Driven by this transforming human creativity

Taking people into that wood beyond the world

Where the healing takes place

Where metaphors arise

Telling stories of light and darkness

My testimony

Because I am

 

“Being a sound scale, unrestrained and uninhibited. Pulling inward what is heard on the outside and bringing outward what lives inside. Cutting marrow and bone. And soaking up life. And expressing that life for the other to feel it in his guts. To be guided by Amalias voice is to tread into places one will never nor could ever forget.” (Bieke Vandekerckhove, author)

 

Singing like a warrior sitting around the evening fire telling tales of her many quests, staring into the healing flames. Underneath the midnight stars, feeling the vastness of the universe. Sensing the resilient life in each and every one of us. Feeling the connection with the wisdom lying in the depths of all things. Life and its many wonders.

Just like the troubadours have been doing for many centuries, Amalia moves along earth’s many roads & landscapes and sings to those who will listen to. Come take a rest around that fire, recovering from life’s many challenges.

She takes you along into that wood beyond the world, a world of myths and archetypes. Raising her voice about the things that grieve her and make her happy, the things that move and disturb her.

In the summer of 2007, after a trip into the vast Scandinavian woods, Amalia recorded 14 of her songs, carved a lino and printed the cd’s cover by hand: WILD MILD. She gave her first concert in an old windmill in the plains at the Belgian-French border, presenting the cd to her friends and family. Ever since then her wandering into that world of music and performing has been growing steadily like a tree bending and stretching its stem to reach the light. The cd found its way into many people’s hearts, and friends telling friends telling friends made her songs reach out far beyond her own stretch of wood. Later on Amalia met other musicians along the road, with whom she often plays together. The journey continues, ever so fascinating, the stories grow. Singing and playing together, healing and confronting. Yet every so often she rides out there on her own and sings her tales. At country weddings and cafes, in churches and chapels, in the open fields and in the woods, in old barns and wind mills, around campfires and on ritual happenings, under the stars…

Amalia is currently working on new recordings. Check www.wanderingwoods.com regularly to find out more.

 

THE RIVER BENDS

Being the youngest of four children, Amalia Vermandere was born in Belgium (1979) out of a father-singer-sculptor and a mother-healing woman. Making things was as normal as breathing. She drew, painted, sang and wrote throughout her childhood. But as she grew older, she sensed the urge to know of the deeper driving forces of that expressive power. Where was the well?

Life’s river brought her to Norway. It was a fascinating time. She lived in a deep forest, near a lake. The waste lands, wild woods and mighty rivers reached her poetic core and installed a precious gem. It was a time of awakening. This life streaming through her, she sensed, is connected to all that is. Something indestructible, a thing of utter beauty, lies at the root of all things. It was a deeply religious experience for her. Religion in its pure sense, that is, connection.

And how about that well? How about that expressive stream? Throughout her studying years she kept on writing and drawing, but found no further meaning for it. Rainer Maria Rilke challenged her. In his Letters to a Young Poet, he answers the young poet’s question, whether Rilke thinks his poems are any good, as follows: “You are pointing your attention on the outer world, which is what you should not do. Nobody can help you, nobody. There is only one way. Question yourself. Find out what makes you write; find out whether that reason has roots into the depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether it would kill you if you had to stop writing. And above all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: do I have to write? Search in the depths of your being for an authentic answer. And if that answer is affirmative, if you can answer that question with a powerful and simple “yes, I do”, then tune your life to that need; your life, even the most trivial of moments, should testify of this instigation. Then you are coming closer to nature. Then you are trying, as if you were the very first human being, to put into words that what you see, live, love and lose.”

Those words appealed to her. And she dived into it, digging for an answer. She left all creativity behind. It would have to dawn upon her, it seemed. The answer to that question will emerge from the depths and reach the surface, if it be worth something. She focused on her studying. She describes those years as being purifying, reminding of a monastic life. Dropping the redundant, learning about dedication, discipline, mapping her strengths and weaknesses, leaving her comfort zone to truly learn new ways.

It was in this large river bend she found the treasure of music. The answer to Rilkes question came clear and sharp. “Yes I do”. Singing and composing healed and strengthened. What a wonder this was! As she grew deeper into that wood, she sang more and more, to all those who wanted to hear. And they too were often touched and healed. She’d found a deeper meaning in her expressive powers as it gave shelter to those sitting around the crackling fire.

One can best serve the world and its many needs by living out one’s full potential, by developing one’s talents with dedication and devotion.