Hey Sen. I like where you are going with this. I have discovered songs, quite by accident in my practice, and they generally have little to know English with them and are fluid based upon the feeling of the moment. Even though they have a basic silible structure to remember the basic sound, they are only preformed when the feeling is felt and they are always different. It is hard to explain . . they are a gift, and ecstatic trans is definitely involved, (without the aid of plant teachers in my case). The world needs new songs, just feel the song, don't think about it, just feel the song rising in you from the ground and let the what ever sound wishes to be made be made - that is how I have learned . .I entrain myself to the vibrations of my bio region and ask for a song - sometimes I don't always get what I ask for . . not immediately anyways - and other times song moves when it is the last thing on my mind. Feel the song, let it be genuine expression of your relationship with the land.

You can try that, or alternatively, attempt to speak/sing in e-prime.
www.mythic-cartography.org/

Most of the posts in the college of mythic cartography blog are written in e-prime.

Many of our NA songs are sung in vocables, sounds without literal meaning, just ones that have the proper tones and sound quality: "heyy-yaa-eyyy...yaa-heyy" such as in powwow songs or "yah-hnah-ho, yah-nah-ho..." etc as in Native American Church (peyote songs) (hear examples from yesterday's post on "Sleeping Giant" blog).

Many NA songs have nothing but vocables. Some songs are merely short phrases sung over and over again, joined with vocables: "yaa-neeh, ya-neeh, waiakida ke, yaa-neeh" (waiakida ke= "he is a soldier" in my tribal Ioway language)

There are of course vocables used in English songs: "la-la-la-LA" "nananaNA-good bye!" ...or..."loving you, is easy cause you're beautiful...doopen-doopidy-doo..AHahahhAHHHH!!" (LOL) Or just humming a tune can be very beautiful and combined with rhythm.

Or take some words from Old English to still have meaning which is still recognizable in a way, but altered enough to have a special quality, even one word like "ácbéam" (oak) or "gewealc" (rolling) can be sung over and over again, joined with vocables and a rattle or drum or ratchet sticks.

Many of the old nursery rhymes were originally magical in nature. It may sound cheesy, but they can be used that way. I am not kidding. And don't forget the old folk songs like "Scarborough Fair" or "Greensleeves" which are so connected to our cultural consciousness, you can use the tune just switch the words or use vocables or hum.

So any vocable series that sounds good with the tune that comes to you works, as long as it is pleasing to the ear and fits the tune..which is often very repetitive in our NA songs, to alter one's state of mind, alone or to join with others, and with the Earth

But the tunes from wind and stream are also rhythmic and repetitive. You can get tunes from the patterns of bird song. Every place has its particular song, its voice, heard in the voices of the birds, the hum and buzz of insects, the wind in trees or grass or rock, the water, and if you listen very carefully and put your ear against the rocks and the earth, Mother Earth herself, blended all together in the voice of that particular place.

The point is, in the old ways, songs are not about performance in the sense we think about today, where people are either too self-conscious and don't sing because they think they don't sound good, or they get ridiculous, thinking they are the next big "American Idol." This split in people's attitudes, "I'm the next big star performer" vs "I suck at singing," is yet another screwed up part of our culture, so alienated from song's origins.

Songs are their own pleasure, SINGING yourself alters one's consciousness even better than listening to songs. Don't care what it sounds like. Just do it. In the privacy of your own room, basement, bathroom, or lonely countryside. But do it. Singing is magical, and joining in song with nature, is magic and it is prayer.

nice post, Lance! i totally agree with you!

"The idea is that is what talking in tongues is trying to access. "

i remember back in my hard core Christian days...i used to speak in tongues. it was interesting. the funny thing is, is that any body i have ever heard speak in tongues (in the Christian sense), all sound very similar to me. and yet i wasn't ever copying anyone...my mouth and tongue moved on their own accord. i just let out a single note and the language formed. i was told this was the language of Heaven; God's language. although the same thing happened to me once when i invoked a mother goddess. speaking in tongues is no longer my interest; i personally, don't see a point to it. now, SINGING...is different. songs can change our emotions, stop wars, decide things for us, move stones. vibration and harmony create order in our world. and has for thousands of years. the most magickal and most primal thing i have experienced is a good song. so if we sing about mountains, hardships, finances, and love in English; does it mean the same when we use our own made up words with the same meaning? of course. and more so i think. there are times, if i'm explaining something to some one , that the word i need to use doesn't seem to fit it. but i have to use it, because that's what explains it. but if we're singing to sing; use your own words. some maybe in English. some in another language, man made or not. if there's one thing i've learned, it's to be vulnerable to natural energies. be a medium and a source of vibration, the harmony will follow.

I can't help much with the song quest, but I did run across this passage from Joseph Campbell that seems appropriate:

"It is because he hears the voices of the stones and trees that are speaking, unheard to us all, that the shaman does not live like other men in relation only to the appearances of things. Hearing their songs, he is led by them to the song within himself, through which he is sustained in a life inflated by the breath and winds of the unseen. The powers of which he thus becomes the vehicle may seem to be supernatural, but they are actually of nature itself."