams, our voices, our flows.

This song celebrates both the diversity and oneness of all womyn, and the harmony and balance that is innate in our very essence, our very beings. Axé. Ometeotl. Ying-yang. Context and perception – push/pull, light/shadows. All and nothing. One.

By existing in an inharmonious world dominated by patriarchy, hyper-masculinity, fear and violence, the uniting rhythms and joy of life are stolen from womyn all too often. What power and wisdom is so great that we are systematically taught to be stagnated by judgment, belittled by oppression and uprooted by indoctrination?

I agree with the statement made by Mari Matsuda in her book Where is Your Body that: “Among patriarchy’s many crimes is the crime that keeps us from going out alone on an evening stroll to look at the stars. This is a real loss of personal freedom. This is a feminist issue.”

The spirit rooted in the word and title we’moon is one that symbolizes resistance and celebration, both one and the same. It is the antithesis of misogyny and self-perpetuating institutionalized dominance and violence that is all too often propagated in mainstream media.

WeMoon is a celebration song aimed to make you dance – in your heart, in your mind, in your body. Let us continue to breathe into existence our living dreams. WeMoons united.

“International Women’s Day Marked Around the World” on Democracy Now!

                                                                                                                                                 “Eve Ensler: Security and insecurity” on TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design): Ideas worth spreading

This is the second version of The People.  It is the second single off the forthcoming album SOULAJU, set for release March 23rd, 2010. 

The first version of The People appeared on Shine Flow EP w/ DJ Icewater, released June 9th, 2009.  I wrote the original in October 2008 in Portland, OR, where I was emceeing Graham St. Productions’ first major fundraiser for Papers the movie.   I was two months into the Up Before the Sunrise tour.  After the Papers benefit, I hopped on the plane and headed to the Bay Area to volunteer for Youth Speaks’ Living Word festival. 

At the end of my stay in the Bay, I recorded “People (Molina Mix)” and “Shine Flow” with Icewater in Oakland, CA and did an interview with Hard Knock Radio.  I added (Molina Mix) to the title of People because Icewater is a mixtape DJ, so I figured other emcees would be flowing over the same beat.

This second version, The People II, was written and recorded in December of 2009 for SOULAJU.  It was a last-minute decision at the time, being that the album was originally set for January release.  The words came to me one evening when Aju and I were catching up on Democracy Now episodes.  It was time for an update.

To some people, this may seem unoriginal—the same artist using the same beat twice to tell a similar story.  To me, this hella fresh.  As an emcee, an instrumental is a blank canvas.  Give 20 emcees the same beat and you’ll get 20 different stories.  Give me the same beat with the same hook two different years and I’ll give you two different stories that are similar in vein, but different enough to provide new insight and keep your attention.  Hip-Hop is all about re-creating and re-using, building upon what has already been done, personally, musically, culturally.

Enjoy the new mix and keep motivating and originating in 2010. 

Molina – www.molinaspeaks.com

Listen to the original: “People (Molina Mix)” w/ DJ Icewater: