He set about to write a country song as good as any, with verse after verse laying bare the hypocrisy of calling yourself pro-life, while embracing the inhumanity of this brutal mass-deportation. Then he sent me the song.

It was angry. It was gritty. It pointed a direct finger and cast clear blame. The lyrics were cutting, brilliant- and liable to shut down any listener who did not already share his views.

When he invited me to collaborate I accepted because the framework of the song was already strong. All I had to do was subvert the message without losing its bite, and break open the heart of every listener. Easy, right?

With my task clarified, I entered the obsessive terrain of the creative process. I turned into a madman for several days, mumbling lyrics to myself and sending unsolicited revisions to kind friends. By the end, I had carved out the story of Carlos and Rosa.

I invite you to listen now in the YouTube link below, comment, subscribe, and send this song to someone who needs to hear it.

Exciting is that the song has already gained some traction and will be played by one of the country’s more prominent folk DJs, Marilyn Rae Beyer, for her end-of-the-year show on Chicago's WFMT this Saturday at 9:00 CT. Follow this link to tune in live on Saturday night!

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It’s a heartwarming thing to be in community with you all, no matter how distant. Thanks for coming with me on this journey, and happy holidays to all!

Love,

Hana Zara

my face ten years older than when I last checked.

listening to your album in my headphones while I open the store,

the sunlight,

the feeling of morning, soft.

Violeta, your songs are still elixirs.

I carry them with me through these cyborg streets.

They wake me from this modern slumber.

Violeta, I wanted so badly to come with you,

to wander the Chilean countryside in search of lost songs,

to help you build the folk school in 1965,

to patch the roof when the money ran out,

to keep us warm and singing.

Maybe if we had stood side by side like pillars in this world,

if our voices had rung out together,

if we hadn’t run like fugitives,

been dive-bombed by butterflies,

stood forever catatonic in a violent and iridescent rain.

Maybe if our bodies had never known war, abuse, or industry.

Hush, my heart.

Violeta.

Your suicide is a bird I can’t quite hold-

one wing sticking out,

a foot clawing at air,

a song neither of us finished

but continue to sing

at the top of our lungs.

Maybe I thought I could free myself from the story of beauty, or at least loosen my grip on the subconscious belief that being attractive was the safest way to move through the world.

So I cut my hair and dressed down.

What I didn’t realize was that the performance of beauty was a silent form of currency, and I had abruptly stopped paying. This brought a surprising level of discomfort. Unless I pinned my hair up just right and added a touch of makeup, I felt like an uninvited guest in society’s performance.

but I’m glad I became uninvited because it’s been changing my relationship to beauty ever since.

A collective form of presentation

The state of Chihuahua, Mexico, is home to the Rarámuri people. Here I see Rarámuri women moving through plazas in long, full skirts that billow as they walk. Matching blouses gather at the neck and sleeves, stitched from bright colors, trimmed with ribbon. Some wear headscarves, their long hair flowing free or braided down the back.

They are beautiful, like desert poppies in technicolor.

I notice that what I’m seeing goes beyond beauty. It’s like a shared choreography, a collective form of presentation, a rhythm of belonging passed down through generations, where clothing serves as living expression woven into daily life.

I stand in the plaza, touching the ends of my chopped hair, and begin to see that the discomfort I’ve been carrying might actually be about living in a culture where identity is something you construct alone rather inherit collectively. Where beauty isn’t a shared ritual, but a strange kind of currency. No inherited adornment, just individuals making it up as we go along, carrying the incredible and disorienting freedom of self-invention.

What we inherit, what we invent

Without inherited forms of expression or belonging, many of us are left to assemble identity from what’s available. Selfhood becomes a project, and the result is a strange sense of disolcation

So here I am, trying to locate myself within a patchwork of immigration and reinvention, searching for roots. What I find is a sense of being that is, yes, patchworked, yes, cobbled together, and yes, made of the very stuff of needing one another.

I come from a family that practices hospitality like a reflex. Sharing is stitched into the shape of our very existence. Our lineage wasn’t passed down in heirlooms or ritual, but you can feel it in a room when someone needs help and we move toward them. Ours is an inheritance of love voiced aloud, of emotions that get processed, of generational trauma interrupted- consciously, painstakingly- and replaced with tenderness.

When I offer half of my sandwich to the stranger next to me on the bus, that’s my inheritance. When I have nothing but an ear to listen, and give it freely, that’s my inheritance. My family didn’t pass down who to be. They passed down how to love.

If I could braid all that into my hair- fashion a skirt out of the way my grandma tears up in the face of kindness, or the way my dad shows love by making pizza- if I could stitch my brother’s wit into the hem, wear my grandfather’s curiosity like a charm, my niece’s joy like little bells on my ankles- and then wrap it all up in the strong material of my mom’s tremendous heart, these would be my garments.

Let this be how I move through the world

I think fashioning this outfit might take a lifetime. In the meantime, I was able to fit some of it into a song.

This brings us to track two on the album: Tatterhood. I originally wrote it 15 years ago as a Father’s Day gift, and then rewrote it to hold the broader circle of my family. My brother came into the studio to add his vocals to the mix. It’s a big, layered production, and im proud to share it

Two friends told me they found themselves stuck on track 2, looping it again the moment it ended.

Check it out here. And remember, if you stream it on Spotify I don’t make any money, but if you listen on Bandcamp and choose to contribute, I do.

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We hop off the bus and pedal through a soft rain toward a small meditation center tucked into the suburbs of Claymont, Delaware, totally unaware that this is where we’ll be spending the next ten months of our lives.

The course itself is well-staffed, but the coordinators are exhausted, a bit frantic, and ready to pass the torch to literally anyone willing to take it. Over the next few weeks, we’re handed a binder, a set of keys, a van, an apartment, and an enormous amount of trust and responsibility.

Meditation is central to my life and I credit it with whatever modicum of sanity I might claim to possess. But living in a spiritual community is something else entirely. As with any group, you’ll encounter strange power dynamics, inflated egos, and belief systems that help no one. Add a spiritual lens, and things can get truly bizarre.

I recently found a note I wrote around that time:

“My experience in Delaware left me grappling with issues I’ve felt unable to express until now. I’m left with the sense that spiritual communities are just inherently weird. My question is, for those of us wanting to dedicate ourselves more fully to sustaining these spaces, how do we do so without getting entangled in the unspoken power dynamics and spiritual gaslighting that turns valid concerns into proof you just haven’t meditated enough?”

Some small examples: in Delaware, I was once told by a senior figure that “the forces of delusion are getting in” because I had unbuttoned the top of a floor-length dress on a hot day. When I tried to bring up actual concerns, I was told, more than once, that I needed to develop my spiritual qualities like patience and loving-kindness.

The deeper issue wasn’t any single interaction, but the pervasive feeling that real problems are unspeakable, and that raising them somehow marks you as spiritually deficient.”

During this time, my partner and I found refuge in the local Narcotics Anonymous community. NA as an organization takes conscious steps to avoid hierarchy in their service committees. Their literature repeats that no individual is in charge, rather, decisions are made through group conscience. Service positions are never for longer than 2 years, ensuring that no one holds a position of power long enough to become dominant. Titles like “chairperson” or “treasurer” exist solely for function and don’t come with authority. Anonymity is key, and the newcomer is the most important person in the room.

In short, the NA organization is full of checks and balances that prevent misuse of power.

Claymont Delaware touches south Philadelphia, and the recovery communities flow into one another. Philly is home to Kensington which has been described as the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast. Encampments, tents, shopping carts, and makeshift shelters gather under bridges. The cheap availability of drugs like Xylazine (famous for its necrotic effect on skin), in conjuncture with systemic poverty, create a devastating landscape of addiction.

And yet, the recovery community in this area is incredibly strong. The people are raw, real, and supportive. They heal and their healing process is bound up in that of others. After watching a meditator at the center lose it because someone put cheese in the salad, walking into an NA meeting often felt like coming home to a place that was really grounded in the reality of human suffering, and the communal pathway towards lessening it.

*personally the majority of my recovery has happened through meditation, but when it comes to community, NA has something that many meditation circles lack. There are clear structures in place to prevent power from accumulating, and channels of communication are intentionally kept open- something I think the broader spiritual community could learn from.*

I was inspired by this fellowship, both the systemic barriers they faced, and the response of their courage and collective liberation. The experience stayed with me, and eventually found its way into this song- it’s my way of trying to distill what I saw and felt. It’s simply meant to shed light on the experience of my time in these spaces- the solidarity and humanity of a community silently doing incredible things. I hope, as you listen, you can feel that too.

If you stream this song on Spotify, I don’t make any money, but the CEO does, and he’s been known to invest in weapons development. If you listen on Bandcamp and choose to contribute, I do make money, and I promise not to fund any military projects. At worst, your support might go toward a sandwich.

Check it out here:

https://hanazaramusic.bandcamp.com/album/bloom-where-you-fall?t=1

Hey friends, I have a new album! It was many years (and many hands) in the making- A small group of us worked very hard to get this collection of songs composed, recorded, produced, mastered, and distributed!

After its initial release it climbed to #4 on the folk charts, which was wild! I got to hear my songs alongside the work of folk legends, on programs I’ve listened to for years. My newest single, “People Against an Empire,” snuck onto the album last minute, and got the most radio play- it is indeed a timely gut-punch of a song.

I’m proud of this work and so very honored to share it with you! You can stream it anywhere you listen to music, or purchase a physical or digital copy here:

Bloom Where You Fall

If you do purchase the album, one thing that helps me tremendously is if you review it! Just hover over the album once you’ve purchased it, and click "favorite track - set" or "Why do you love this album?" to open the comment box.

A review gives reputation to the songs and helps them reach more listeners. Thank you for your support!

Bloom Where You Fall

Share Singing, roaming, waging peace

Hana signing off,

Be well my loves!!

It warrants a mention.

For context, Taylor and I dated a decade ago, and this song was written then. We were intellectually matched and elementally opposed, and enjoyed/suffered an intense 6-month tango of opposites. In the song Taylor parallels our blooming and dying relationship to the myth of the Corn King. There are many versions of the myth, but the essence is that the Corn King marries a pre-christian goddess- let’s call her the Earth Queen. Their marriage brings happiness to the couple and fertility to the land. The Queen, however, is ultimately loyal only to the land itself, and her husband must be sacrificed each year at the time of harvest. Ouch, young love is brutal. 

I’m grateful that Taylor and I have remained friends after all these years, and that we both continue to write and perform musically. I appreciate this exquisite piece of art for what it is- a song about two people we once knew. I’m also grateful for the medium of song itself- what a time capsule for emotion! I know of no other art form that can return us so fully to these lost dimensions (as to almost let us sip the elixirs that once intoxicated our younger selves).

I encourage you to give this song a listen- it is magnificent.

Performed by Cricket Blue. Music and lyrics by Taylor Smith with help from Laura Heaberlin. Orchestral arrangement by Taylor Smith.

Friends, I want to share a new song with you. I wrote this song as I reflected on my trip to Israel in January of 2018.

Upon arrival we were befriended by our Air B&B host who offered us his services as a tour guide. He and his wife had “made aliyah” from Canada a decade prior and were enjoying success in Jerusalem, her as a yoga instructor and him through rental properties. To “make aliyah” means to make the journey home, and while I was there I was asked many times “when are you going to make Aliyah?”

The other question I got asked a lot was: “Are you single?” I was at the time. “We have a cousin, he works in computers, you would make a fine match- he could support you, you could do your music.” The doors to an entire life were wide open to me in Jerusalem City. Me… a half-jewish girl from the Midwest, for whom neither parents, nor grandparents, nor great-great-great-great grandparents had ever lived in Israel.

A thing that struck me while in Jerusalem was how Americanized it felt. I sat in cafes with glossy menus printed in English, I perused little shops, I walked aimlessly through suburbs with their little parks and cars and streets and driveways, and it looked a lot like home.

We did take our host up on his offer, but we had to make a stop first. We pulled up to a several-story apartment building. The building had been occupied by Palestinians up until recently when the area had been evacuated, annexed, and settled. Now the properties were on the market, and our host was considering opening an Air B&B there in the West Bank. He took us up to the roof and I stood up there for a long time, looking out, being re-educated by what I saw.

As I looked down at the border wall, I saw two very different cities down below. On one side I saw Israel- gleaming, new, lush. On the other side I saw Palestine. Girls in hijabs and backpacks walked to school holding hands. A man walked several goats down the dusty streets with bells around their necks. I watched for a long time, trying to reconcile what I was seeing. On one side, life was happening in an indigenous, cyclical way. On the other side, growth was happening- that restless need, born of trauma, to amass and progress.

This song speaks from the imagined perspective of a Palestinian girl who grew up in that apartment building before it was evacuated and annexed. I imagined that she used to love looking down at the world from her rooftop. I imagined her similar to myself- someone who loves her family above all else, with a little brother who she would do anything for, with no interest in war- just a person caught in the teeth of empire.

All my gratitude goes to Kelly Mulholland who beautifully produced this piece and did all of the supplemental instrumentation. Collaborating with Kelly has been a bright spot for me over these last couple years- stay tuned for our album, coming out this summer.

“Gaza is the future: a naked world exposed to ceaseless violence where human beings are extinguished to quench the financial thirst of weapons manufacturers; a fragile world where populations are transferred or annihilated to make way for military occupation and resource extraction; a dwindling world that loses all locality and specificity where all life falls under the brutal law of accumulation; a warming world where human beings can no longer live from the earth and need instead to rely on polluted and corrupt global networks of production and distribution all premised on profit and profit over all else; a world in which all these infernal processes are ever-accelerating toward utter devastation with the feverish speed of industrial lunacy.”

@mu_han_nad

Lyrics:

I am standing on a rooftop
With two cities down below
And they cannot see each other
But from here I can see both
I see a rapid growing process
Against the hum of daily life,
I see a people, against an empire

My family used to travel
In bands across these hills
Through the highlands and the valleys,
Until the interstates were built
To the indifferent teeth of progress,
Went our entire way of life
We are a people, against an empire

Sometimes i hold my head up
Sometimes I let it fall
Sometimes my little brother
throw stones across a wall
And sometimes the uniforms
Obeying orders open fire
Upon a people, against an empire

I didn’t build machine guns,
I didn’t program drones
I learned my mothers recipes
I looked after my home
And when my brother needed Medecine
And we couldn’t get supplies
It was me that went across the checkpoint

And look just like a movie
That I saw once from the states
The swimming pools, the houses
The parks and the cafes
I thought of home, how we get water
For an hour every night,
As a people, against an empire

Now I’m walking through the border territories, occupied
Past the camps laid out like cities
Past the Coca Cola sign
Past the remnants of the whims
Of what some government decides
For a people, against an empire

Once there was a rooftop
With two cities down below
And they couldn’t see each other
But from up there I could see both
Another relic of my childhood for archaeologists to find
I think I’m ready to be old now and to watch the world go by
But should anybody wonder where my loyalties lie
I am a person. I am a person. I am a person against an empire.

credits

From People Against an Empire, released May 17, 2024
Produced by Kelly Mulholland, Termite Tracks, Fayetteville Arkansas
Kelly - upright bass, Estey folding pump (reed) organ, bass, tenor, and soprano recorders, percussion.
Guitar and vocals recorded by Jim Henry, Shutesbury Massachucettes

It was almost unnoticeable when it happened. I began to swallow words instead of speaking them. I did it because I was a good daughter. And then I did it again because I was a good granddaughter. As a good participant in society, I tailored my words so they would fit, curated the feelings I could share, and limited the truths I could tell.

And for a while, when someone would ask about my music, I would tell them that I hadn’t written a song in a while; almost glad to have conquered this unrefined part of myself, proud to be outgrowing this tendency to feel.

This is how much I internalized society’s hatred of the feminine, the stormy, the emotive. This is also how much I lived in fear of cancellation.

Cancellation is the quiet weapon of a violent society. Family members cancel one another over political views, friends cancel one another over missteps, we watch humans get cancelled for sport on TV… “you have been voted off the island!” At one end of the spectrum, cancellation looks like this country’s mass-incarceration rate. It looks like a car plowing through bodies at a protest in an attempt to cancel an entire point of view. At the other end of the spectrum, cancellation looks like silence. We cancel the words from our very mouths.

Cancel culture fosters the idea that we are fragile, without margin of error, and incapable of loving debate. It leaves no room for the varied texture of our complete existence.

I asked myself recently: What truth am I not telling? And this song came in reply. I call it “Tikkun Olam means Heal the World.”

The lyrics are available in the video description, I just ask that you honor the art form and read them in tandem with listening. To those who struggle with the content, I want you to know that I hold your experience with a great deal of care. Should you feel inclined, replies to this newsletter come to my inbox. You can also reach me at hanazaramusic@gmail.com

I give special thanks to Laura Josephs for joining me on this song.

The countryside changes from fishing towns to gleaming cities to rugged mountains.

What am I doing? I am trekking the northern coast of Spain with my father. We are walking the Camino del Norte- a route that has been travelled by humans for over 1,000 years.

They call us pilgrims, those of us that walk this trail, and we stay in churches and “albergues”- rooms with bunkbeds and minimal acomodaciones for travelers. It’s donation based and entirely in the spirit of generosity.

And it’s breathtaking.

The mountains roll out of the sea like sleeping dragons.

The rain moves across the land in waving sheets. We get wet, we dry off.

A nun serves us breakfast, an old man picks us grapes from his vine, sometimes there are 6 languages spoken around the table.

We roll up our pants and cross bodies of water. We scramble up mountains and find goats grazing at high altitude.

The sea is usually visible.

One evening a fellow traveller asked what I did, and I told him I made music. The next morning me (and everyone else) awoke to one of my songs- Laurel- playing throughout the dormitory. It was quite a surprise.

We walked for 10 hours today and my legs are tired, but my belly is full and my heart is happy. There’s a lot of good in the world, and plenty of figs. From this little bunk bed overlooking a churchyard, I’m sending love out to all of you.

Hi sweet friends!

I have a new EP out. These songs came as I walked the mountains of Shelburne Falls Massachucettes, where my partner and I have settled for the past few years to dedicate ourselves to the practice of Vipassana meditation. It has been a huge privilege.

The first track, The Waning Moon, came out in one whole piece as I drove to the post office. I grabbed my phone off the passenger’s seat (things you should not do while driving), and hit the record button so i could catch it as it came. The subject matter is strange- a song of disappearance. As some guy on LSD once said “the banana is big, but the banana peel is bigger”, in this song the banana sings to the peel (so-to-speak) about the ephemeral nature of her own existence.

The second track, Perfect Little Things, was written on one of those impossible days where gravity was strong, emotions were high, and mistakes were abundant. I went home and collapsed on my bed. As the ceiling fan spun above me, something reassured me that all my human fallacy fit, somehow, and was even perfect in the eyes of love. It said “all your little tragedies, I wear them all like rings. They are perfect little things.” What a relief. I took out my phone, queued up a beat on a looper app, and recorded it.

May All the World Be Well is the final track. It is about the hallowed ground that is our interactions with one another, and the immense power therein to create a better world through our actions. Above all, it is a Metta practice (a practice of loving kindness), as it repeats a wish for the well being of the world and fades slowly into the distance.

Give these songs a listen and share them with someone that needs to hear them. Give a donation if you have the means, and please enjoy them for free if you don’t.

Album art by Brian Kerrigan

Mastered by Eric George and Jer Coons

Harmonies by Taylor Smith

The title of the album is Rivulets. These rivulets represent our own separate tributaries that, forget as we might, still connect us to a unified and vast sea.

I invite you to slow down, take a walk or sink into your favorite chair, and give these songs a good listen. They were my heart’s medicine in the writing- perhaps they can offer some heart-medicine in the listening too.

Sincerely,

-Hana Zara

Spotify:

Bandcamp:

Recorded by: Dango Rose in Boulder Colorado

Instrumentation: Darryl Purpose, Xerephine, Dango, and the Elephant Collective

Album Art: Brian Kerrigan

As always, your generous donations made this possible, and help me keep on!

You can reply to this email here or via hanazaramusic@gmail.com