Found Sound Round / Mouth Music Blessing

Here is an example of something you can do to close the circle, to give thanks to the place, plants and animals where you have been making music, working, camping etc.

It's a closing ritual or blessing, a gift to the numen, or spirit of place.

Latin speakers began using numen to describe the special divine force of any object, place, or phenomenon that inspired awe (a mystical-seeming wooded grove, for example, or the movement of the sun), and numen made the semantic leap from "nod" to "divine will or power." English speakers adopted the word during the 1600s.

I invite people to join in the blessing in a few ways:
  • by inviting them to go and find an object that represents something they are grateful for that they have experienced during the time in that place... and them imagine it expressed as a sound
  • or by inviting them to remember a sound or rhythm they heard or imagined while they were in that place
  • gather in any feelings our gratitude they feel towards the place, and express that as a sound or rhythm

We then stand back to back and one of us starts, with the sonic blessing slowly increasing as people join with the music consecutively, repeating their sounds or loops, until we are all making sounds together. Then, slowly, when the feeling arises, people stop repeating their sounds, and the blessing fades out.

With thanks to inspiration and the spirit of music and place.