Support the publication of „Songs of a Midwife“ Písně porodní báby

Songs of a Midwife is our gift to all women who are going through perhaps the most amazing time of their lives, becoming a mama. For all the beautiful creatures that come into the world. And for all those who accompany women on this journey of profound transformation. Come and give them this gift with us.

You can listen to the birth songs and be carried along by them, and you can also learn and sing them to yourself and your belly, your baby and bigger kids, your inner woman, your sweetheart, or the women you support during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum.

These are Songs that have come to me on my life’s journey, from the depths of Soul as well as from many cultures near and far. All of them speak to my heart and singing them I feel at home, free and connected to the depths of womanhood. 

The time has come to share them and send them out into the world.

I trust they will bring blessings to all they reach, not only for the great journey into the unknown that is entering motherhood.
And so, after all the years, I have accepted the call to record and send out into the world birth and women’s songs celebrating the transformation into motherhood with all its beauty and challenges. And I am very fortunate to have women close to my soul with beautiful voices and some great musicians to join in and come along with me, and thus the loose band Medicine Women has come to life.

Songs od a Midwife are born to

 * To help you tune into the birth journey to the unknown
 * To caress your soul
 * To make you feel safe
 * To give you new strength and joy in life

Ženy Medicina or Medicine Women – is the name of one of the songs and also the name of our singing group – I am grateful for the beautiful  cooperation with Domča, Monča and Zuzka, women I met on my journey who accepted the challenge to create, rehearse and record together multi-part songs that are all woven from the common thread of childbirth, motherhood and womanhood. With this album, we want to caress the female soul, especially in the moments of fragility and power of the upcoming motherhood. I am also grateful and excited that my family is involved in the making of the album.

What songs can you look forward to?

On the album Songs of a Midwife you will find original songs, folk songs from Moravia and Slovakia, but also from Africa, Mexico or Tibet, as well as composed or medicinal songs some of which we translated into Czech.
Among them is our modern „hymn“ of the midwife, which was created by setting to music an ancient prayer of traditional midwives, whose legacy we continue in the Art of Midwifery.
I Midwife by God
Where I can, I will help
Where I cannot help
I leave it to God 

Songs have always been a part of my life.

During my pregnancy different melodies came to me and while giving birth to my babies I helped myself with sounds and songs, sometimes accompanied by a drum, sometimes by a guitar, which spontaneously flowed out of me and completely transformed my perception of space-time and I could, with the words of one of the songs
“With confidence, sail to meet my baby,
With each wave more and more ,
Diving into my depths
To seek my Sun in the starry darkness”
Katchamama

This unique project that has been gestating in me for quite a few years. We need you to help the Songs of the Midwife to be born in its full glory and bring the message of love, confidence and feminine togetherness to all expectant and deserving moms and their families.
It would be our joy if you would join us in supporting them with your blessing.

Who is behind the project?

Katchamama and Women Medicine

Katchamama
I accompany women on their blessed journey to have a baby. It is a great honour and joy to welcome into the world the Beings who come here and to be a support to their families. I care for women at all stages of life and often in doing so, a song will inadvertently emerge as a caress or encouragement. I love music and singing and anything with deep roots and it is my passion to peel back the layers of civilization and return to what is natural, pure and alive. In 2020, I co-founded The Art of Midwifery where our goal is to return to the living essence of birth, childbirth and the transition of woman into mother. 
In terms of music, I have released an album of original songs with my sister Markéta and Michal Turek, Vyrostla tu kwiatčka (2012, re-released in 2020), and with the band ZeMě I have compiled a double album and songbook ZeMě Písně (2018), mostly folk songs that relate to the cycle of the year and the festivities during it, such as Mardi Gras, Opening of the Wells, May Day and Soulstice.

Women Medicine
The core of the group consists of four women, Kača – Domča – Zuzka – Monča. Diverse, amazing, beautiful women-mothers-goddesses each of us on our own path and in our own phase of life. We are united by our love of life, nature, what is between heaven and earth and our fascination with birth and the human body and soul. And we’re all blue-eyed blondes too :) 

We enjoy singing and creating with our voices.
We have also invited the amazing musicians Michal Turk and Petr Korbelář, as well as Viktor Janoštín, Anička Kodríková and Jan Kotulán. We are very grateful to them for their great musical support and valuable advice. Jana Lewitová was a great support in opening and exploring the voice. Markéta Kotková kindly provided us with a print of the Old Czech coutnice pattern for the CD cover.

Zuzana Rýdlová
Songs spontaneously bring us into deeper contact with the themes that are currently vibrating in our souls. Medicine Women strikes the strings of femininity and motherhood so that anyone who needs them can listen or sing along. We all put a lot of love into making this CD, may it breathe on you as we sing together. The Songs of a midwife caress the womb :)

Monika Krátká
I am a passionate creator of Life. In addition, I love water, nature, Love, my horse, family, freedom, caring for other women and any kind of creation using my body – moving, drumming, singing, touching, painting… Being part of Medicine  Women is a great Joy for me and an opportunity to fulfill a dream – to create with my voice a project so close to my heart and with people on the same wavelength. Thank you! 

Dominika Hrzánová
Songs, singing and music have accompanied me on my journey from a very young age. They were a beautiful and supportive help during my pregnancy with my son. Where I could immerse myself even more in my body, pelvic floor and breath. The connection between the songs and this sacred time gradually began to intertwine with the School of the Art of Midwifery, where songs are our daily bread. 
Over the summer, the idea of approaching Katcha to sing and record her song Baba’s Prayer as part of my project for the Art of Midwifery School. However, Katchamama surprised me with her similarly tuned radar and invited me to record the entire album. And so it is happening and it is a great honour and blessing to create birth songs together  

The Art of Midwifery

is an association that was created to support and celebrate the arrival of new beings into the world, and childbirth as a transformation of woman into mother as a naturally loving, intimate and deeply transformative process that leaves a profound imprint on us for a lifetime. Our goal is to connect and provide education to all who have as their mission the support of women and families at the time of a child’s arrival into the world.
As part of the Art of Midwifery, we have hosted a nearly three-year-long School of Midwifery, where songs also have a place, and so it has become a gathering place for like-minded souls, which has fostered and inspired the idea to record Songs of a Midwife, and the nucleus of the Women in Medicine group
www.umenibabictvi.cz

What will we use the money for?

We are at the stage where we have had many days of tuning, co-writing, rehearsing and creating arrangements for each song.
We’ve even had our first successful recording day! And there are more to come.
We need to pay for the recording costs – two to three recording days with a good sound engineer and equipment. (Thanks to Radek Horak for his openness to record not in a studio but in an acoustic space. This also gives our music juice, we record live :)))

Afterwards we will process the recorded material in the studio for a few days, which requires a lot of concentration and additional finances.
In the next stage we will commission the pressing of a CD with printing, paper sleeve and booklet, where the words and chords to the songs and a few of their stories will be, so that you can easily sing with us anytime. The booklet seems like a small thing, but it costs about 1/3 of the total cost of physically producing the CD.  

We also need to do the artwork and text for the cover and printing of the CD, hence the nice graphic design. We would also like to convert the resulting album to digital format so that it is listenable for those who no longer have a place to listen to the CD, although our priority is a CD that has a body and is just a nice thing to not only play but also to look at.

And in the end, we would like to make some music videos so that the songs can reach as many women (and men, of course :)) as possible and be an inspiration to them along the way.

Thank you very much for your support and we believe that Songs of a midwife will fill your hearts with much love.