Welcome to the Vocal Playshop
A safe place to sing.
Hi! I’m Kasia Aynur, a singer and writer of songs, poems, and essays. What I’m most passionate about these days is creating circles where women can feel safe to open up their creativity and sing.
Here are some songs I’ve written specifically for these circles:
Song circles braid together the work of soothing the mind, tending the heart, and creating beauty with song. Sessions include instruction in vocal technique, playful improvisation exercises, and simple songs enjoyable for singing in groups.
We all come from long lines of women who worked together with their hands, often in circles, often while singing. When we do the same, we tap into something that lives deep within our ancestral memory. It feels right, like coming home.
My vision is to channel beauty into the world through sound, and encourage a widening of the human senses via the harmonious, authentic expression of all women.
Your authentic voice is beautiful, powerful, and needed.
My mission here on Substack is to explore together the ways we can always remember and walk in that truth. I see this unfolding in three parts:
As a songwriter, I love sharing the gift of song that pours through me. Every month or so I share a new work in progress.
As someone who’s always known she wants to guide women in singing, I’m also growing in my voice as a leader. From that lens, I share singing and creativity exercises that I’ve created, discovered, and remembered from my own training.
As a global citizen, I come from a diverse lineage, and have traveled the world learning about music. When we share songs, we carry so much hidden within them: traditions, emotions, recipes for life; hints of the composers and practices that support harmony among the beings of this planet. I’m also using this platform to release previously unpublished interviews I’ve recorded with songwriters, traditional song carriers, and ethnomusicologists.
My name reflects my Polish and Anatolian roots, though I spent my formative years in San Francisco, California before moving to İstanbul in 2018. I performed and released music at a steady clip from 2012 to 2020, sometimes under the pseudonyms Chicken Mama and Kasia Moon.
My academic background is in psychology, which I passionately studied at the undergraduate level at Mills College. I did several internships and published research via UT Austin and NYU, chiefly in the subject of cognitive neuroscience and social cognition.
Ultimately, I decided to develop myself as a musician instead of an academician, but my passion for understanding the voice still ripples out with a blend of scientific and spiritual inquiry. I love language, and am obsessed with how the words we use reflect our inner state, and how we might sculpt our expression with the highest of intentions.
My song babies are born with the intention of lifting empowering, beautiful thoughts into the air.
I’m always happy to hear from my readers and listeners.
Love,
Kasia Aynur
For more about my current musical offerings, click here.
