The moment we're in

We can listen to almost any song, anytime, anywhere. But that's not a substitute for using our own bodies to make music with other bodies. Most of us have stopped singing together at all, even though it's good for us. And if it's been a while, you might have forgotten it also feels great.

I was sitting around a solstice fire with the Beehive, a camp from Kiezburn — the German cousin of Burning Man. Someone started singing a simple German round, "Hejo, spann den Wagen an," and slowly other voices started trickling in. Like the fire, it grew from a small melody to a roaring chorus. Some of the English speakers probably didn't understand a word, and it didn't matter. They could feel it, and joined in anyway. But when was the last time you sang with people? With your family? Your coworkers? Strangers in a park?

You might join in at a sports game, or in church if you go, but for more and more of us, making music has gone from something we did all the time to an occasional round of Happy Birthday.

What Agapic Chants are

Agapic Chants start with something a person is actually living — a struggle, an inspiration, whatever's pressing. We see what's behind that, and it's often not what we expected. Then we turn what we find into a simple musical repetition.

Be just the way you are
I'll be happy to be with you

This is the chant I wrote with Jim. It came out of a specific moment, but you can sing it to yourself, to parts of yourself, to other people, to life… take it how you want. What matters is that we're actually singing — using your throat and your lungs and your tongue and your whole body — and even better if we're singing together.

A secular hymnal

I'm an artist with a bit of a strange ambition: to build a secular hymnal. We're too fragmented now to have songs everybody knows, so I want a set of original, creative-commons songs that anyone can sing, anywhere, without signing up for a belief system to do it.

There's a special-needs teacher in Indiana who sings Be Just the Way You Are with her kids. She told me she'd been looking for a song with real spiritual depth that her whole class could sing together in a public school. And there it was. That's the thing I'm trying to make more of.

Preview Open the Chantbook →

Try it yourself: open Be Just the Way You Are. Use the track to sing along. Find someone you trust — your kids, your partner, your closest friend — and sing it together.

This is not a product. It is a practical answer to a real absence — a small act of rebuilding something we have quietly lost.

Where the money goes

When someone and I make a chant, it exists — but it lives as a rough demo on my phone. To get it to anyone else, we need a studio: that's where it becomes something you'd actually want to sing along to, something I can put on Spotify or SoundCloud. The studio is the biggest cost by far. The rest keeps me fed and housed while I do the work.

So the unit is simple: about €2,000 brings one chant into the world — forming the chant together, preparing it for the studio, recording and mixing costs, and the work to finish it and release it. Your €2,000 pays for one specific song to exist that doesn't yet. Ten of those complete the first hymnal.

Become a founding supporter

If you become a founding supporter, your name goes in the work. When I make a chant with someone, their name goes on it. You've already seen it: with Jim. And when it's possible, I'll come to your town and hold a chanting evening — your living room, or somewhere bigger. So far these have run anywhere from 15 to 200 people.

About Nathan Vanderpool