The little song sample I put up here is dedicated to my Collie-Sheperd, Katy, who lived to be 15 years old who sang along with me on this garage band special experiment.
I run the No Nukes Music in Hawaii site. I love to work for a cause and my plan is to put together a compilation album to promote real green energy for our planet. I can assure you the earth chemistry has substantially changed since nuclear testing and not for the better. This was a very important humanitarian issue to my father who vehemently opposed the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Duck and cover was BS. While, the only songs I've written are while driving in the car to entertain, something like the little ditties my dad used to make up in his head, (Is there a Scottish-Irish gene for this?) I have written dozens of research papers as a public health professional and cultural and medical anthropologist.
My maternal grandmother was concert pianist who was terribly shy and taught piano for over 50 years in Arlington, Virginia. Naturally, I took piano lessons, but not from her. I also played Clarinet briefly in elementary school. I am a very unprolific painter and sculptor and I am on hiatus as a semi-retired dancer, child prodigy ballerina. I write poetry when the moment suits me.I started singing when I was a little girl when it was discovered I had the highest high soprano voice of my class in 7th grade. I began to sing in public with the other dancers who formed the chorus of the Washington Ballet during the Nutcracker Ballet. When we finished dancing the scene as the rats, we rushed to sing for the snow scene. This was the Washington Ballet production at Lisner auditorium in Washington, DC but when I danced the role of "Clara" and later as the "Star" and the "Snowflakes" I couldn't sing because I was on stage... Those nights when we went into the wings and sang this angelic snow chorus, it was pure joy. Later I sang in my high school school chorus where we did Brigadoon, Oklahoma and my favorite, Handel's Messiah. Still I was best remembered by my chorus teacher for my contribution of the Can-Can in the Oklahoma production when Dolly Fox was the lead!When I moved to California, I dropped out of college and met Bill. He was a songwriter and we lived together for five years. I know that music was a big part of our life in the Bay Area and we did sing at home together. Neither of us imagined we would ever sing in public. Bill just wanted to sell his songs and still does.In Hawaii, probably around 1995, I found my way down from the University to see the live performance of John Cruz. There was this magical mystical energy around him with which he had traveled back to Hawaii from NY and Massachusetts. Oddly enough two women I sat down with had just seen him on the Cape and they were both from Williamstown. When these women told John this, he asked how many people at the bar were from there. I had to raise my hand, too, since I had lived there while my father's taught at Williams College. Now, John is a fascinating human and I did not understand the inferences of his local dialect we call Hawaiian pidgin, so we got off to a funny start. Over the years I saw him invite so many wonderful artists to the stage, it was amazing. He suggested I sing along to the radio. Alas, I didn't have a radio in my cars, vans and moped for almost ten years. I stay broke, John!Sometime around 1997, I was invited into the Greg Crane home studio. I have been singing and enjoying his original songs for over 13* years. He now has many albums worth of material to release! Gregory has a beautiful strong falsetto voice and has created The Greg Crane Band. I've enjoyed his artistic developments, including Way Cool Jr, and Crane and Camp, I've just sung along as a studio back up singer unofficially. Well, I don't sing in public yet with him, but I know the songs. I'm just lucky to be tolerated in the studio, except that I play some important role there, like maybe I kinda help with important stuff. It has never been clearly defined. I just know that people ask my opinion about music and I do occasionally carry the beer.(*Please note: Keesing and Crane met in the early 90's and initially talked at the beach and hated each other. He had retired from the computer chip business in Southern California and she was from Berkeley doing a graduate degree in Hawaii. Eventually there was an accident, (literally) - they collided (it was totally his fault/no it was an accident and they were both at fault) and they arrived at the studio together for the first time, except she was bleeding and had to go to the hospital ER. They didn't even like eachother before then...accident forgivenness...later they drugged eachother with Budweiser and smoked out tunes.)Most recently I was invited to join Sweet Adelines, a barbershop quartet for women. I sing lead and am learning some fun tunes and arrangements.
Otherwise I can be found supporting music, musicians, and I am still in the studio recording, photographing and encouraging friends and myself, inadvertently. I need to hear live music every week and I enjoy being at the part of the project where the song is being born or has just been born and sung in public for the first time.
I have actually sung solo in front of a few small audiences, once in China, only to receive amazing amounts of roses and phone calls to my hotel room, even though it was unlisted. I was once known to sing with Dr. Rock who had a karaoke machine and me and Sunshine sang back up at a biker bar on Sand Island Road. We had a blast! My musical friends are awesome.
Create your free myspace visitor maps , myspace layouts and myspace comments .My first spoken languages were Spanish and English. I was raised in Mexico City from 1 year until almost 4 years of age. My nickname was "Palomita." That is the name I remember being called especially by my nanny, Alicia. Perhaps I received this name when I found my way to the top of the roof at age 2? I've always wanted to fly and now I am a student pilot. To see more about me, you can go to my civilian page: www.myspace.com/rainwoman
Perhaps I don't hear music with my poetry because I was mostly deaf from the age of six to eight years with "glue ear," until Stanford University Hospital restored my hearing. Apparently the did a wonderful job because I can now hear 20 decibles, so I was recently able to pass my pilots medical exam. I was discovered to be deaf when I got up from math class to sit behind the piano. I placed my hands upon it and made colorful patterns with the wood blocks. When I was asked what I was doing, I told them I was listening to music. I was. No one knew that I was lipreading until that time, nor did I. I just got up because I couldn't see which child to look at to see the answer to the questions the teacher had asked and so I got bored and frustrated. I went to dance classes during these years and was a natural. I was flexible, graceful and petite (second smallest in my class next to a girl with cystic fibrosis.). I think I heard most of the music through my feet on the floor! ~ I wish more instruments were made to be played with feet, instead of hands.~ Around that time my neighbor was a gifted pianist, Winton, www.wintonreynolds.com, and he was my penpal after I moved to the East Coast. Last summer 2006 I caught a glimpse of him on PBS.In order to sing, I still lipread what the lead singer is singing, often so fast that one day in the Temple I visited here, the Rabbi was convinced I knew the words to the songs which are in Hebrew, a language I do not speak. (I was not raised with any religious tradition and so religiousity is still foreign to me. While I appreciate cultural traditions, I'm not interested in explaining the meaning of life or my beliefs, except as an anthropologist.)
As a result of my temporary hearing loss in childhood, I have a visual memory and my auditory memory is terrible. I can't quote people, so I paraphrase. I don't remember the words to poems and songs, the names of songs and artists and this is a handicap. My dislexic musician friends are really lucky!!
Long ago, I suggested to my brother, Donald Keesing, that he was the musician in the family and I was just a dancer. We are 'Irish twins'; he was born fifteen months after me. Over the years I've been in many studios and seen many musicians and artists develop. At one point in my life, when I lived in Chapel Hill, N.C., I thought of becoming a country western singer. I was 9 years of age and I didn't see many opportunities of fitting in the south. In fact, I staged my first protest in third grade making signs in art class that read, "Black is Beautiful" and picketing, impromptu with a bunch of students. I had to leave 3rd grade as a result of my efforts to integrate the bathrooms which were being segregated by bullies who would check to see which "color" child was using which bathrooms. For my efforts and safety, I was promoted to 4th grade. I asked to return to my grade when everything calmed down. Thanks to a wonderful teacher, I was became a poet. I won honorable mention for a poem I think my mother might have somewhere in a drawer. I started piano lessons in Williamstown, MA in 4th grade. My grandmother was a concert pianist and a piano teacher. We realized my hands were pretty small for that instrument and I couldn't sit still for long. I did learn to play clarinet and to read music.Studying at the Academy of the Washington Ballet, I won an award for my writing in 7th grade. My father encouraged me to write. My father was an economist who became international consultant after he retired from the World Bank and Professorships. Half way through 7th grade, I changed schools because the ballet academy was closing. As the new kid, my best friend from the neighborhood introduced me to his best friend and classmate, Oteil Burbridge. Oteil and I were both on "release time," meaning that we were allowed to attend half the day of school, so we could pursue our artistic works. He was acting in Peter Sellers movie "Being There" and on PBS with 'Zoom'. Oteil and I had so much fun in Mathematics class that my grades started to suffer, especially when I refused to accept that "X" in algebra is an unknown number. I was certain everything in the universe was known by a higher power or an ET. Above all, Oteil loved music. His bass playing was so spectacular that I was spoiled and forever seeking to listen to good music. I participated in chorus and did a couple musicals before college, but I was never good enough to be the lead singer. I've written poetry throughout high school, college and through all of these years. If only I or someone heard music to my words...
