It's been a busy few weeks for our family. We've had many changes in our lives of late and much negativity thrown at us. (But hey change = growth right? and that's for another post.) So it came as a blessing in disguise when my good friend and soul sister asked my friend and I to join her band for a gig at a festival.

I'm the one on the far left, behind the piano

Making music to raise awareness about world issues.

I've talked in a few other posts about how the island where I live has many environmental issues that it is slowly addressing. Mostly owed to my friend who has brought her wisdom from The Cook Islands, who are also fighting environmental issues.
We had all been working on the environmental exhibition and in the past, have had many a gathering where we sit around a fire, with good food and some instruments and happily sing a collection of songs.
Each year the island holds a folk festival with visitors coming from the UK and various places in Europe. My friend usually performs in another band, however the lead singer decided to take a year off for personal reasons. So carrying on the legacy, she sought to recruit a few new members and added four beautiful songs that she had written to the set. The aim of these was to raise awareness about environmental issues.

Imge Credit

• Building Walls ~ A song about how we need to stop feeding into corporate greed. To stop treating the earth as our dumping ground and draining it of natural resources. The song was inspired by Tuvalu, an island where the people are fighting to preserve their beautiful land which is currently disappearing as the sea levels increase. There has been a documentary made about this that has disappeared from YouTube which is also rather concerning.

• Ariel Liquid ~ This song was inspired when my friend was reading the back of a pack of laundry detergents and noticed that the label said " Harmful to aquatic life, with long lasting effects". The lyrics hit hard and a few people commented after asking what the alternatives are. This was a blessing and I was enthralled to point them in the direction of soap nuts and eco friendly products.
  

  
  My alternative cleaning solutions

• Grass Roots ~ This song discusses how if we all rise up and work together to make the world better it can be achieved.

• Escape (From Intellectual Lock In) ~ This song is about empowering people to think for themselves and look at nature to find solutions, which will bring peaceful revolution.

Also included in the set were a few cover versions of some beautiful songs by the Levellers, and an old Folk Poem called Terror Time, which is a haunting harmonic rendition about life as a traveler in the UK.
We also sang 3 Cook Island and Maori songs. I must confess with the short time we had to rehearse, both my other friend and I resorted to ooh's and ah's for the harmonies but we have vowed to have the words learnt by the time of the next performance.

Helping a friend out.

One of the perks of being a performer at a festival is the free ticket and the food and beverage tokens. When I arrived I hadn't been expecting these. We were each given three tokens. I spent my first one on some much needed Dutch Courage, (this was the first time I had ever played piano and sang when performing).
When the gig had finished one of my friends who had come to watch us wanted to get home to make dinner for her son. We had wangled her a free ticket but she had no money to buy food. I could see that she and her son both wanted to stay longer and enjoy the other bands.
Now I'm not going to go into great detail but she has hardly any money, through no fault of her own and her circumstances make it hard for her to be able to enjoy many of the local events because of the fear she has over her situation. (It really is a complicated one).
Anyhow, feeling grateful for all those here on Steemit who have helped me in so many ways to grow on this platform with their pay-it-forward mentality and in the spirit of this I decided to give her my tokens so she could get some food. It wasn't a lot I know but it felt good to help her out.

All in all it was a great weekend. The sun shone and the heat was up. We had an amazing time and I'm super grateful to have been part of it. I can now say I have ticked off one more thing from my bucket list too! Once I have video copy of the set I intend to upload to D Tube... stay tuned :-)

I really do believe that music has the power to bring about changes. If you've written a song that has made a positive impact I'd love to hear it. Please feel free to link it in the comments. Music has the power to make the world a brighter and better place for our future generations.

~ONE LOVE~

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