My Rainbow Race -- performed by the Echo Women’s Choir
Channel: Echo Women's Choir
Date: 20/12/2021

My Rainbow Race
Words and music by Pete Seeger, © Sanga Music Inc., 1970
https://www.peteseegermusic.com/
https://www.discogs.com/artist/239937-Pete-Seeger

Any paragraph that tried to describe Pete Seeger’s influence on his communities’ songs would fall apart from its own immensity, so let’s restrict ourselves to this one tune, from Chapter 4 (the love songs) of Pete’s book “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” He wrote it in 1967, and mailed it to a Yamaha song contest; in return, he says, he got “a prize – a song I’ve sung ever since.”

Somewhere else, Pete claimed that almost all songs are love songs, but this one is specific. And timely: “How do you separate love of home, country, kids, love of O.F. (Old Forever)? The last song in this chapter is another kind of love song. A love song for the earth.”

Rainbow Race was translated into Norwegian by Lillebjørn Nilsen as the hit song Barn av regnbuen in 1973. More recently it was sung in the public square of Oslo, on April 26, 2012, to rebuke a mass murderer who thought it was a bad, communist song which corrupted the youth of Norway. We have been singing it in Echo for many years, usually including the extra verse adapted from a Findhorn song, about living together in harmony.

www.echochoir.ca
Art Work: Anne Stanley
Audio and video editing: Peter Turner

Echo 4th-Wave Pandemica Singers
Alan Gasser, Artistic Director (and choral arranger)
Thanks also to our piano accompanist Susanne Maziarz and section leaders Alida Doornberg and Susanne Maziarz


Fall, 2021 – Echo Women’s Choir continued its “new fall season” still at home on Zoom, holding regular virtual meetups that are almost the same as a rehearsal, and which remind us of the camaraderie of singing together. 

We keep learning how to present our work in virtual video form, to show our audiences; and we try to learn from teachers far and near. We’re very proud to know our voices are still sounding together … though with fewer singers, and all of us widely separated. Many thanks to the Echo Alumnae, guest artists and other singer friends who have joined us, virtually every week. We have enjoyed many singing dates outdoors and are beginning hybrid rehearsals. Looking forward to when we can all be together again.


Lyrics:
 One blue sky above us, one ocean lapping all our shore
One earth so green and round, who could ask for more
And because I love you, I’ll give it one more try
to show my Rainbow Race it’s too soon to die.

Some folks want to be like an ostrich
And bury their heads in the sand.
Some hope that plastic dreams
Can unclench all those greedy hands.
Some try to take the easy way:
Poisons, bombs. They think we need ’em.
Don’t you know, you can’t kill all the unbelievers?
There’s no shortcut to freedom.

Go tell all the little children
Tell all the mothers and fathers too
Now’s our last chance to learn to share
What’s been given to me and you.

Let’s sing songs together 
Growing food to share
Living lightly on this Earth
With the ones that we hold dear

Echo Pandemica Singers Videos

1) Do Not Carry a Heavy Heart, by Alison Burns -- https://youtu.be/Poay7rLwtpQ
2) Fount, by Malcolm Dalglish -- https://youtu.be/52GRxvlMNAQ
3) Bird Song, by Heather Masse & Nicky Mehta https://youtu.be/5SowPDbmqEk
4) Big Sky, by Seth Houston -- https://youtu.be/vnpuc-5afto
5) Hope, by Alex Bevan -- https://youtu.be/o1jq9V0SHyQ
6) Better Times Will Come, by Janis Ian -- https://youtu.be/Cee4H6VoTfg
7) Holding You in the Light, by Kathy Reid-Naiman -- https://youtu.be/pAUF6nHw-9U
8) Green Shadows, by Malvina Reynolds  -- https://youtu.be/Kh9xIGfchM4
9) My Rainbow Race, by Pete Seeger -- https://youtu.be/Y8pJBjJruyU