We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarina Partridge a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sarina, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
The most meaningful project I’ve been working on is creating more spaces for community singing, and creating new songs that invite folks into singing for connection and full expression — not performance or perfection. I think a lot of us have internalized the message (thanks a lot, capitalism) that art should be left to “professionals”… and we all lose something vital – individually and collectively – when that happens. I imagine a world where singing is deeply woven into everyday life: helping us do our work, show up and care for each other, do things we are afraid to do, and feel all of our feelings with our whole bodies. I imagine a world where community meetings begin and end with singing as a way in to a deeper plane of listening and sharing. I imagine a world where we sing in harmony with each other, even hard songs, creating musical moments that are satisfying and magical when they come together… I’ve studied singing in lots of places in the world where everybody sings in harmony, and I believe it just takes some practice; and by practice, I just mean, doing it more. I imagine a world where lots of people feel comfortable (and have practiced) stepping in and leading song in a way that serves the work they care about. My hundred-year dream is that community singing circles will be more ubiquitous than… gas stations. May it be so! This feeling of being called to bring more community singing into the world has also inspired me to write tons of new music. I’m actually just wrapping up my very first studio album (!!!!) of original music, called Songs to ReRoot & Remember (save the date – October 15 cd release show in Minneapolis at Walker UMC), made possible by an Emerging Composers grant from the American Composers Forum. I also am diving into bringing more of my own musical lineage into community singing spaces – I got a grant this year from the State Arts Board (thank you MN voters for funding the arts in Minnesota!) to study, arrange, and share Yiddish songs in public community sings this coming year. I am proud and honored and humbled to receive so much support and love from my community – and it’s my dream to return that love, through song, as the work of my life.
Sarina, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a musician, song-leader and educator in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I feel most alive when learning, creating and sharing songs, and I enjoy leading and singing with a wide variety of music projects – I lead community choirs and community singing at events in Minneapolis; I sing music of the Jewish diaspora as part of duo Nanilo; I create and perform original place-based music with folk trio Heartwood; and I use singing as a community organizing tool for Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, an interfaith climate justice advocacy organization. I have traveled around the world to study with master folk singers, and I’ve toured and performed with different ensembles abroad and in the USA. These days, I am pouring my heart’s energy into creating more spaces for community singing. I have a passion for connecting people with their own creativity and with community, and using singing to help folks develop a sense of wonder for this wild world around us. Song is such a powerful medium, often transcending spoken language; when endless facts detailing the crises of our era can leave us overwhelmed and unmoved, unsure of how and where to act, perhaps through singing, we can find our way back to being beautifully beholden to the whole.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I keep these questions in the front of my notebook to remind me of the mission I am on with singing and my own path to walk… What are the songs that can help me and us connect with the magic of the natural world, that can help me and us reshape our relationships with place and time and all beings, alive and not alive? As a songweaver, how can I attune myself to the cycles of the seasons, the elements, and the many teachers around me in the natural world, listening in for songs that can hold some of those lessons and truths, and then how can I grow as a teacher and community facilitator, to share those songs in good and useful ways? How can I do right by my ancestors, by my future ancestors, by the communities that I live in now? How can I help more people connect with the power of their own voices? What is the role of collective song in healing the world?
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
A universal basic income and universal health care, so that all people, including artists, can have dignity and a living. Imagine that! 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarinapartridge.com
- Instagram: sarina.partridge
- Facebook: sarinapartridge
Image Credits
Ted Hall – last photo, black and white with banjo Joni Griffith – photo with one other person, I’m in a red shirt