Originally Published Sep 7, 2023
Ann Mortifee seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough few artists even dream of, when she left the music industry in 1975. EMI Records had just produced her second album and set up a world tour.
Yet Ann’s inner voice clearly stated, “if you go down this path, you will not fulfill your destiny.”
She resisted at first, but finally told her music director, “I’m leaving music, and I’m going on a pilgrimage.”
AM: “They could have sued me because I had this contract with them, a huge contract. And they let me out of it. Then I went into a depression. Like, what was that about? Am I afraid of being successful? Why did I do that?”
She would later refer to the next three years as one of the most incredible periods of her life.
AM: “I ended up building a chalet in Whistler where, at nighttime, I wrote my first musical, which I called ‘Reflections on Crooked Walking.’ It’s a family musical about my original dream in many ways. It was about four characters who find they are the only people awake in a town full of sleeping people. They set off in search of a cure to the sleeping sickness. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was the template I was born with.”
Why do I look around and everyone’s asleep? Nobody’s aware that we’re in paradise. We’re in this beautiful world, and we’re killing each other? My consciousness was starting to develop and wanting to do something like ‘The Ecstasy of Rita Joe’ (1967 & 1971) again, something that actually could transform culture. We need to wake up.”
“I was living with a man by the name of Paul Shaw, just a wonderful person.
I’ve had three Pauls in my life. I must have known it was going to be Mr. Horn, but I had to have two others to begin with.” (She laughs)
“We wrote, we built the chalet and skied. I learned to be a carpenter.”
“Paul was an economist with the UN. He was full of life. He was an incredibly interesting human being.”
“We took our bicycles, we went to Paris, where my sister lived. Then we peddled down the Loire, all through the grape growing region, picking grapes along the way. Next down to the Côte d’Azur, to the boot of Italy, then up to Venice and finally back to Paris for the winter where I studied karate and took up painting and writing. I used to go to the L’Opera, where they had the perfect acoustics, and make money for us.” (She laughs)
CC: Make money?
AM: “Well busking, I guess you call it, but in those days you just could stand on a corner. You didn’t have to get a permit.”
“It was an incredibly powerful journey, where I was learning a tremendous amount about many many things.”
“In Paris, Paul met an old friend on the street who was working in Geneva and looking for someone to work for the International Labor Organization with the UN. “There are two positions, one’s in the Philippines and one’s in Beirut, you can have your choice if you want to come.”
“Paul and I talked about it. He said, ‘why don’t we go to the Philippines? There’s no war there, It’s beautiful.’”
I said, “I think we should go to Beirut because, how can you understand mankind if you’ve never lived in a war zone? Whoa, did I live to regret that on occasion!”
“We lived in a seven story apartment. We were the only people in the whole apartment building and most of the buildings around us had been bombed out or badly damaged with people living in apartments that still survived. We were often without electricity and water.”
“That was when my music got darker. I found instead of a high soprano voice, I was building this darker, deeper voice. I ended up developing a four octave range. It had obviously been there, but I never had used it.
“We went through many very powerful experiences and then toward the end of the year, we went to a lot of the Arabic countries.”
“I wanted to travel through the Middle East so I put on a hijab. I’d pretend I was a mute and deaf and get a friend to write, in Arabic, the town I wanted to go to. Another note stated, I need a hotel that’s safe for women. I had gauze over my eyes so that they didn’t know I was a Western woman.(She laughed)
“Toward the end of our year, we had to be evacuated. There were only two flights going out and we had to leave within the hour. One was going to Rome, the other was going to Bombay, now Mumbai. Paul had to go to Rome, I chose to go to Mumbai.”
“I think I was there for about 4 or 5 five months on my own. That was when serendipity really kicked in. I was led all the way, and found books that opened doors for me. It was a whole new world. That was where I learned Kriya Yoga and started to meditate. I worked with Mother Teresa in the House of the Destitute and Dying and also in the leper colony.”
“Whether it was working in a Palestinian camp in Beirut or being with Mother Teresa,I was opening to a deeper place in myself, and felt I would be happy staying in Calcutta and working there.”
“She really showed me what unconditional love was. I had that feeling before when I was a Christian, in the early days when I was passionate about my love for Jesus. I’d seen a template of unconditional love and I wanted to be like that.Then being with Mother Teresa was a profound gift.
“Mother Teresa said to me, ‘This is not your destiny. You know that, don’t you?’And so, life called me back.”
“When I came back to Canada, Bill Millerd, at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver, who has done so much for my work, wanted me to do another one woman show.”
“So I ended up writing about my journey and called it ‘Journey to Kairos.’ In ancient Greek they had two kinds of time: Chronos time, from which we get the chronological ticking away of our lives, and Kairos time, which is a mystical place where it’s ‘timeless’ time. You’re taken into different experiences that open you and transform you in some way, which was what my journey had been.”
“I had been blacklisted by the record companies because I had left EMI and I felt sad about that.”
CC: How did that affect your life? Did it affect your life?
AM: “Not really. My career was bigger than when I left. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know whether ‘The Ecstasy of Rita Joe’ (1971) caught up with me or what it was.I did five or six one woman shows over the years and I loved it because I could say anything I needed to say.
Ann had known Valeire Hennell from about age 18, they had started working together.
AM: “We were a dynamic duo. We started with her writing lyrics and me singing.She was so gifted,now she runs her partner Rick Scott’s career. I owe her so much.”
“We were best buddies and we had the same spiritual interest. We were always questioning, why are we here? How do you follow your heart and how do you know if your heart is leading you astray, or if it’s the right direction?”
After Ann came home from one cross country tour, she and Valerie took Reflections on Crooked Walking to Bill Millerd.
“So my first musical was produced (1980). I played the Wicked Witch Opia, well known as Madame O.” (She laughs)
“I was just branching out. Then Valerie and I decided we’d start our own record company.”
They named it Jabula Records – Zulu for rejoice. Their first record was Reflections of Crooked Walking, followed by Journey to Kairos (1980) and later Born to live (1983). Jabula Records became well known and a larger record company asked to do their next album.
AM: “They would pay for it and distribute it, but I would still own the music.”
Most artists don’t own their work.
AM: “I just never thought it was fair. When they are done with you, you don’t even own the things you’ve created.”
“So I did the album and they brought a producer in to work with me. He had worked with Cat Stevens and I thought it’d be a great combination. When he first arrived in Vancouver, I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t calling, and I kept trying to get in touch with him. It was before cell phones. When he finally called, he said, Oh, Ann, let’s meet today at five. So I arrived, and he had already recorded all the bed tracks.
“I heard them, and I said, ‘this isn’t what I wrote.’”
“He said, ‘Oh yeah, it is. We just wanted to get it more up to date.”
AM: “Up to date with who? I can’t sing on these. They’re not right for me. I’m so sorry.”
“And he said, ‘Well, you know you have to.’”
“So I called the President of the company and I said, ‘listen, I’ve never been treated like this.’”
“He said, ‘well, if you don’t sing on it, you owe us $120,000.’”
“By then I’d already had my son Devon, and I didn’t have $120,000. So I went back to the contract we’d signed, and nowhere did it say I had to promote the album. So I just sang the best I could. AND When it was finished, I went home and I said, ‘I’ve lost my way. I am in the wrong place. This is not good for me. It’s not good for Devon. I am not doing this anymore.’
“So I closed my office down. I finished off any concerts I had to do and I totally let go of my career.”
“I said, ‘ To whom it may concern (speaking to the universe at large), I’m never going to sing again until you bring someone to my house and you tell them to tell me exactly what I’m supposed to write about,I’m finished. I’ve lost my way and this is not the life I want. So, I quit everything.’”
“Then Hollyhock (on Cortes Island) started calling me, asking me to do a workshop.”
AM: “What kind of workshop would I do?”
They said, “Well, singing.”
I said, “I don’t know how I sing, I just sing.”
That started a new period in Ann’s life. She grew to love just being, singing, and learning with people.
“Ironically enough, I made more money than I ever made as an artist.”
“Anyway, for two years, I did nothing with music at all. I had gone to Ashland, Oregon to do a workshop there, and I’d been asked to give a public talk about what I was going to do.
“I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just do it. I don’t have a theory. I can’t talk for an hour about myself and what I’m doing.’”
But Mortifee had worked with Jean Houston an extraordinary woman who, Ann says ‘took people on extraordinary mythic journeys.’
“She’d say things like, ‘We’re now in the ancient Temple of the Sun God, Ra, and the High Priestess steps up to the altar, and as Ra rises over the horizon, she does an incantation.’ Then she’d hand me the microphone, and I’d have to make something up. It was an unbelievable opportunity in improvisation!”
“David Feinstein was going to be doing something on personal mythology the same night that I had to give this talk. So I told him what I had done with Jean Houston, who he happened to know, and I said, ‘I could make up songs for you.’”
“He responds, ‘you mean you just make up songs in the middle of my talk?’”
“I said, yes.”
“To this day, David has no idea why he agreed. He went back to his wife Donna, who is now one of my closest friends, and told her ‘Donna, I’ve just done something so stupid and I don’t know how to get out of it.’”
“Donna’s very psychic, ‘It’s something good, do it.’”
“Anyway, it was the hit of the evening. I just make up songs about whatever and he came out of it saying, ‘that was the best fun I’ve ever had.”
“I didn’t see him for two years and then I got a call after I quit music. I think David was living in Florida at the time.”
“He said, ‘Anne, it’s David, I’m coming to Vancouver to do some talks and I’ll be in Seattle the week before. Rather than flying all the way back home, would you like a guest?’”
I said, ‘Yeah, come, I’d love to see you.’”
David had just written Rituals for Living and Dying.
‘He said, ‘I remember when I told you about that book, you had said, wow, that would be amazing to write an album for people facing death. I’ve been thinking about that. Why don’t we do that this week while I’m with you?’”
AM: “I don’t remember saying that, David.”
“‘I think it’s important. let’s do it.’”
AM: “We ended up having the most fabulous week. We talked about two layers: there’s the person who’s dying to a dream, a way of being, an opportunity, their own life; or somebody is dying with an illness. Then there’s the way you can look at it from a transpersonal point of view, and the way you look at it from a personal one where you’re dying or someone you love is dying.”
“We talked about it, created an outline and then he said, ‘Okay, so let’s start.’”
AM: “How do we start?”
“‘Well, let’s talk about the first song.’”
AM: “So we talk about the first song. Then he’s got his computer and a little recording device and he says, ‘okay, so go ahead.”
“Let me just close my eyes and see if anything comes.”
“So I’d sit there sometimes for 15 minutes, just thinking about the first song and trusting something would come. Then I’d suddenly go, ‘it’s coming.’ He’d turn on the recorder – and this is no kidding how we’d do it – I’d go, ‘To every life must come an ending,’ and he’d type it. “To every birth must come a death.’
“We wrote the whole thing like that, and really changed almost nothing. Just added a verse maybe here or there, because we tried to figure out whether we should do it personally, or from a kind of a philosophic point of view. It ended up going from very personal to more abstract.”
“Then he said, well, maybe we should take some photographs of you to put on the cover. He’s pushing me to get this out there as an album. ‘We have to get some musicians for you.’ Well, that was when the serendipity was unbelievable.”
“While we were there I get something in the mail from a woman I didn’t know and she had taken a photograph of me when I was doing my very last concert. Usually they’re not supposed to take photographs while you’re singing, because the flash can be distracting. She said, ‘but I had to have a photograph of you at your last concert.’”
Only this woman lost her film. Then, two years later, the daughter of one of her dearest friends died, and she was asked to photograph the final ceremony. When the pictures came back, one image showed two hands holding a sprig of spring flowers over the girl’s coffin, superimposed over the photo of Ann singing at her last concert.
AM: “David and I looked at each other and went, ‘Oh my God, this was meant to be.’”
The image was used for the cover of ‘Serenade at the Doorway.’
AM: “I wasn’t working with anyone at the time and he said, ‘well, we’ve got to get you into a studio.’
“It’s got to be so organic. I’m not doing a thing. I have to know I’m on the right road, a hundred percent.”
“So I was taking Devon to see his father, Paul Burton, in Penticton and Paul said, ‘I’ve met the perfect band for you, they’re just wonderful.’ So by the end of the day, all the charts were done, we’d rehearsed everything.”
“I’d already built a studio in my house, and they came down to Vancouver and we recorded it.”
“While I was thinking about going into the studio, I got a call from Chicago asking me to come and do the keynote address for the first palliative care hospice care conference in the world.”
“I said, ‘why have you called me?”
“They said, ‘we just feel you’re the right person.’
AM: “Okay. I’ll come.”
“So I then take the finished product to the place to make the CD and he says, ‘we’re so backed up, we can get this to you, but it’s going to be at least three months.’”
“So the day before I’m getting on the plane to go to Chicago, I get a call and they say, ‘it’s ready.’”
AM: “What’s ready?”
“Your CDs are ready.”
AM: “It’s only two weeks since I gave them to you.”
“Somehow your name got to the front of the list.”
“So I filled two suitcases full of CDs, sold every one, and within three months I was going to nine countries in Europe to work with the dying. That started a seven year period during which I did a lot of this work. Then I started doing concerts again, and I was back in the saddle.”
Links to other posts in this series:
Top image credit: Ann Mortifee giving a one woman show – courtesy Ann Mortifee.com
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