'I'd like to teach the world to sing!

Paul offers inspiring songs, both original and from the Americas and Europe in English and/or Spanish.

Plus beautiful projects to make that dream and those songs reality

   

Woody Guthrie, Mercedes Sosa, Víctor Jara, John Lennon all ‘imagined’ the great dream in tough times, sometimes even to torture and death. Today, in these times of rampant hate and bigotry, their visionary music is needed more than ever: to re-affirm beauty, hope and compassion; to counter fear and xenophobia; to celebrate the best of us rather than the worst. So to move us to take serious, systemic and sustained action to heal the Earth, one another, and thus, ourselves.

"These freedom songs invigorate the movement." (Martin Luther King Jr.)

 

Echoes of Silence offers beautiful and imaginative practical projects to make the music's vision concrete.

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    WINDY DAY: A GLOBAL CALL FOR A JUST, PEACE-FILLED AND RE-GREENED EARTH. An exciting and visionary project calling for the worldwide establishment of World INTERDependence Day. To challenge xenophobia and isolationism. To form a great planetary choir of hope. To flood the world with beauty, banishing fear and freeing us from feelings of frustration and helplessness. To insist that countries and individuals that have become immensely wealthy through the exploitation of whole peoples and the common resources of Earth, assist those they have abused to adapt to the global warming largely caused by that very abuse. And to re-dedicate at least 3% of all monies, materials and - especially - the creative lives currently sacrificed to the development, manufacture, sale and use of arms to re-green the planet and to bring pure water to everyone on Earth. Thus to avoid otherwise inevitable wars over water, and, in a healed, peace-filled planet, to construct a truly fitting memorial to all those killed/maimed/bereaved to 'end all wars'. windyday 

 

LOCAL: Nags, Nippers and Mother Earth - an exquisite Nicaraguan project bringing marginalized children and work ponies together in tenderness on an organic farm, so developing a center for animal care, and for learning good environmental practices to heal life back in the impoverished neighbourhoods of the capital, Managua.

http://paulbaker2004.wixsite.com/nags-nippers-earth

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. Your assistance will enable:

 

1. Fátima, Paul’s Nicaraguan wife, to continue her pro bono health work in La Primavera (Spring) their marginalized barrio. The very epitome of courage, Fátima fought in the mountains against the brutal forces of the Somoza dictatorship as a young teenager. Her crippling arthritis is a result of being alternately soaked and scalded.  In spite of everything, she continues as a health educator, using her house as a first aid post. 

 

2.   Make Earth GREEN Again! A campaign for the US to re-join the Paris Climate Accords, pay Nicaragua ecodamages, teach city food sustainability. Inspired by this exquisite video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvkI8c9eALQ we demand that the US immediately re-sign the Paris Climate Accords; that US Environmental Protection Agency funding be restored and expanded; and that the industrialised countries pay substantial and appropriate damages to countries suffering the effects of their depredation and contamination, so enabling those countries to adapt to rampant climate change.

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1. By constantly 'tweet-bombing’ Trump, challenging him, the US people and the world at large to ‘Make Earth Green Again,’ rather than retreat into the false independence of isolationism. 

2. By extending our pitiful single Global Earth Day to a full annual Earth Month, to give Earth her proper due, and to galvanize radical action to combat the onrushing environmental crisis.

3. By targeting golf courses - especially Trump's - for their billions of gallons of daily water abuse in a world where countless people are dying for lack of pure water, and where wars over water will make wars over oil look like a stroll in the park. 

4. By a legal challenge to force the industrialised nations to recognise the calamitous injustice of their behaviour, and to pay substantial damages to Nicaragua to enable her to adapt to rampant climate change.

 

3.   Pexy to the Rescue: a delightful project to rescue abused dogs and cats, coordinated by Vanessa Peulevé, Paul’s daughter, together with her own rescued pet, Pexy. Vanessa, herself adopted, parlays her own experience of abuse and abandonment as a tiny girl into practical concern for abandoned and mistreated animals. She is working towards establishing a small shelter, where dogs and cats are healed, treated for parasites, etc., and adopted into loving homes.

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4.   CD of Victor Jara’s best-loved songs in original Spanish &, uniquely, in sung English. Victor Jara, Chile's great and greatly-loved singer/songwriter, was appallingly murdered during the Nixon/Pinochet military coup that destroyed the elected government of Dr. Salvador Allende in September, 1973.  They could not bear his voice, singing out for justice.  Ever since, Paul has specialized in Victor's songs. His poetic interpretations into singing English are unique, designed to assist those who have no Spanish fully understand the songs' extraordinary power and beauty.

5.   CD of original songs, inc. 'Frrrappuccino, Crrrappuccino’ – ‘inspired’ by Starbux, and 'Ode to Earth' - inspired by Beethoven's Ode to Joy'. 

6.   Film script: Love story. Salvadorans’ courage under death squad attack in LA in the 1980s.  An extraordinary time in Los Angeles, when Salvadoran death squads ran riot within the exile community.  Happening by, Paul joined an accompaniment program to help shield the family of their principal target, a young woman activist. He stayed for ten years. Thus inspired, he eventually moved to Nicaragua, where he now lives. 

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* 50 years ago Paul Baker Hernández began his revolutionary musical life as a silent hermit monk! A smuggled tape of Bob Dylan’s, ‘Times They Are A-changin’’ inspired him to make a guitar from a retired toilet seat and to start singing protest songs. Booted out, perhaps unsurprisingly, he soon found himself bearding Queen Elizabeth II over nuclear weapons at her private Balmoral Castle; defending Salvadoran exiles attacked by death squads in Los Angeles; helping reclaim the stadium where Víctor Jara was murdered; translating the great Chilean's wonderful songs into singable English; even holding candelabras for Isabel Allende,and being invited to live with Maggie and Jake Gyllenhaal as children. Now married in his beloved Nicaragua, he digs eco-drains, supports his wife, Fátima Hernández, in her pro bono educational and health work in La Primavera, the marginalised barrio where they live, coordinates local and global environmental and peace projects, co-organizes an annual 'Víctor Jara Siempre Canta' festival, writes news and songs about Starbucks and other dictators, and occasionally translates for the President when the real Spanish speakers chicken out.

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On tour, with more than four decades working shoulder-to-shoulder with extraordinary 'ordinary people', Paul tells their stories in a passionate blend of song, analysis, information and practical projects, in English and/or fluent Spanish. Lectures, homilies, (house)concerts, discussions: university/school courses, unions, faith communities, solidarity, environmental and other groups, conferences .. you name it!  

 

Fees by negotiation or donations at event.   Plus, a bit of floor space to sleep, a drop of Chilean red

to keep cheerful, and some assistance with travel to keep on trucking.

 

Many Thanks.

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