Brenda MacIntyre, Medicine Song Woman
On June 21st, I had the honour of interviewing Brenda MacIntyre, Medicine Song Woman, a Juno- winning indigenous artist and keynote speaker. June 21st is Indigenous People’s Day in Canada and it also happened to be the summer solstice. I first met Brenda in 2010, when I first launched my web and TV show, Extraordinary Women TV. It was a delight to have her on my show then, and a pleasure to re-connect on Twitter Spaces, Twitter’s live audio feature, where I interviewed her a second time
Brenda’s music is healing. Through her signature medicine, song, healing work and picking up the pieces, 13 moon resilience and re awakening program, Brenda helps women manage grief, trauma and chronic pain. She’s based in Canada.
Show Notes
You will learn:
- The meaning of Indigenous People’s Day and Brenda’s perspective as an indigenous woman.
- The healing power of music.
- How a mother of a son who was murdered turned her pain into purpose and healing.
Audio Clip of Brenda’s Top Tip (sound on, 13 secs.)
Transcript (edited for length and readability)
Interview date: June 21, 2022 / Twitter Spaces / hosted by Shannon Skinner
Shannon: This space is powered by Extraordinary Women TV.
So it is Indigenous People’s Day here in Canada. What does it mean to you?
Brenda: It’s a day for our people to come together and celebrate, and to show our culture and take pride in who we are. and on the flip side of that, it’s kind of awful to know that our government is behind the scenes basically doing all kinds of, well, the genocide continues. And so this is kind of a performative day in a way for a lot of people. And then they will forget about us and go about their business, meanwhile we have missing and murdered women and girls. I mean, my son was murdered.
Shannon: That’s right. A few years ago, your son was murdered here in Toronto.
Brenda: Six years ago, still feels like yesterday. There’s still so much that’s going on that needs to be healed and the media loves to ignore it. And so does the government. So it’s a day where at least we can claim space. And have pride in our culture.
Shannon: It’s also a great day for others to learn about the culture, music, dance and art. So it’s good to raise awareness from that standpoint.
Brenda: It is. And it’s also really good to raise awareness about truth and reconciliation because that’s what really needs to happen so that our culture can be celebrated. And in an even bigger ways.
Shannon: You are an artist, a singer and you make beautiful music. What inspired you to become a singer? I’ve known you for a number of years, I’ve interviewed you in the past, so I’m familiar with your music. What inspired you to become a singer, in the first place?
Brenda: I always have been one. I couldn’t not be one. I was born to be a singer. That’s who I am. It’s in my name. It’s literally in my name – Medicine Song Woman. That’s who I am. And I didn’t know anything about my indigenous heritage at all until my thirties.
And I’m still discovering, because I was adopted in the sixties. But, I knew from the age of 11 that I was to be a singer.
Shannon: Maybe you can describe your music and what makes it unique.
Brenda: All of my songs are healing songs these days. When I started out, I was actually a rap artist in Miami.
So picture that. Right. that’s how I got my start. And I loved hip hop because it was very easy for me to just make rhyme. It was so easy and I was asked by this label to do a 12 inch single. And it was the start of my career, really. After that I went to reggae and I fell in love with reggae, and I am still in love with reggae. Roots reggae, mostly, but even a little dance hall, but I play in a way that nobody was really doing back then, which was conscious music. After just sort of doing empty rap and I don’t know, pop songs and whatever, even some house music and stuff like that, it was empty to me. But when I fell in love with reggae and started playing with the reggae band, back in the nineties, that just lit my soul on fire because now people were not just dancing and enjoying themselves, but they were listening to the lyrics and singing them.
They were singing those conscious lyrics. For me, it was about oneness and peace and coming together as people. And so that’s continued as a theme in all of my work, really. So reggae was a gift to me and became kind of part of the way that I sang too. Marcia Griffith, like I fan girl over her, she’s like one of the greats.
Because it’s conscious music and that’s kind of where I started springing into more of that. And now that’s all I do is conscious music. It’s no more of the fluff anymore. When I was 11 and when I was a teenager and even in my twenties thought that I was gonna be a pop star. That was my whole thing. And no, that’s like, not at all. I’m not even part of the music industry. My music now, kind of like my last album, there’s a little reggae. There’s a little rap. There’s a little kind of R and B styles. The thread though is that it’s indigenous reggae. So there is hand drumming and certain kind of shaker.
So it’s more like a roots reggae style, but with an indigenous flavour and foundation. And when I do my albums, everything’s done in ceremony. I’m infusing healing energy into what I’m doing.
Shannon: So, as you mentioned, your son. was killed in Toronto in 2016. And you really turned to your own music to help you with your own grief and you turned that into a way of also helping other women, too, with trauma and grief. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Brenda: First of all, music is the thing that brought me back from the shock. The first couple of years were just a mess of all kinds of weird publicity media stuff and discoveries and going to court. Then the real trial didn’t start until actually 2018. And it literally started on my birthday.
After a bunch of delays, it was supposed to start much earlier. I called that year, 2018, the year of court, not realizing half of 2019 would also be spent in court. But I prepared myself for it, so I was in ceremony that whole year. And I just did, nothing but healing for myself, but I also applied for grants.
I was like, what’s gonna get me through this as always is my music. So I decided to make an album literally while I was in the murder trial. Obviously not in the, on the benches, but in between sessions. That’s what I was doing was working on that album and it got me through it, but also those are songs for grief.
They’re full of love for my son. That’s the medicine, songs of love and grief. And I did that on purpose. So that all that I was going through would go into those songs as medicine and also the healing that I was getting while I was going through that. The trial ended June 2019. And then September, 2019 is when I put the album out. Every time I do music, it’s never just about the music. It’s always something attached to it for the healing. There’s always an e-book that goes with it to help people understand how to use the music for healing, and then spirit leads everything.
Spirit leads away on everything for me. So I got a download, a spiritual download. Here’s what I need to do next. And it was to create the picking up the pieces 13 minute program for women. And that program for women is how I get to literally just spend my new and full moons in play mode. I’m just playing and I’m lit on fire.
I’m just in my element and that’s because we’re singing, dancing, moving, we’re doing resilience, embodiment practices to those songs. And then on top of it, the new moons, that’s just a splash for me. That’s so much fun because I literally am channeling music live for them during the new moons for a journey every time.
So that kind of came through and it’s been amazing just seeing how the women have shifted and how they have become like sisters. It’s incredible for me.
Shannon: Give us an example of how you’ve helped someone.
Brenda: I have my medicine song healing technique that also came through from spirit in 2008. So I’ve been doing medicine song healing work for a long time. I have healed a little girl of a – she had basically came to me with a tumour and when I say came to me, they were thousands and thousands of miles away.
I do this all by distance, the healing work and the tumour had been operated on – and was there was something going on? The family contacted me and within two weeks of the healing session for that little girl, the tumour was completely gone.
So that was like my, ‘okay, now I know it works’ kind of a sign. In fact, when I started, I also had people just come into my drumming circles and literally walk away without the back pain or the headache that they came in with. Lots of stories. And the resilience piece is really important too.
Like, just to see these women who are struggling. I struggle with chronic pain still, ever since my son died, too. And I get myself as an example actually, cuz I had panic attacks all the time and now I hardly ever have them. And when I do, they’re very short instead of what I was having before with the CCP PTSD after losing my son.
I’ve seen similar shifts in others, in the women cuz we’re doing the practices. It’s not like here, go read a book, or listen to this song and now we’re done. No, we’re working with the music but really we’re playing with it. It’s getting those things into the body memory. It’s rewiring the brain and body, basically.
Shannon: Isn’t it amazing how music can be healing, but when you have knowledge and wisdom, like you do about a way of using and channeling music to heal, that’s truly a gift.
Brenda: I’m grateful to be able to do that work. It is everything to me.
Shannon: And on your website there’s some testimonials, there’s some women who wrote about their experiences. And I know that you have a video there as well about you talk like the one as a sizzle reel of you sort of speaking and whatnot.
And it’s really captivating. You can listen to your music, and we can watch how people react in the crowd to your music in the rooms. And I thought that was really quite lovely.
Brenda: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. I really miss in person everything, I’ve been doing virtual ever since 2010 anyway, so it’s still fun. I’m still enjoying, delivering my music in that way, in those formats, still doing circle, it’s just not in person.
Shannon: What are you working on now?
Brenda: the healing sessions, the medicine song, healing work that I do.
And the picking up the pieces, 13 moon program, we open for the summer season, actually tomorrow. So, tomorrow I have a solstice event that’s happening, which is on my events page at my website medicine song woman.com. And you can join us for free for a solstice, celebration. We’re gonna do some of those resilience, embodiment practices and with the live music that I’ll sing for you.
Shannon: And, and to be clear too, people don’t necessarily need to be indigenous to work with. Though you work primarily with women?
Brenda: Yeah. For the picking up the pieces program, it’s open to women and two spirit non-binary people.
Tends to be all women that show up for me. and then the medicine song, healing work, really, anyone can book a session with me. I work privately with a number of long term clients and those are all women. Every now and then I will get an other gendered person for those healing sessions.
Shannon: I’m curious, to win a Juno is a huge honour. How did you feel when you got this award?
Brenda: It’s a little bit different of a story because it was our producer that received the award because it was for a compilation album. So really it’s like kind of 10 of us artists that got to share that honour. I didn’t even know we had submitted or anything was cuz there’s a whole process. You have to actually submit and pay a bunch of money to be considered for a Juno, or your label has to do it for you. If you have one and we didn’t have a label. I guess we were with a little label with that album. But it was exciting. Billy Bryans was my producer. He’s he was the drummer of the Parachute Club.
Shannon: So to wrap, if you can leave us with a tip on following your heart or something to do with music and healing, that would be lovely.
Brenda: I’ll always start with the breath. Always get into your body. Like we’re most of us are walking around in our heads. Most people are not living in their body. They’re living in their heads. And we need to get back into our bodies because that’s where the good stuff is.
So it helps you to feel grounded and to just be able to do anything if you get into your body and you can do that by breathing into your belly, that is the most simple thing that any of us can do to come out of a trigger, out of a panic attack.
Out of anger when you wanna like lash out at somebody or if you’re just feeling like you need to come back home, that’s the biggest and easiest thing that we can do.
Just brings you home. I learned that when I brought myself home. Literally, I sang my spirit home and you can’t sing without breath.
Shannon: So I’ve noticed that even for myself, when you’re feeling anxious about something, when you stop and just do some kind of breath work, it does center you.
Brenda: Immediately. There’s a reason our body’s sigh. Like all of a sudden you’re like Ah.
And yawning. Yawning is the deepest breath you can take. And there’s a reason for that, too. It just brings us back home.
Shannon: Well, thank you. And thank you for sharing some of your evening with me.
AUDIO RECORDING OF INTERVIEW (RAW, UNEDITED FILE)
Shannon Skinner is an author, international speaker, radio host, creator and host of Extraordinary Women TV.com, and travel and wine writer. You can find her on Twitter at @Shannon_Skinner.
