Women's Voices: We'll leave a light

It occurred to me not too long ago that when I listen to The Voices—the part of me that some refer to as “intuition”—I generally choose things that turn out well for me. And, alas, when I either don’t hear them or ignore them, well…the sight is not pretty.

So I started thinking about what The Voices actually might sound like, if I made a habit of letting them speak to me. And I came up with a number of women with astonishingly beautiful voices, singing about all the things I’m still trying to figure out.

So I figured that I’d collect them all here and share them with you throughout September, a couple per day. Same rules as for National Poetry Month—my blog, my associations, my choice. Feel free to comment on any of them, though.

I’m kicking off with a couple of collaborations, just to get things rolling. Collaborative effort is an especially female thing, and I like it that it’s not hard to find women artists pooling their talents in support of one another.

You’ll see and hear a lot from Mary Black in the next 30 days. She’s got one of the purest voices you’ll find, and she sings about things that go straight to the center of my soul. Here she joins Emmylou Harris (another powerhouse) to sing Eleanor McEvoy’s “Woman’s Heart.”

I really like the way Black and Harris ultimately harmonize on this.

Another woman who’ll make repeat appearances here is Mary Chapin Carpenter, because I find that both her writing and her singing resonate with me. Like Black, she’s a singer-songwriter of great power. Her voice is completely different from Black’s—but her material is at the heart of women’s experience.

I can’t even recall what search led me to this particular video, but she’s joined by a treasure trove of artists to sing one of her most beautiful songs, “Dreamland”. They come from pop, country, folk, gospel, and they blend with easy charm singing a lullaby.

I don’t know where you’ll find a group of male singers from different genres gathering together like this (outside of something like the Bob Dylan 30^th anniversary concert), but I know if they did it would be much more of a “thing”.