Espero La Luna

Rupa Marya--Deep Medicine

Espero La Luna

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Espero La Luna

In Honor of International Working Women's Day

Rupa Marya

Mar 09, 2025

Transcript

I wrote this song to herald the end of patriarchy, to call forward a gentler world, though the raucous sound of ska, trumpets and trombones. It is told through the lens of someone crossing the desert, making the perilous journey on foot, walking between the false reality of a border that divides the ancestral trails of the Tohono O'odham people. Many people die of this and exposure on this path because of US immigration terror.

Here is the LIVE version of this. You can find the album wherever you find your music. We recorded this album at a sold out show at the Independent in San Francisco. At midnight, it was my birthday and we added the recording of Happy Birthday to You on the album. Warner Chappell contacted us to pay $455 for the rights to include the HBTY on the album. So we paid it and then sued them, because there was no way that song was owned by anyone. Turned out Warner Chappell was extracting millions off of film production companies or artists who used the song.

We won and got $14 million back to artists from the corporation. I got my money back and asked the judgment include a proclamation that the song was forever in the public domain. So now you can sing it in a restaurant or post it in a video online without the parasites coming to collect royalties.

The Commons are the things that are necessary for life—the things that belong to no one and everyone. Let’s liberate the Commons, starting with a song. We can call it the Happy Birthday Movement. And working women+ can lead the way.