Ann Mortifee
Musical Shaman
by
LISA TANT
Originally published in BC
WOMAN Magazine August 1997)
At 17, West Vancouver singer/song
writer Ann Mortifee discovered her calling when her improvised
songs from the play Ecstasy of Rita Joe moved the audience to
tears. It was that awakening that led Mortifee, now 48, to use
music not as a star vehicle, but rather as a healing tool to
drive herself and others down a path of self-discovery. Mortifee's
own course has taken her from a Zululand cradle to Indian ashrams,
to New York's bright lights, and now to her home in the North
Shore mountains. Over the past three decades, she's forged a
celebrated career by constantly straying from the straight-and-narrow
and into uncharted personal territory.
Twice, she walked away from the promise of international
stardom after earning reviewers' praise for her performances
in plays and musical scores. "I felt like I had been offered
the world in New York, but I just couldn't go down that road.
I knew that something deeper was calling me." That instinct
has unfolded over the last decade during which Mortifee had a
child (Devon, 9), and became world renowned as a musical healer.
In 1992, she was presented with an Order of Canada. "My
own healing has become my work," she says, as a trio of
finches chirp in the back-ground. Her holistic workshops - first
launched nine years ago at Hollyhock Farm on Cortez Island -
Mortifee uses music to "contact your deeper feelings and
your own value in life." "Musical ability and self-confidence
are insep arable," she says. "You can have tremendous
talent but if you're shut down emotionally, it can't get out."
Another detour along her musical highway was David Feinstein,
a California psychologist who listened to her music while writing
Rituals for Living and Dying. He approached her to write an album,
"Serenade at the Doorway", for people facing death.
"I was in the middle of a middle-age crisis," she recalls.
"I realized that it doesn't matter what the death is - the
death of a dream, marriage or youth - all of these transitions
are hard to make." Without marketing, the album found its
way into cancer, AIDS, and palliative care clinics, and steered
Mortifee down another life-forming path.
Music as a healing tool became Mortifee's message at global
conferences and workshops for caretakers of the dying.
One of the album's tracks, "I Won't Stay Silent Any
Longer", became an an them for survivors of sexual abuse,
and forced her to face her own childhood abuse at the hands of
a gardener. "It made me realize that everything in life
is a two-edge sword. One of my deepest woundings is turning out
to be one of the gifts I bring to help others. The experience
becomes part of your story as opposed to this dreaded secret
and dark place of pain that you can't share with anybody."
"Music has been my therapist, my friend, my consolation,"
she says. "Every person should have a creative outlet -
whether that be painting or baking muffins - every person needs
a place to pour their soul."
Mortifee's latest work is a Phantom-scale semi-autobiographical
musical called "When the Rains Come". A love story
set in South Africa, its characters mirror her own inner struggles.
While searching for a major production company, she's also working
on the book version of"Serenade at the Doorway" with
Feinstein. Perhaps it's because stardom's bright lights are twinkling
again that Mortifee insists she's heading into an other soul-searching
hiatus. "Yet," she says, "if you're absolutely
sure of who you are, and where you're going, then chances are
you've wrapped your life up in a package and you're set in your
ways. If you don't get trapped in being depressed about self-doubt
- if you can share the discomfort - it becomes a natural part
of being human. I'm committed to finding purpose in life. In
pursuit of that purpose, you're living that purpose."