DreamSinger
Healing Songs and Inspirational Music Celebrating the Human Spirit

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Future Song
Play Song - Slow Connection      Play Song - Fast Connection

DreamSinger is the ethereal voice of Demian Yumei singing her message of hope through the musical artistry of Stacey Young. Demian's songs are the culmination of a lifetime of healing, a response to the wounds that life can sometimes inflict and the grace of healing that the human spirit can embrace.  


DreamSinger Debut CD

Demian:
At
five or six, I remember dancing alone in our living room to the music of Swan Lake.  Against my parents' wishes, I would sneak across a major highway behind our house and stand inside an adobe bus stop for the pure joy of hearing my voice bounce off the walls.

Creative expression was a part of my being, but for a number of terrible reasons the freedom to speak, to express one's true self was forbidden in my home.

Silence was the rule - no singing, no laughing, not even crying - especially crying.

When my parents discovered through 6th grade chorus that I could shine as a soloist, everything changed. My father became my vocal coach.  Suddenly, I was singing all the time. He told me what to sing and how to sing.  He gloried in the accomplishments of his precocious daughter and his fine mentorship, and never passed up an opportunity to let me perform our songs or the poetry I wrote in honor of him.

I felt special during that time. I had value.

One night - I was 12 years old - my voice cracked and gave out in a performance.  I had been sucking on hard candy waiting to sing.  No one told me that it would coat my throat and affect my voice.  I was also physically and emotionally drained.  It had been a long rehearsal and looking back, I can see I was anorexic at that time. Not because I thought I was too fat, but because, subconsciously, I was trying to disappear.

The strange sound coming out of my mouth and loss of control frightened me, but my mother's sweet and reassuring smile helped me to continue and finish the song. I made it through the performance though I never regained my composure or the power in my voice.  Nothing awful.  I just didn't sound extraordinary...I sounded...well, like a nervous average kid.

No mountains of praise this time, but one person, a considerate nun, did come over to tell us I sounded "sweet".

My father graciously thanked her and mentioned I normally did better.  I felt bad I didn't do better, but I was proud I hadn't quit.

When we got out to the car, my father said, "All right. If you're going to be like that, you'll never sing again."

My mother, never able to challenge my father's authority, just looked ahead. I'll never forget the look on my father's face or the anger in his eye. I had humiliated him and he was dead serious.

As we drove home that night, I stared out the back seat window, stunned by the injustice, silently raging at my own powerlessness and terrified at my father's perceived power to make good on his threat. He had forced me to quit dancing. He could force me to quit singing.

I resolved to be perfect.

In that moment, I lost my voice.

For years afterward, I sang like a tape recorder - technically correct and well rehearsed, but unable, terrified to improvise, ashamed of my paralysis when called upon to be original.

It wasn't until a traumatic remembrance in my 31st year of life...more like a terrible, truth-naming of all the abuse in our family, when the family lies were exposed and rationalizations challenged, that the stones burying my voice were shaken. Two years later they crumbled to dust.

With eyes closed and sitting on a kitchen floor, I sang and wrote, "Future Song" a result of the healing path I walked the preceding year.

I found my voice.

That was 17 years ago and I've been singing ever since.

I have to sing, and I have to tell you, and as many others as I can, about the wonder of the creative process, the joy of finding your voice and the celebration of healing.

DreamSinger is my musical medium to sing the songs that have waited my whole life to come out. It's a love affair with the creative process and my way of loving and being loved by Spirit. In allowing the Song to sing itself through me in this way, I hope to inspire you to find your connection with your creative source, and in doing so, discover just how much love you have inside...and how much love Life has for you.

Keeping the Dream,
Demian,
     ~DreamSinger

 

Contact us through email:
keepingthedream@gmail.com

Or write to us:
Keeping the Dream
P.O. 238
Craley,  PA 17312

 

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Beautiful CD design created  by David Arfsten of I Zone Designs, www.izonedesigns.com.

 DreamSinger Website © 2004 - 2007 by Demian Elainé Yumei, all rights reserved.
All songs, writings and material on this website © Demian Yumei, unless otherwise noted.  No unauthorized reproduction without written permission.
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