Press
This page presents a compendium of coverage and content related to DocSong and documentary songwriting practice in regional and national media outlets.
NAfME CONVERENCE | May 21, 2021
Live Documentary Songwriting Session
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for MUSIC EDUCATION | DocSong board members Drs. Jody Kerchner and Malcolm Brooks recorded this documentary songwriting session for their talk at the February 2021 conference of the National Association for Music Education. This video helped illustrate the documentary songwriting process to a national audience of music educators.
IDEASTREAM | October 21, 2019
Sharing #MeToo Stories Through Songs
CLEVELAND | Feelings about sexual harassment and assault often go unspoken, but Nora Willauer thought music could get people talking. The master’s student in cello performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music decided to embark on a documentary songwriting project sharing people’s #MeToo stories.
INSTAGRAM FEED
The Latest from @DocumentarySongwriters
Today we begin our "Sustain the Song" initiative! Our goal: reach $500 in monthly support by May 31st to create one documentary song each month for our Music in Conversation series. While social media pushes us toward outrage and news cycles pull us apart, DocSong creates spaces for genuine connection through music. Link in bio to become a monthly supporter! #SustainTheSong #MusicAsConnection #MusicinConversation #weneedmusicmorethanever
NEW ON THE BLOG! An Extended Legacy: Reflections on “I Feel So Connected” 🐝
Our latest documentary song “I Feel So Connected” written by @renovaremusic features Lexx Davis, a member of My Sistas Keeper, a Black female beekeeping collective in Cleveland, OH.
Through beekeeping, Lexx discovered connections that extend far beyond honey production, transforming her relationship to her family and community.
Read about the lessons we’re taking away from Lexx’s story on the DocSong blog!
#MusicinConversation2025 #DocSong #legacy #community #storytelling #documentarysongwriting
🎵 OUT NOW: “I Feel So Connected” 🐝
Today we’re thrilled to release the newest documentary song for the Music in Conversation project, featuring the powerful story of Lexx Davis from My Sistas Keeper, a Black female beekeeping collective in Cleveland, OH. The song was written in collaboration with @renovaremusic as a part of their A Hive Song project.
This collaboration explores how beekeeping creates unexpected connections that EXTEND between humans and nature, parents and children, and individuals and community.
Listen to the full song now and discover how stewardship of our natural world can enrich our lives and create a legacy for generations to come.
Visit our blog next week to join a conversation about the lessons we can take from Lexx’s story.
#EXTEND #DocumentarySongwriting #DocSong #MySistasKeeper #BlackBeekeepers #CommunityStories #MusicinConversation
🐝 “We had a hive in our backyard...”
Meet Lexx Davis, a passionate beekeeper and a member of My Sistas Keeper, a Black female beekeeping collective based in Cleveland, OH. Through caring for a backyard hive, she and her family discovered deeper connections with each other, their extended community, and the world around them. Lexx recently shared her story with Renovare, as a part of their annual documentary songwriting project, inspiring the newest documentary song in our Music in Conversation series.
We look forward to sharing Lexx’s song later this week, and—exploring how stewardship of our natural world can enrich our lives and extend a legacy for generations to come.
#EXTEND #DocumentarySongwriting #MySistasKeeper #Beekeeping #Community #MusicinConversation
This past week, executive director Caroline Rex-Waller and lead teaching artist @khalidantonio had the opportunity to travel to Honolulu, HI to speak to teachers at the Kakau Mea Nui Writing Matters conference and participants at the 2025 PACRIM conference, hosted by the University of Hawai’i Center on Disability Studies.
We talked about the power of deep listening to shape how we tell our stories, and modeled the documentary songwriting method for an incredible group of engaged community builders and change makers.
Documentary songwriting continues to bring together people across difference (and oceans!) We are so grateful for the opportunity! And we can’t wait to come back!
#DocSong #documentarysongwriting #universityofhawaiimanoa #pacrim2025
📝 The wisdom of fifteen years: Malcolm Brooks reflects on documentary songwriting 🎓
We’re proud to share Malcolm’s insightful new paper, “Innovation at the speed of music: Reflections on introducing a new composing method over fifteen years,” which explores the journey of documentary songwriting from its beginnings to today.
Check it out on the DocSong resources page!
In this thoughtful reflection, Malcolm traces how the method evolved, the obstacles faced when introducing innovation, and the surprising discovery that the method’s greatest impact has been in amplifying voices of marginalized communities.
As Malcolm shares in his paper: “Maybe an inductive songwriting method is less about discovering fresh topics to sing about and more about listening to people and honoring them by expressing their experiences through music.”
Fifteen years of connecting stories to songs. Fifteen years of building bridges through music. Fifteen years of a vision becoming reality.
#DocumentarySongwriting #MusicResearch #InnovationInMusic #DocSong
ADDITIONAL HEADLINES
Documentary Songwriting in the News
WERU | Maine
Documentary Songwriters on WERU Radio Hour
APRIL 1, 2016
The "WERU Family Radio Hour" with Belfast's Scot Cannon features Chloë Isis, Will Foote, and Malcolm Brooks. The broadcast includes documentary songs by Clio Berta, Chloë Isis, Rohan Edwards, and the Push Farther Project. The program also features a demonstration in which Chloë Isis and Will Foote compose a song live in the studio.
FRESHWATER CLEVELAND
DocSong Virtual Concert to Benefit Rape Crisis Center
AUGUST 6, 2020
More than three years ago cellist Nora Willauer took an interest in documentary songwriting. She was intrigued by how therapeutic the art could be, especially after she started talking to women who are victims of sexual misconduct or domestic violence. So, in 2018, she resolved to help tell these women’s stories through Documentary Songwriting.
Young Artists in Quarantine: Caleb Edwards
JUNE 23, 2020 | This is part of a series highlighting the stories of young artists in quarantine. The period of free time that many people are experiencing has led many students to find a new independence in art when they have the ability to create just for themselves. This features Caleb Edwards, who will be a senior at Watershed School in Camden in the fall.
Lyric Writing with Malcolm Brooks
AUGUST 21, 2019 | Malcolm Brooks, a composer, performer and teacher and has created a program for writers, musicians, and ordinary citizens to express their feelings through lyrical song writing. During a week-long writing workshop with teens at Maine Media, he and his student Khalid Taylor used this method to help us turn a prose piece into a song. He said, "We don’t have enough songs that talk about our emotions,” and our song was full of such emotion and surprise.
Documentary Songwriting at Sweetland School
DECEMBER 14, 2017 | In small groups the Explorers and Innovators met once a week for 6 weeks with visiting artists Malcolm Brooks and Alex Wilder. The children shared ideas and created original songs. Each week children recorded their voices and songs and listened back to reflect on their sound and ideas. At our Solstice celebration children shared original songs with families. We noticed a high level of commitment and ownership of ideas.