Creageivity 30 - with Singer Halimah Collingwood

HALIMAH COLINGWOOD, aka Halimah the Dreamah, has been making music all her life, even claiming that when she was born, instead of the usual scream on entrance into the world, she sang a high C, shattering all the windows in the delivery room. 

Her stories of a life in music are many and varied and feature the duo Blackburn and Snow from mid-sixties San Francisco, at a time when she went by the stagename of Sherry Snow. Many of her Bay Area acquaintances went on to become internationally famous artistes (although Halimah somehow only told us of her being in the room with Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey and Bob Dylan after the podcast was done!) 

With two singles and an album’s worth of songs completed – eventually released in 1999 as Something Good for Your Head by Blackburn and Snow – Halimah turned away from the music business after a profound inner prompting which began a spiritual journey that took her to Indonesia, and a Shepherd’s cottage in Scotland. This was not before she’d also become a vocalist with the highly regarded Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, a period she speaks of with affection.

After some time in Europe, Halimah and family moved back to the USA where she is now settled in Arcata, California. Along the way she returned to college to study philosophy, which she wryly describes as ‘something very practical’, and co-founded the Redwood Interfaith Gospel Choir – whose track He Made a Difference is our intro and outro piece. She also DJ-ed on the local radio station for many years with her Ethnic Excursions show. 

Her motto, borrowed from the I Ching, is Perseverance Furthers. We couldn’t agree more!

Blackburn and Snow: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYAKa9ZSpPw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Cw0KxRLwY&list=RDH2Cw0KxRLwY&start_radio=1

Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (with the song Halimah sings on our podcast):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTz7nABgIH4&list=OLAK5uy_lMEgr_MuA_OdLKR7oWkHJ2B0Z-KATGbkY&index=1

If you feel you're too old to be creative, or too creative to be old, then Creageivity is the podcast for you!