Playing Friday May 26 at the Centre régional d’animation patrimoine oral (CRAPO)
Québec weekend with Max and Donna
Donna Hebert
Monadnock Folklore Society – 3 ravens
Donna Hébert, Max Cohen and Lui Collins bring their new trio, 3 ravens, to the Monadnock Folkore Society. It’s great to be back in Nelson!
La marche des femmes / The March of the Women
On Saturday January 21, The Women’s March proved to be the biggest world-wide protest in recorded history. Almost five million people, including an estimated 1 in 100 women in the the U.S. and their male allies, took to the streets. Not just of one city, but of 673 cities around the world. Protests occurred on all seven continents, including Antarctica! We are mighty and now we know we are anything but alone in our worldwide support for social justice.
When I wrote this tune in 1984, I wasn’t trying for prophecy. I didn’t even know how to notate it. Waltz time? Really? But isn’t it a march? So, I guess it just happens to be in three, with an odd bar of four where, I surmise, the women stop to pick up a child or help an elder. But we keep right on marching.
The recording is from a 2013 Panache Quartet demo. Andrea Beaton, Véronique Plasse and Jane Rothfield are the other fiddlers. I play lead throughout.
Here’s a PDF copy in treble clef of La marche des femmes. Share it with my blessing and the writing credit.
My Five-College students are joining me with my new band, 3 ravens, (with Max Cohen and Lui Collins) in concert on March 3, 2017 at the Amherst Cohousing Concerts to perform La Marche des Femmes. Join us if you can!
Raven’s Wing
A bird, a canyon, a day of wonder and sorrow
I was traveling out west in March 2008 with fiddler Jane Rothfield and guitarist Max Cohen and we visited the Grand Canyon. It was a beautiful day, clear, glorious and and majestic with the ravens soaring overhead as we walked the trail at the canyon’s edge. It was also a sad dy because my father was dying in Florida. As we left Hermit’s Rest, one raven landed in our midst. Fixing me with a beady eye, the bird whuffled its throat feathers in and out, clacked its beak and seemed to speak to me particularly. We were enthralled – I even snapped this photo.
The long moment ended and the raven took flight. Stunned, we all just stood, silent and then piled into the car. Just as we left the parking lot, the call came through. It was my brother and my father had just passed. Several weeks later, in memory of my dad, Rodger E. Hinds, I wrote a slow air with Max Cohen and called it “Raven’s Wing.”
The story has even more layers. Upon hearing the about the bird and listening to the music, my mother told me about my father’s World War II airborne unit, the Ravens (301st Bombardment Group, Army Air Corps). This was new to me, as was the the photo of his insignia with three ravens on a blue background. Their newsletter is even called “The Raven.”
As the years have gone by, a raven comes often to visit in the yard. Not a crow, much bigger. Not the same raven, of course, but a relative. I greet him as if he were a a relation of mine. Who knows?
Max and I play this tune at the Fiddlers Summit in Shepherdstown WV in 2010.
Mother’s Day 2014: Impromptu jam on “Raven’s Wing” at La Grande Rencontre. Cathedral del Gesu, Montreal. With Bruce Molsky, Pierre Schryer, Quinn Bachand and Robin Bulliaume.