Music can invite and encourage contemplation and connection, solitude and community.  Participating in arts of all sorts allows, invites, and encourages perspective and reflection.

At times, this also makes space for a place of rest.

With those ideas in mind, take a listen to the differing ways these musicians invite you into all of this.

There are so many ways music can speak to, and with, these shifting and changing times. For this part of the adventure of Music for Shifting Times, come along on a journey that takes in dark and light, but always with hope as a companion.

It is a time of year when thoughts turn to Ireland. It is the time of Saint Patrick's Day. The whole of this time of year, from February through May, is known as Patrick season, for that reason. At the time of Saint Patrick in earlier years in this series, I reflected that the story of Ireland, its diaspora, and its people, is one of making it through hardship and change, and finding ways to do that while keeping music in the heart, and sharing that music.

Dark and light, hard news and good news, in public life and in personal circumstance, always shift and change. It is vital to balance hard and discouraging with good and hopeful; that's what makes it possible to seek hope in challenging times, and to share that seeking and finding with others. As other musicians have through the music we have shared thus far in this series, and these artists do here.

The turning of a year invites looking forward and looking back. The ancient Romans knew this, hence Janus, from whom January takes its name, faces in both directions. Seismic changes in all areas of life seem to be almost normal in these last years, which is certainly a looking-both-ways statement in itself.

It is winter in the northern hemisphere.

Unsettled weather in every sense of the word, in every part of the world, at this December.

Yet, that very unsettled aspect can offer encouragement and means to treasure connections, to deepen them, to look for those things which we hold in common rather than what divides us. Yes, that can be hard, but the long term consequences of the alternatives are harder still.

Autumn: a season turning leaves, of changes in landscape, of conversation, of reflection, of renewal. A season of preparation for holiday celebrations, and for thinking about what oncoming winter may hold. 

Music for shifting times: that's the title we came up with for this series of stories which I've been writing since the summer of 2016. Wherever you find yourself, things do seem to be in continual shift and at times and at an accelerating pace. Finding one's way through that sort of circumstance is an aspect musicians have often thought about.

Here are several musical ideas for you to consider, some practical, some mystical, all thought provoking.

Think of songs you may know: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, We Shall Overcome, The Coming of the Roads, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos. The first frames questions about war and sacrifice in terms both gentle and direct, the second is a gospel song adapted to civil rights and other causes, the third is a story about greed displacing people and landscape, the fourth a ballad which frames questions about identity and compassion in a news story about migrant farm workers. 

Connection with place, with landscape, with well-loved and familiar things often comes with connection with each other. That's an idea we've explored from several perspectives in this series. In shifting times, physical place, whether you are present geographically or you are visiting through imagination or through memory, can offer a sense of comfort, of connection, of hope.