Poetic and clear. Evokes beautiful images of the human and natural world.

10 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, FOLK: Folk Blues



Details:
"The Bible, Koran, and the Medicine Man
Are cut from the same stone.
One took the form of a wailing wall,
One took the form of a meteorite,
One took the form of the Sioux's peace pipe.
Her force, it rings the same, the same, the very same.
She strips away our coat..." (This Earth--first track)

Olmec is a singer-songwriter who was born on a farm in Texas, on the eastern border near Shreveport, Louisiana.

The first music he knew was Southern Black Gospel. At church, everybody sang--and what they expressed was basic and raw. It would be years later, living in New York City, that Olmeç learned music in another way: he learned to care about playing the guitar--while keeping the basic intent of the southern folk and church music.

Playing guitar led to writing songs and gave him a way to express his innate philosophical sense and his love of poetry--interests he had honed during years of travel.

Beginning in his teen years, Olmec had traveled/lived in such diverse areas as Alaska, California, New York, Iowa, New Mexico, Canada and Mexico. Spending time in all these places, he says, taught him to appreciate all sides of nature--and more sides of people.

This appreciation, as well as his concern for humanity, shines through in his songs. "Man is the only creature on the planet who lives in a non-organic way toward that which gives us life," he says. And he writes songs to serve as "reminders."

"We use the sun's fire as a reminder
Of what we're supposed to do,
A reminder that we've got work to do..." (The Reminder)