The most important songs...Pt. 1 of ???

Some days, you wake up, and you feel like you might have been crying in your sleep.  You feel the sticky, transparent, salty residue on your cheeks...but don't remember how it got there.  What dream created it?  From there, know that the day will be an emotional day. A day when laughter and sadness can come hand in hand, for no reason at all.  Days like that, songs will tap the emotions hard.  Hit them rather, like one of those sledgehammer games at the fair.

I love music.  I love how songs and sounds create feelings.  I love what music can do to educate us, as people, about ourselves and each other.

I want to compile a list of influential, powerful, meaningful, fun songs...with help from you of course.  The list will grow infinitely. It's exciting.

So, to make this work....post a comment here, or on my Facebook saying what song means the most to you and why. And I'll add it to the list.  Let's see what kind of playlist we can create!

  This is song number 1:

Colors of The Wind from the movie "Pocahontas."

You think I'm an ignorant savage

And you've been so many places

I guess it must be so

But still I cannot see

If the savage one is me

How can there be so much that you don't know?

You don't know ...

You think you own whatever land you land on

The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim

But I know every rock and tree and creature

Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are people

Are the people who look and think like you

But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger

You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?

Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest

Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth

Come roll in all the riches all around you

And for once, never wonder what they're worth

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers

The heron and the otter are my friends

And we are all connected to each other

In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high will the sycamore grow?

If you cut it down, then you'll never know

And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

For whether we are white or copper skinned

We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains

We need to paint with all the colors of the wind

You can own the Earth and still

All you'll own is Earth until

You can paint with all the colors of the wind

Those are some powerful lyrics to go along with a beautiful melody and composition of instruments.  Having been in Ecuador for the past 5 weeks, I've been exposed to the culture of the indigenous people.  There knowledge of the physical world, their use of nature for everything--like the woman I met who makes medicines from plants to keep her Diabetes in check--to the stories about mountains, lakes, clouds, the sun...it's all fascinating.  And in stark contrast to the mindset of many people in many places--lets build a commercial shopping or housing development where the beautiful woods are.

This could lead to song number 2--that song by Joni Mitchell, I don't know the name, and I'm not going to look it up...I just know it goes like this:

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone.  It could be paradise, and they put up a parking lot."