Your vulnerability, and your ability to show it, is a mighty force. That’s especially true in a world that often seems to grant justice and rights only to those with the most powerful weapons and the deepest pockets. It’s the reason why the music of poet-rapper Voces and dream-folk singer-songwriter Alicia Clara is so valuable. In the final episode of the Far Out Freedom 45 series, these two artists meet to talk about the role of vulnerability and intimacy in their music and to connect with the world.
This encounter in the Far Out series can, in a way, be traced back more than 80 years, to a moment when people from Canada found the courage to cross the ocean to stand up against fascism and the nazis. A statue of a man waving with his hat in Apeldoorn, mirrored by an identical statue in Ottawa waving back stand as the symbol of that history. It was near this monument that Voces recorded Slaap zacht (“Sleep Softly”), as a vocal memorial honouring those who once and today fought and fight for freedom.
Neither of the two artist’s music nor lyrics directly call for activism or can be seen as political statements. But by sharing their personal stories, their songs are part of a universal story. The music of both Alicia and Voces invites openness, an embrace of vulnerability that create a genuine connection between artist and audience, between people in general. Like two people recognizing each other across a distance, and waving.
The words of Voces’s Slaap zacht and Alicia Clara’s Blame It on the Moon feel almost like two sides of the same story, a dialogue between two people lying awake on opposite sides of the ocean, both gazing at the same moon.
Terwijl ik staar naar de sterren, stel ik de maan mijn vragen. Ik vraag haar of het lichter wordt om mijn ziel te dragen…
(While I stare at the stars, I ask the moon my questions. I ask her if it gets any lighter to carry my soul…)
from ‘Slaap zacht’, Voces
Baby I wish I knew
How to talk to you
About a thing or twoMy words are out of tune
This I know is true
Won’t blame it on the moon
From ‘Blame it on the Moon’, Alicia Clara
The full podcast episode is now available to listen to and watch on all streaming platforms.
