BetterListen!

BetterListen! Free Sampler Mix with Thich Nhat Hanh, Shlomo Carlebach, Gloria Steinem, Coleman Barks

Welcome to the First BetterListen! Sampler Mix.

Our sampler mixes offer you a taste of our titles. This Mix features Gloria Steinem, Thich Nhat Hanh, Shlomo Carlebach, Coleman Barks, Beryl Bender Birch, The Indigenous Peoples Message To The World and more.

As far as we know, we've never seen a sampler mix anything like this, both in format and content. So please let us know how the technology works and how you enjoy the content.

Subscribe to our feed to get updates on new preview mixes, new releases, new authors, new blog posts and new audio / video programs.

Follow us on Twitter for unique quotes and special offers.

Share these free previews with your online and offline friends. If you like a sample, you can buy the complete program on our site and on iTunes.

Let us know what you think, Help build our new online community—comment on our blog and BetterListen!

If the player does not show up below in your browser click here to listen.

Excerpt from "Indigenous Peoples -- Message to the World"

We at BetterListen! are delighted to introduce a series of sample transcriptions from a number or our recordings. With spring in its explosive full force, we feel it is an excellent time to be reminded of the beliefs and teachings of the Indigenous Peoples. Following is an excerpt from our recording of "Indigenous Peoples -- Message to the World."

Declaration: We the Indigenous Peoples walk to the future in the footprints of our ancestors, from the smallest to the largest living being, from the four directions, from the air, the land and the mountains.  The Creator has placed us, the Indigenous Peoples, upon our mother the earth.  The footprints of our ancestors are permanently etched upon the lands of our peoples.  We the Indigenous Peoples maintain our inherent rights to self-determination. We have always had the right to decide our own forms of government, to use our own laws, to raise and educate our children, to our own cultural identity, without interference.  We continue to maintain our rights as peoples despite the centuries of deprivation, assimilation, and genocide. We maintain our inalienable rights to our lands and our territories, to all our resources above and below, and to our waters we assert our ongoing responsibility to pass these on to the future generations.  We cannot be removed from our lands.  We the Indigenous peoples are connected by the circle of life to our lands and environment.  We the Indigenous peoples walk to the future in the footprints of our ancestors.  Signed in Karoka, Brazil on the 30th day of May, 1992.

For More Information

Women and Wild Animals - Author Notes Part III

Although I began to put this together in 1983 I  recorded the stories with Steve Gorn in the early 1990's in Boulder, Colorado for NorthWord,My father had died a few years before and the last tale, a true story is about his death and four herons. 
I continue to tell the stories, going deeper hopefully in my capacity to bring them to life without manipulating them  (my attempt).  They feel more relevent today then twenty years ago.  Beside a good story never getting old; they are always fresh when they are brought out, released, and  shared.  But, our need to be reminded of our interdependence with the natural world, our abiding presence as connection - wilderness of our own heart..  is vital to our ability to live on this earth and to lessen the increasing propulsion of violence and greed that are destroying the world.   

One pathway to access that place in ourselves... that is not a place at all, but the open receptivity of direct engagement with our being that is all ready interwoven, part of - is through deep listening to such rich tales. My ever apprecation for your willingness to listen. And for having the good fortune to be a storyteller.  Open your animal eyes and ears..  Tell the stories to someone else.  laura
Click here to order

Women and Wild Animals - Author Notes Part II

I have never tired of telling LOK SNOWEDJAS and learning about the story.  My first encounter with it was in Strand Bookstore, where I saw a book  of Moduc
tales printed in 1904, in the wrong area and bought it -  because when I opened it, I read the first line  of a tale, " LOK SNEWEDJAS was a woman during the day but at night she became a bear." it was the final story that I chose at that time.  I  phoned up Ron Evans, a Chippewa-Cree Keeper of the Talking Stick who was living in North Carolina at far from the reservation where he grew up in Saskatchewan. He was building a boat in Barbara Freeman's (a storyteller) driveway far from any water. 

He called me back collect later that day and we spoke for three hours. I told him the story. He listened. I asked about meanings and symbols. He never explained anything to me. But he kept telling me stories, other stories,  anecdotes about his life and being trained to be  a storyteller or being in the bush with old hunters.  I was a bit
frustrated, having always in the back of my mind my seemingly seering questions. 

Finally I asked, "why do you think I chose this story?"   He said, "You did not choose
the story. This story has chosen you."  Getting a bit nervous I said, "Perhaps I should not be telling this Native myth."  He laughed and commanded, "It chose you.
You have to tell it now. Don't be impatient or you will gather a dust storm."

Click Here To Order

Women and Wild Animals - Author Notes Part I

In 1983 I  began gathering the stories that eventually became this recording.  It was  a process of cutting and pasting, listening and responding, to the fact that I had so many stories, both traditional and personal that were about the relationship between human beings and animals.  So many of them about women. A friend who was a  Jungian analyst said that I was living with animal eyes and ears.   The title WOMEN AND WILD ANIMALS came to mind  one morning and so the series of tales was born. 

The first time that I told these stories was at the Center for World Music that was in a storefront downtown Manhattan at that time.  We were a storyteller and three musicians (Steve Gorn, Julia Haines and Glen Velez).  The Center was packed.  The concert lasted well over three hours and none of us, audience included, seemed worn out at all. In that time the audience became  a traditional tea house audience anywhere in the world, responding, calling out, humming along, lost in deep silence or outrageously laughing together.  These stories seemed to touch a nerve, like an acupuncture needle.

Click Here to order

Indigenous People's Message To The World - Words & Music

In 1992 Marcos Terena, Articulator For Indigenous People's at The United Nations, organized a gathering that was to be the first time Indigenous Peoples from every continent would be in the same place. In the jungles of Brazil, just outside of Rio, a week before the First Earth Summit, The First World Conference of Indigenous People's took place.

Echoes of that seminal and ground breaking event continue to ring out. The event was closed to the public and non-indegenous peoples -- BetterListen! was called in to document on audio, the lectures and cultural music presentations.
The result is this award winning program produced by David Ison, endorsed by The United Nations, Starred Review in Publisher's Weekly,  is now available for the first time in digital format.
This project belongs in libraries, world music collections and is for anyone interested in human rights, sacred cultures and the preservation of the land and its first peoples.

-*Royalties from every sale go to help the cause of Indigenous Peoples.

Running Time:75 minutes. [Hear Sample on iTunes]

Buy From BetterListen! Note: All downloads sold from iTunes. Never used iTunes before? It's easy- just follow the directions!

Dance Without End music by Steve Gorn available on MP3

Storyteller Laura Simms and musician Steve Gorn in a collection featuring creation myths and tales about the origin of existence from Aztec, Inuit, Maori, Scandinavian, African and Native American cultures.

The performances of these thoughtful and heartfelt ancient and modern stories are a product of a longtime collaboration between Simms and Gorn and feature Gorn's world music orchestration.

Running Time:101 minutes. [Hear Sample on iTunes]

Buy From BetterListen! Note: All downloads sold from iTunes. Never used iTunes before? It's easy- just follow the directions!