Herbs Rock!: Songs about Herbalists, Medicinal Plants, and Food as Medicine

If I were to make a mixed tape (yes, as in a cassette tape cuz I'm from the days before cd's and mp3's and all that...) of songs that weave together plant medicines, respect for traditional healers, and food as medicine, here's where I'd start - with the songs posted below.  Please add more suggestions to the comments!  (And I ended up making a playlist here, just imagine it's a cassette!)

What do songs/music videos have to do with self-care, herbal remedies, and community health?  Lots!  With even minimal exposure to mainstream radio, videos, televisions, or the interwebs, you've probably seen or heard images and lyrics that are offensive in many, many ways.  White people stealing music styles and dance moves from communities of color without any kind of accountability, awareness, collaboration, solidarity, or anything else that may make it anything other than cultural theft.  Music videos where all the microphones are in the hands of cis-gender (non-transgender) men, while any women present are silent and scantily-clad (if clad at all) eye candy.  Violently homophobic lyrics.  It goes on and on and on.

In a world full of creative, brilliant, and down-to-earth music-makers and other artists, we really don't need to limit what we take into our beings to what mainstream media is serving us.  Whether we're tearing up the dance floor or just relaxing at home, listening to the music (and supporting the artists) that feeds us creates a more nourishing, reciprocal cycle.

The music that I listen to when I'm making remedies is part of the medicine.  Sometimes I listen to radio programs like Democracy Now!, Making Contact, First Voices Indigenous Radio or Moccasin Tracks.  Or I listen to the music and words of Climbing PoeTree, Ras K'Dee, Erykah Badu, Goapele, Arrested Development, Lila Downs, and RuPaul.  All that positive consciousness, collective vision for healing and liberation, and you-can-do-it!-ness goes into the remedies, whether I'm pouring Heart Elixir: to open, heal, and protect the heart for Self-Care Kits: for emotional first aid or I'm simmering syrup to blend with infused herbs for Speak Truth! Throat Spray (made with gratitude in honor of whistle blowers and truth tellers, past, present, and future!)

Your mind is sacred.  Take care of it, protect it.

By the fabulous Julio Salgado  shop here

(check out QUIP - Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project here and here)

Red Beans & Rice by Spearhead (Garlic clove...Licorice root...Ginger...and Food as Medicine!) in English/en Inglés



Be Healthy by Dead Prez  (fyi you may just want to end the song at 1:51, totally not suitable for work) in English/en Inglés

"El Yerbito Moderno" by La Sonora Matancera with Celia Cruz (aka Queen of Salsa) en Español/in Spanish

 

Yerbatero by Juanes in Spanish (and check out what happens at 3:16!!) en Español/in Spanish

 

La Cumbia del Mole by the multi-lingual artist Lila Downs, where she sings about many medicinal/culinary herbs.  How many names herbs/spices do you hear? After you listen to the original, you can listen to the English version here and the Spanglish version has disappeared, but maybe we can check it out later because life is so much richer in more than just one language.   en Español/in Spanish

I had to include the video of Palomo Del Comalito by Lila Downs, because corn is so sacred to so many peoples - it's definitely a medicine, feeding much more than the physical body.  Though my ancestors do not have this kind of relationship with corn, I included this song in this list because it is a form of plant spirit medicine. en Español/in Spanish

 

Flores by Danay Suárez  (“Flores” es una canción que habla de resistir / “Flores” {"Flowers"} is a song about resistance) en Español/in Spanish

What songs, foods, plant medicines, artists feed you and your spirit?

(Want more music (in both Spanish and English)?  See the links posted on the So You Want to Learn Spanish?! Hooray! English-only, No Way! post)

Additions:  (keep the suggestions coming!!)

Vendedor De Yuyos (Hierbas) por/by Jorge Cafrune y Marito, en Español/in Spanish

Lyrics here/Letras aca

Honoring ALL Mothers: Mama's Day Our Way

What does Motherhood in a just world look like?

Walking into a store around Mother’s Day, one would think from all the greeting card images that all mothers are white, able-bodied, middle-class, straight, feminine and female-identified women in nuclear families.

This narrow view of who a mother is excludes so many of us - Immigrant women raising their children in bilingual homes, Transgender moms with disabilities, Masculine-identified women raising their nieces and nephews, Incarcerated mother maintaining connection through barbed wire and concrete walls, Indigenous women honoring both their children and Mother Earth in the struggles against colonization and tar sands, Women of color serving in the military and parenting from overseas, Breast-feeding working-class queer mamas, Survivors of sexual violence who are transforming pain and trauma into creating a safe home for their little ones, Mothers working as domestic workers - separated from their own children to raise the children of upper-class families, Mothers of all skin colors and their little ones who may or may not be the same color, Teen mothers taking good care of their babies, Single moms and multi-generational households, Mothers that cross borders and endure separation from their families in order to provide for them, Mothers by blood, adoption, and chosen-mothers.  

This year, let’s honor all mothers! 

Let’s celebrate midwives, doulas, and other birthworkers!  Let’s take this day as an opportunity to learn more about our own birthstory and send some love to uteruses all over the world!  Let’s support motherhood and parenthood as a whole, and create and nourish culture/communities where families are included and valued.

    To all those who help build strong and resilient communities by creating inclusive,     
    multi-generational spaces-  

    To all the mothers and allies working collectively for justice in the realm of  
    motherhood/parenthood and  other aspects of community justice – 

    To all artists who are creating vivid reflections of families in all their vibrant, simple,   
    complicated, and loving manifestations -

THANK YOU!

Please check out Strong Families -"a home for the 4 out of 5 people living in the US who do not live behind the picket fence—whose lives fall outside outdated notions of family, with a mom at home and a dad at work....We see the trend of families defining themselves beyond the picket fence—across generation, race, gender, immigration status, and sexuality—as a powerful and promising development for the US, and we want to help policy makers catch up.  Our vision is that every family have the rights, recognition and resources it needs to thrive.  We are engaging hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals in our work to get there."

    -and their Mama's Day Our Way  campaign - beautiful and free e-cards here, created by   
    a network of artists and organizations.  Some of their cards are included below.

More resources:
Art of Favianna Rodriguez and Dignidad Rebelde
Radical Doula
The Shodhini Institute
Campaign for Prison Phone Justice  - please sign their Mother's Day petition here.
Brown Boi Project
The Native Youth Sexual Health Network
National Day Laborer Organizing Network

You can click on images below to make them larger.

"My mom would cross 100 borders to give me a better future."

Please sign the petition here.

"Our souls are so much bigger than this"

Love & Migration: Migration is Beautiful & Natural. So is Solidarity.

Febuary is here and with it, a month to celebrate Love in it's Many Forms.  While February is sold as the month for romantic love, there is no reason to limit ourselves to this one form.  There's self-love, community-love, family-love (chosen family &/or blood family),  community work/labor-of-love, and global/universal/solidarity-love, to name of few.  These forms of love are not separate and exclusive.  There's overlap.  Our romantic and/or family love can feed our community work/labor-of-love.  Our self-love is vital in order for us to be fully engaged and healthy in that community work.  And that global/universal/solidarity love feeds our day-to-day community activism love.  And there's so many ways to celebrate these all - ie. reflecting upon and appreciating the love in our lives, cultivating more, sending love notes to friends and family near and far, breaking bread together, creating a culture of love.  

I strongly believe in Khalil Gibran's quote "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."  I take great comfort knowing that a broken heart is an open heart.  And a vital way for my heart, in all it's battled and bruised glory, to keep open, and for me to be and feel fully alive, is being part of movements for social justice.

In celebration of Love in it's Many Forms, let's focus on the global, take-action! love.  We're beginning with migrant justice, a movement that's near and dear to my heart.  I am so heartened by the courage and creativity of everyone in this movement that are working not only to change policy, but to liberate our minds from racism, xenophobia, and other divisive forces that create a climate of violence, target communities, separate families, and break hearts.

Favianna Rodriguez is a fierce creatrix of community and art.  She's co-founder of Presente.org, is a national organization that amplifies the political voice of Latino communities (on Facebook here).  Migration is Beautiful: Voice of Art is a recently-released program that shows how artist-activists are creating a culture of resistance and transforming conversations and perceptions  around (im)migration in the U.S.

 Also, check out Dignidad Rebelde, a graphic arts collaboration between Oakland-based artist-activists Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes, as well as the art of undocumented, queer artivist Julio Salgado.

I love when artists, actors, musicians, politicians and others use their influence to send a powerful message of truth and solidarity.  Wisin & Yandel take a romantic-love song, 'Estoy Enamorado' (In English: I'm in Love), and using powerful images, create a video that's a call to action.  While mainstream US culture often clumps all Latin@ cultures together, I think it's important to note that while the images in the video are most likely of people originally from Mexico and Central and South America, Wisin & Yandel are Puerto Rican.  Mainstream US culture often portrays Puerto Ricans in "those people" terms, and many people don't realize that Puerto Ricans, either living in the US or on the island, are US citizens.  Sometimes Puerto Ricans and other Latin@s with US citizenship/papers are pitted against others who lack documentation, or are perceived to lack documentation.  For this reason, Wisin & Yandel using the video to send a clear message about inhumane immigration law in the US is a blatant refusal of divide and conquer tactics and beautiful act of solidarity!




The message at the end of the video is: 
"Creemos en la protección de los derechos de todo ser humano. La Ley SB1070 representa una violacion de esos derechos y una injusticia contra la integridad de nuestras comunidades. En nuestra unión esta la fuerza. Unámosnos. Recuerda en este mundo TODOS somos iguales!"

In English: "We believe in protecting the rights of every human being. (Arizona) SB 1070 Law represents a violation of those rights and an injustice to the integrity of our communities. In our union there is strength. Unite. Remember, in this world, we are ALL equal!"


Activists and artists are making it so easy and so beautiful to become educated and get involved.  Through this movement, I am continuing to unlearn racism, reclaim my humanity, and know true solidarity.  As a white, English-speaking U.S. citizen, and with respect for my ancestors and their journeys from Ireland, Scotland, and England, I feel so blessed to be on the right side of history and part of such a creative, beautiful, loving, and fierce movement.  


Please see National Day Laborers Organizing Network's arts and culture page for more powerful videos (in English and Spanish).

image by Julio Salgado

Other good resources:
Drop the I-Word
No More Deaths/No Más Muertes
(Im)migration and Lip Balms for Social Justice?! blog post

Justicia Migrante/Migrant Justice 
National Day Laborer Organizing Network
Puente
Standing on the Side of Love

Heart Elixir: to open, heal, and protect the heart   Info here

Other Valentines-inspired blog posts:
Valentine's Aphrodisiac Recipes
Love is a Verb: A Valentine's Post
V-Day: One Billion Rising and Man Prayer (Un Billón de Pie y Oración de un Hombre)