The backstory

by Heather Holm

In July 2017, my husband Steve and I visited Pam in Ottawa. I had a new Blue Yeti microphone and suggested we record Pam doing her voice and singing bowl “thing”.

Her bedroom was pretty quiet, so Pam set up her crystal and brass bowls and other instruments around her as she stood on one side of the bed. Steve lay on the other side. I put the laptop outside the room to minimize background hum, and connected it to the mic by a long cord.

Pam started with a prayer of invocation and intention:

We invite in the archangels, the ascended masters, your guardian angels, ancestors who are in the light. Welcome. We thank you for your presence, enfolding the space here for light, for healing, for help, for well-being….

Then she began playing the bowls and improvising vocally.

Pam had long cultivated her awareness of different high spiritual energies and gave them her voice, essentially channelling them, not with words, but rather allowing them to express healing intentions and move the energy that arose to be cleared.

Our first attempt was interrupted halfway, right at a moment of peak intensity, by a neighbour’s lawn mower or leaf blower. Pam paused and resumed when he was finished, but we didn’t know if the recording would be salvageable.

Nonetheless, she stated that the energies that had come through concerned prayers for the Middle East and Africa, specifically for clean water and healthy food, a safe environment for children, the releasing of despair, hope for those who are imprisoned, harm reduction for those who need it, raising the vibration on Earth and in the heavens, rest and a peaceful sleep at the end of the day.

She had felt the presence of Archangel Sandalphon especially, as well as Archangels Zadkiel, Michael, Raphael and Gabriel. Among the ascended masters she had felt Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene and the Christ Consciousness.

Lying on the bed in the middle of all this, Steve felt that there was a lot more going on in the room than was immediately apparent. He had been transported into a timeless space in which the bowls were pulling sound up from the ground and swirling it in a vortex that drew out worry, tension and fear, cleansing the mind, leaving it quiet, the heart happy.

Not knowing if we had a recording that was shareable, she did a second “piece”/prayer/meditation, which turned out to be quite specific in its intention: healing for those who had been abused. The neighbour left us in peace for that one.

When we got back home to Nova Scotia, I published the second recording as a YouTube video. Pam was delighted. You can find it here.

But I gave up on the first recording until now, 6 years later. This time I persisted, feeling Pam’s blessing on the project. There is power in the sound of her voice and the bowls.

I coupled it with a video of the sky from our backyard. If you keep your eyes open (no obligation), you may see some birds flying across it.

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Practice video

Here is a computer generated flute with a follow-along prompt to help with learning the tune or practicing the chords.

(The video managed the repeats like this: AABB AB with the final ending played at the end, but you don’t have to do it that way. AABB AABB is fine.)

Sheet music preview

Sheet music download

The story behind the tune

I found this tune in a notebook right after Lament for Sarah June. They make a nice set when played together, with the slow air first, then the jig.

Pam wrote the first part in Bm and the second part in G, but I’ve put them it in Em/G because (a) I think she was trying for a minor-major modulation, and using the relative minor works just fine and is less confusing, and (b) this way it fits within the range of a recorder, flute or whistle. Chords are mine. -HH

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For a hint of their deep, complex mother-daughter relationship, see this poem. Our mother’s memorial website is at JuneMaginley.ca.

Audio on tenor recorder

Heather Holm, tenor recorder

Practice video

Here is a computer generated flute with a follow-along prompt to help with learning the tune or practicing the chords.

Sheet music preview

Sheet music (PDF) and download

The story behind the tune

I didn’t find this tune until 2021 when my brother Mike was finally able to come to Nova Scotia with some of the boxes that I wasn’t able to get in my car after cleaning out Pam’s Ottawa apartment after her death, two years before.

I loved the tune from the beginning, but at first struggled with finding the metre, as Pam had apparently done as well. She had written it in 3/4 time, and attempted to count the measures to figure out the structure. That tells me that she created the tune in her head before putting it down on paper. It stuck in my head until one morning I woke up with the idea to write it in either 9/4 or 9/8 time. Suddenly it all made sense, with phrases that scanned. I’ve used 9/8 simply because it’s easier to read joined eighth notes than quarter notes. It’s not a fast tune.

She also wrote it in D, but I transposed it into a suitable range for tenor (or soprano) recorder, in G.

I’ve also worked the chords a lot, finally settling on the ones indicated. But there are other possibilities.

Pam may well have written it in 2014, as it’s in the same mostly empty notebook as early drafts of Another Bright Star and I Found a Place where Angelica Grows, which she sang at our mom’s funeral. But it’s opposite a written note dated 2017.

It can be followed in a set by June’s Jig which was on the next page in the journal.

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I have always loved to sing. Some of my earliest memories are of my family singing together in the car and my parents harmonizing over the dishes. At the age of five, my older sister joined the junior choir at the church where our father was the minister. I had a hard time understanding why I couldn’t be there, too. She came home and taught me all the songs.

As my sister learned instruments in school, she brought them home to teach me: flutaphone, recorder, ukulele…I had some piano lessons (which I eventually traded in for painting lessons) and when the girl next door started showing us how to play her guitar, we both received guitars for Christmas. I WAS in the junior choir by that time, and the director found me playing my friend’s guitar during a break, and suggested I bring mine. That’s how I got started. I loved it: it was easier than piano, portable and it provided great background for my singing.

The Church gave me my beginning in music, and has played a role at many times: church choirs, learning the history of music by singing it – richness of various periods and composers. At the same time, growing up as a minister’s daughter there was a quest for something else.

I started flute in grade 6 when St FX University in Antigonish NS started a school band program. At 13, after moving to Sydney, in Cape Breton, I was able to continue with the flute but had only one year of singing in grade 10, a big disappointment; however, during that year I found a book of madrigals in a cupboard. As the singing program died, I lost my innocence, and stole a copy of the book. I knew about piano and flute lessons, but had no idea one could study voice the same way.

At 25, I set out travelling around Europe by myself, visiting friends in Paris and family in Holland and Denmark; and discovering sculpture and stone, architecture, and tastes and smells. It was wonderful!  I felt restless while travelling through the North, until, coming down along the Romantic Road in Germany, I reached Lindau, a town south of the Bodensee, or Lake Constance, where southwestern Germany and Switzerland meet. There I felt like I was home. That was my first concrete experience of knowing another lifetime.  That night, in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, sleeping on the floor beside a baby grand piano in a friend’s home, my life changed. I discovered lieder, the classical art songs of Schubert along with some Brecht and several other composers. Included in the stash on the piano was a song for peace I later learned was sung by the people in the Swiss Resistance. I had studied German for 4 years, and was able to grasp the lyrics, and in my heart somehow knew the song. I made copies of a few songs, and continued on my way. I knew by the end of the trip, I wanted or needed to study music, and voice and sculpture, which was also new to me.

Returning to Montreal, where I was living at the time, I entered a BFA program at Concordia. While waiting to begin, I heard an arrangement of the English folk song “Barbara Allen” working its way through my mind, beckoning me to write it down. I really knew I was ready, and the composer/arranger was born. In my third year, the inner voice came out again, asking how shall I actually earn a living. In 1989, I came to Ottawa for the national conference of the Canadian Association for Music Therapy, and by the time I left, I had had my interview and was on my way to Vancouver to continue my studies.

Music took on a whole new meaning there. When I was young I had found peace at the piano when family discord arose. In the piano studio at Concordia, I discovered how playing could support my breaking through emotional blocks. And my songs emerged that reflected the inner turmoil and joys of the period. In school I found that applying instrumental and vocal improvisation in therapy seemed natural. Working with others to express their inner world though song choices or rhythm instruments grew into my profession.

To sing takes courage. Other instruments take technical ability to make a sound, skills to sound good, but the instrument is what makes the sound, and its maker puts the quality into the instrument. The voice is different. It comes from our body and emotions, and I find the energetic model which comes from the Eastern traditions makes more sense for understanding this. Our quantum physicists have found that our bodies are made up of vibrating energy. These energy particles can be organized by sound. You’ve heard the expression “You are what you eat”. Well, we are what we listen to, too. Which means we are shaped by the sounds and other vibrations around us. In the Hindu tradition we learn about the chakras, or energy centers and aura or energy bodies, which are permeable layers of energy fields of different frequencies, which have a registry, of sorts, for our emotions, thought forms and spiritual beliefs. The child who is raised in violence and arguing, becomes fearful and defensive. There are studies by Dr. Emoto on frozen water which has been treated by emotions – words written on the bottles. The emotions bring about different crystalline snowflake shapes. Hate is angular and harsh. Love is symmetrical and proportional. We are what we listen to or sing.

At times, I have been so caught up in other’s songs that I have strained to hear my own melody, but something has happened and song finds me and pulls me back in. At times, I have forgotten to listen, and the realization has brought me back to its path.   It is part of what I am. And once and a while, I realize I haven’t been taking my voice for enough walks, and it gets’ out of shape. I know how I am by my voice and what I am singing.

What is music?

It is expression, it is a way to voice the inexpressible, at times. Without words melody comes straight from the heart and reaches directly to the soul. I’ve come to realize that words can be limiting: we often struggle to say things which we have not yet consciously explored. But through instruments and the voice we can do it. Words are a prism or filter through which we seek to express. But the voice is owned even by ones without languaging ability. From the baby’s first cry, to our last gurgle our voices are with us.  Using my voice, I have been able to build relationship with a man in his 70s who experienced brain damage at birth, and who, we suspected, had received little attention other than someone feeding him and changing his diaper for most of his life. His voice was loud and pervasive in the hospital where he lived, like a rooster. In his group home, with music therapy, he quieted down and showed preferences for different styles of music, especially the female singing voice. As I sang with him, we developed conversations based on sighs and tones, and on hearing I was leaving, he expressed his sadness. Another person, this one a child, who again had experienced neglect and abuse, found self-confidence and self-esteem through the discovery of his hidden talents, which emerged by playing and singing together. Music comes straight from the Soul and carries all the emotion needing to be expressed and doesn’t need any translation.

When I have doubts or questions, Spirit sometimes responds with a new song, a composition. It happened when I needed a way to address closure with a group of incarcerated teens, and again after a difficult conversation with a minister around theology.  Songs may come in the middle of the night, as in the first case, or after meditation or walking the dog.

Music is comforting and grounding: The autistic child who centers herself through humming; The monk who uses chant to pray and its health-giving benefits.  Music urges community. It brings communication, social interaction and expression; it is shouts of acclamation and joy, love songs and anger, and is shut down by fear and terror. It is a measure of the health of a culture and community. It is meditation. It offers a metaphor for life, and teaches us how to live in harmony.

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At the funeral for her father, Flemming Holm, on October 17, 2009, in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Pamela sang one of his favourite pieces of music, “He Shall Feed His Flock” from Handel’s Messiah, accompanied by Bev Shaw, violin, and Josephine Skinner, organ.

Before singing the above piece, Pam spoke about her father’s love of music, and how it helped shape her own:

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Painted on June 14, 2008.

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We found this large work in Pam’s apartment among assorted painting supplies. Date unknown.

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From 2018 (?)

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A mixed media piece produced at a workshop with Shirley Mancino in 2018 (?).

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I never got to ask Pamela about this painting, so I really don’t know what it represented to her. I see an elegant mother and a magical child, and the hair colours seem right for it to be our mother, June (Holm) Maginley, and Pam.

It’s quite large, 29 x 20″, and full of palette knife texture.

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