per0835-voce

8:35 PM

Voce: Italian for "Voice"
Avatar Worlds Sing Out on the Internet

Wendy Sue sends her "voce" to Finland, Wisconsin, Alaska ...

words by Eva Way
photo by Barbara Traub

Digital Be-In Netcast Reporter Eva Way catches singer, songwriter, visionary entrepreneur Phil Harrington before the voce performance, an international chant via avatar worlds and the internet.

The Voce: A dream of Phil Harrington and Paul Godwin to perform global chants and music

DBN: We've been hearing that an exciting performance is going to happen at the Be-In involving something called voce . . . first why don't you explain, what is voce?

Phil H: It's a lot of things. It's an attunement and it's also community of hearts and souls around the world.

Be-In: Could you just be a little bit more specific?

Phil H: About 7 or 8 years ago when I was coming back into singing I discovered various techniques to open the voice which I started to share with friends. I put those techniques together to bring people into being able to speak and sing togeher in the moment. I became powerful at opening that space up for myself and other people. And a friend gave it the name voce. It's the Italian word for voice.

DBN: So what happened in the other room tonight?

Phil H: In the other room we did the preliminary voce exercises.

DBN: So there was a group a group here in San Francisco chanting and then there was a group where else?

Phil H: Two years ago when I was doing a voce in San Francisco, Mark Pesce came up with the idea of doing a voce on the net. He introduced me to Paul Godwin, who's the producer of voce on the net events. OnLive gave us the technology to be able to do it. Kevin George is the guy who's coordinating that for us. We have a website to create a place where musicians and singers can jam together. Our website is www.voce.com. The intention is that the voce website will become a voce server, which people can pull down to do their own voces around the world, opening up to include musical instruments as well as voice. But the main thing is the quality of the felt experience. That's what community is.

DBN: How can people get in touch?

www.voce.com or they can email to libertyb@netcom.com

DBN: People who want Phil Harrington's world-beat CD (called "Voce") can find out about it at home.earthlink.net/~philharrington