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Joan Szymko
Joan Szymko Music
Call
Rising to the call for engagement around gender imbalance in matters of education, economics and politics and spiritual leadership.
SSAA, taiko drums (2)
(taiko drums may be substituted with low/high calf skin drums played with timbale sticks)
Alla René Bozarth was the first woman ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal diocese of Oregon in 1971. Her ordination to the priesthood with eleven other women in 1974 created a huge stir within the denomination and attracted international attention. She wrote the poem, “Call” on the eve of her historic ordination. Her poem, inspired by the poem “Mountain Moving Day,” (1911), by Japanese Feminist Poet Yosano Akiko, is as relevant today as when it was first penned. The roar of voices continues. Women and men are waking and rising to the call for conscious engagement around widespread gender imbalance in matters of education, economics and politics and spiritual leadership.
“CALL is one of the best pieces I have come across written for the female voice— I’m a composer myself and I must say I tip my hat to you….It is exquisite – my girls love it – love it- they cant stop singing it!”
-Dr. Adalberto Yanes, Doral Academy Prep HS (Miami, FL)
Text
There is a new sound
of roaring voices in the deep
and light-shattered
rushes in the heavens.
The mountains are coming alive,
the fire-kindled mountains,
moving again to reshape the earth.
It is we sleeping women,
waking up in a darkened world,
cutting the chains from off our bodies
with our teeth, stretching our lives
over the slow earth—
Seeing, moving, breathing in
the vigor that commands us
to make all things new.
It has been said that while the women sleep,
the earth shall sleep—
But listen! We are waking up and rising,
and soon our sisters will know their strength.
The earth-moving day is here.
We women wake to move in fire.
The earth shall be remade.
– Alla René Bozarth
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