While I was living in Addis, I was invited to drive south with my friends Ivo and Jean (ethnologists) and meet some of their dear friends in the Hamar community. The Hamar people that I met blew me away with their acute intuitive psychology, their elegant demeanor, and their refined sense of style that I think about all the time as I deliberate in front of my closet on what to wear! :-)
Lalibela, Ethiopia
So many of these places stir up good and hard memories, but I really try to focus on the good memories and view the hard experiences as precious life lessons. In Ethiopia, I lived in Addis Abeba, I spent al lot of time writing songs and briefly even had a band there and we would play at a local jazz club every week. I also got to spend time in some of the sacred places of like Lalibela. Because I grew up reading the bible, it was quite eye opening to me to see and learn about the bible from the Ethiopian perspective was incredibly enlightening! Also having grown up learning about Haile Selassie from the Rastafarian perspective and then to see it through the eyes of the ethiopian people was fascinating.
Dakar, Senegal
Living in Dakar with a Griot family, I was in heaven, playing music and dancing all night, strolling the markets by day, designing outfits with the family tailors… I fell in love with the Senegalese spirit. I learned so much from the women I lived with in Senegal. Their strength put so much into perspective for me. They taught me how to say “no” with love and good spirit, and they taught me how to say “yes” even when I wanted to say “no”.
Machu Picchu, Peru
My beautiful sister Carmen (my brothers’ wife) took us all down to stay with her family and to experience some of Peru’s magical places. A highlight for me was getting lost in the magical mist up on Machu Picchu!
Sea of Cortez, Mexico
I’ll never forget this day, (during a survival leadership training program) I was kayaking in the Sea of cortez when suddenly I found myself surrounded by hundreds of seemingly joyful dolphins. It’s was a kind of holiness that goes beyond words…
San Francisco, California, USA
After a lot of traveling, and trips to France and the Caribbean to spend time with my father. I moved into my big brother Austin’s attic.
Here is a web site with some of his work: www.austinmanchester.com. He had a house up on Haight St. where he painted and rented out the rest to other artists. I felt quite at home in my brother’s artist community…
In my life I’ve always been the outsider, the foreigner, but living on Haight st, I suddenly wasn’t so odd. In fact, walking down the street, I was often one of the more so called “normal” looking people! Still terribly shy about my music, I spent a lot of time writing songs alone. I’d go and watch bands play and wonder how they got the nerve to just get up there and sing. It’s there that I first met the Ali Khan family of classical sufi musicians. I began to spend a lot of time with them learning as much as I could from their long line of family experience.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
My Uncle Jeffrey was a true cowboy who took care of the family ranch, and he believed in good hard honest work. He’d get us kids going all day long, taking care of the horses and training for rodeo competitions. But the rewards were well worth it, he’d take us off ridding for days, telling us old stories and singing around the camp fire. He passed away in a plane crash five years ago and I miss him very much.
Bob Marshall Wilderness park, Montana, USA
Getting chased by a giant grizzly bear while camping was another reason I didn’t stick it out for too long in Montana!
Missoula, Montana, USA
Growing up and going to school in different countries, I became more and more interested in true history told by the people than the history taught in text books. While living in the states as a teenager, I got to learn a bit about the “American” history told from the Native Americans side.
I met some fascinating people and felt compelled to get closer to some of the few remaining Native American Communities in the States. So with some friends we jumped in a car and started driving west to Missoula Montana. I enrolled in college there to learn from the local native american tribal communities with the hopes of finding some way to make myself useful. However I soon found my self skipping class and spending most of my time writing songs.
Karen Blixen’s house and family, Denmark
At the time my mother had an artistic project that took us to spending long months up in Denmark, where we became good friends with Karen Blixen’s family (with whom we shared a deep love of Africa).
Mont St Odile, Alsace, France
In Alsace we moved into an old 15th century convent converted into a kind of an artist colony. Artists, journalists, activists, doctors, farmers and wine makers. I would spend the summers picking fruit with my friends, cherries, “mirabelles” and selling it on the side of the road (2 francs the kilo at the time, so I too can tell you that food prices are indeed rising! :-)). I grew very close to my neighbors there and consider them my very dear family now.
Langata, Kenya
When I was a little girl, my dear mother (tired of the touring and the crazy music business) split from my father and turned her life towards being in service to others. She sold everything she owned, and took my brother and me to live in Kenya to help the people in the drought stricken areas of Turkana in the rift valley of northern Kenya.
People sometimes say to me “Oh, but you were just a kid then” , and I have to say, “Exactly! thats what made it such a profound experience!” My “age of reason” happened in Africa.
My world came to light in Kenya as I was moved by the generous people, the music, the land, struck by the dramatic beauty, the wild, the wise, and sometimes the terribly tragic atmosphere. Between the hustle and bustle of Nairobi streets, the barren starving deserts of the north, the lush Mombasa coast or the wild bush on horseback through the game parks. The people I met, the wild life, the trees, and the music in the air, always… All this makes me who I am today, and contributed to my deep longing to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
Nova Scotia, Canada
My first memories start way up on Cape Breton, not far from where the Indian River meets the sea, in Nova Scotia, Canada. My parents had built a little log cabin together with their own hands and the help of their friendly neighbors. Between touring they would come up there to get back to nature and rejuvenate their souls in the wild… but I was actually born in Pictou county, Nova Scotia on a beautiful working farm where my folks were living off the grid and back to the land. So my early years were split between forest walks to gather berries and fire wood, and driving across the North American continent in my parents tour bus. In fact, they tell me that I even learned to walk in the tour bus!