Modern Medicine Songs for Healing, Liberation, Justice and Joy

SUMMER/SW TOUR 2024

Welcome...

Join Shireen Amini (nonbinary using she/her) for a community singing experience rich in soulful truths and fiery liberation. As a leader, bridge-builder, and humble student of the modern community singing movement, Shireen has found her work as a musical artist more and more anchored in song as a sacred container in which cycles of intergenerational and systemic trauma can be broken, as a portal into our grief and celebration, and as an energizer of visions for thriving in our lives and our world. She weaves stories behind the songs that have come through her as medicine, those arising out of pain, reclaiming of power, and irrepressible feelings of joy, into the skillful teaching and spirited singing of them in community. Having received these songs in collaboration with nature and spirit, she knows that if their medicine has brought her such strength and healing, they can for others as well. And so it has been. Songs like “I Am Free in my Body,” “Gather Your Resilience” and “The Sun Song” have rippled out, meaningfully, far and wide.

In a field of firmness and care for the nuanced realities we walk in with, including complex relationships to singing and various forms of lived marginalization, Shireen sets the space to increase the potential for safety and bravery. Powered by groove and soul, voices, percussion, and guitar, we become a live organism, present to the emergent, co-created magic and movement of the moment, available to whatever way the medicine shows up for us, here and now. All prostrations are welcome: sitting, standing, walking, shaking, dancing, laying flat, as the body has full permission to do what it intelligently knows to do to hold intention and release. Come sing for your curiosity, your broken heart, your anger, and your belly laughter.

May you come away just a little more free.

In this container:

We believe singing is a birthright and welcome all levels of experience. We teach short-form songs on-the-spot, usually through call and echo.

No matter your race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, size, neurodivergence, abilities, or housing status, you are not only welcome and wanted here, you belong here.

Evening flow:

Arrive and settle in: 6:30-7pm

Song container: 7-9pm

Cost:

Regular Ticket: $15-55 sliding scale

Pay what you can / No one turned away Ticket: $0-$14 >> enter Access Code: CARETICKET

Teen Ticket: $10 >> enter Access Code: TEEN

Kids 12 and under are free

BIPOC* Scholarship available. Contact host.

*Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color (including mixed race) who cannot hide their non-whiteness, whether through skin color, name, accent, or physical features, and who experiences a particular kind of other-ing, discrimination, and disadvantage that white or white-presenting folks do not experience.

Land and people acknowledgment:

This event is taking place on the unceded territory of the Shoshone and Bannock peoples.

Accessibility:

This venue is, unfortunately, not ADA accessible.

Please let us know if there are any other ways we can support your access to this offering.

Parking:

Parking is on the left side of the building. The building is called the Hoppy building. A stairwell to the second floor can be found to the right of the smoke shop.

Community care:

This event is indoors! Please come free of Covid or contagious symptoms. You are most welcome to mask and distance to your own comfort level.

What will be provided:

Water

Hot water and tea (if weather is not too hot)

Restroom facilities

What to bring:

A water bottle and/or hot tea mug

Any cushions, blankets, and layers to help your body feel comfortable

Bio:

Shireen Amini (non-binary using she/her) is a queer Puerto Rican-Iranian American, earth-loving song creator, rhythm maker, and community facilitator based on unceded Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and Grande Ronde territory, aka Portland, Oregon. As a human, she carries a deep commitment to her own liberation path and vision of a more just world. As an artist, she believes strongly in music’s power to propel cultural revolution. She blends pop, rock, hip hop, latin, and roots sensibilities with socially-conscious themes as a singer-songwriter and creates modern medicine music for community singing. In song circles, she holds transformational space, leading joyful, groove-based songs, evoking tenderness, and often engaging her participants in the rhythm and ceremony of it all. She also teaches drumming and facilitates ritual as part of her community-based music empowerment project, Shireen Amini Music Medicine.