Welcome...

Join Shireen Amini for a community singing experience rich in soulful truths and joyful liberation. As a leader, bridge-builder, and humble student of the modern community singing movement, Shireen has found her work as a musical artist spiraling toward re-anchoring music as a sacred container in which intergenerational and systemic grief can be felt and expressed. Employing music to help us unhinge our life-taking conditioning and energize visions of a more thriving world is what she aims to be up to. She creates a field of firmness, care, and flexibility for the nuanced realities we walk into the space with, to increase the potential for safety and bravery. The most authentic and honest nature of your being is welcome and wanted, where withholding can be laid down to whatever level of trust you are able to feel.

Shireen shares stories behind the songs that have come through her as medicine, those arising out of pain, reclaiming of power, and irrepressible feelings of joy. Then she leads them skillfully and spiritedly. In kinship with the natural world, spirit, and community, she has received these songs knowing that if their medicine has brought her one step closer to healing, it just may for others as well. Evidence has shown this to be true with songs like “I Am Free in my Body,” “Gather Your Resilience” and “The Sun Song” rippling out far and wide. She comes with a fresh harvest of new song medicine for re-wholing ourselves and our belonging to humanity, to life.

All prostrations welcome: sitting, standing, walking, shaking, dancing, laying flat, as the body has full permission to do what it intelligently knows to do to pray 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: as early as 5pm (bring a picnic supper, walk the trails, relax :)

Song container: 6:30 – 8:30pm

Cost:

Regular Ticket: $15-65 sliding scale

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

Land and people acknowledgment:

This event is taking place on the unceded territory of the Ojibwe/Anishinaabe (Chippewa), Báxoǰe (Iowa), Kiikaapoi (Kickapoo), Omāēqnomenēwak (Menominee), Myaamiaki (Miami), Nutachi (Missouri), Umoⁿhoⁿ (Omaha), Wahzhazhe (Osage), Jiwere (Otoe), Odawaa (Ottawa), Póⁿka (Ponca), Bodéwadmi/Neshnabé (Potawatomi), Meskwaki/Nemahahaki/Sakiwaki (Sac and Fox), Dakota/Lakota/Nakoda, Sahnish/Nuxbaaga/Nuweta (Three Affiliated Tribes) and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Nations.

About the Venue:

This event takes place in the beautiful outdoor gazebo around a campfire at the Center for Belonging Folk School just north of Decorah, IA.

We will be in the woods, under the roof of the gazebo, rain or shine.

Accessibility:

Depending on where you park, there’s a 3-5 minute walk on natural earth including a slight downhill slope for about 15 yards. It is also possible to drive right to the site; if you are planning to do this please let us know in advance so we can show you the way.

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

Parking:

Upon arrival you will be greeted and shown the way! Parking in the driveway and on the road.

Community care:

Come without Covid symptoms. You are welcome to mask and distance to your own comfort level.

What will be provided:

Water

Hot water and tea

Seating

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 grief ritual as part of her community-based music empowerment project, Shireen Amini Music Medicine.