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HOPE IS A CREATIVE FORCE
Following the spirit and serving humanity as her guide, Hope has walked many paths flowing from the same source.
Hands in the dirt, beating drumskin, brushing color across canvas, holding a newborn babe, or gathering the tribe; Hope thrives when steeped in raw, fresh energy pulsing around her. She is a visionary who sees the positive direction she wants the world to move toward and takes the steps she can to manifest it.
After the birth of her daughter, to respond to her life shifting from touring full-time as a drummer with Nahko & Medicine for the People, Hope wanted to create more opportunities for women to be heard on a larger platform. After performing for years with Medicine for the People, Hope realized it is rare for women's voices to be equally heard in the music and festival scene, and that moving towards that balance benefits everyone. Women's voices hold an important frequency to our cultural healing. Hope is committed to helping women find their voice and share it!
MAnaFest is a festival that honors the sacred feminine; it is run by women, featuring over 20 female performers, many workshops led by women, live artists, dancers, a red tent, and more- all on the beautiful grounds of tropical permaculture retreat center across from the ocean! The festival has continued to grow, creating work opportunities for over 50 women per year. MAnaFest is inclusive of all people, everyone is welcome.
2024 Together We Rise is the theme of this upcoming 6th annual
MAnaFest Jan 19—21st
Hope's Musical Journey continues forward!
Has recorded 3 solo albums, Bring to Light, Purify, and Back to the Mother. Her sound has continued to evolve and has been described as "A Sensual Hip-notic journey of World Beats infused with Maternal Soul."
Recently, when Hope evacuated Hawaii in the 2018 lava flow, she temporarily relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountains where Hope met Robin and Aradhana. She recognized a shared musical resonance that galvanized a collaboration that evolved into CedarWing. Their combined skill was electric! Drawing from their diverse backgrounds and experience in folk, soul, hip-hop, and world rock music, these ladies synergized a fresh sonic experience.
Cedarwing is a soulful trio of talented women with an inspiring frequency woven through tapestries of beautiful harmonies, rich melodies, sophisticated strings including banjo, ukulele, and guitar, and a world percussion groove featuring bajo Cajon creating a sound they call 'world soul folk with a groove'. CedarWing recently recorded their first album which has not yet been released! ...wait for it, seriously, it's worth it!!
She practiced primarily holistic home and water births, in the U.S., Indonesia, and Africa, where Hope worked at a village birth center with the African Birth Collective. She is a graduate of the National College of Midwifery.. Protecting the next generation has always been sacred and close to her heart. Birth is the moment a fresh soul enters the world and a woman transforms through an extraordinary rite of passage to become a mother. Hope has always felt honored to spend endless hours by a woman's side in her most primal and powerful birthing moments. The humility and awe in holding a new human being in its first breaths have given Hope a deeper connection, compassion, and grounding in life. This has inspired her to work to raise awareness about families' birth options and the importance of their choices. Hope created the Artemis Healing Arts education program and taught 'Rhythm & Birth' natural birth classes in Peru, Brazil, Bali, and the US, and in 2016 she was featured at the Healthy Earth Healthy Birth Conference Findhorn Ecovillage, in Scotland.
Before that, Hope was a midwife, assisting over 450 births
The drum has always been a tool of spirit for Hope
She has been drumming for over twenty years. Her first teacher was Babatunde Olatunje, who encouraged her to keep playing, and to always play with love. Drums have taken her around the world; Hope studied with teachers in Brazil, Peru, and West Africa. She shared the drum with children in India and taught rhythm to youth groups in Guatemala. Hope has taught over 2,500 students of all ages; she uses drums to facilitate empowering women's voices in workshops and confidence building with at-risk youth groups. She is honored to channel the mystical sonic fusion created when using indigenous instruments on a modern stage. Drums are a powerful connection to our ancestors. As ancient healers have always known, when infused with positive vibrations & intentions, drums are potent medicine.
Touring internationally and playing drums with Nahko and Medicine for the People
since they were first heard of, Hope and Nahko shared a chemistry and frequency that catalyzed Medicine for the People to catapult from busking in the streets to performing in front of well over a hundred thousand people in a few short years. Nahko's music has a message that serves as a call to the global conscious community for justice, truth-talking, and positive social change. Together, they activated a very special movement. Their music brought people together who were healing and wanted to make the world better.
From the day they met around a campfire, in 2007, Hope played by Nahko's side across the US, to Bali, to Australia, to Jamaica and beyond until she was 6 months pregnant and it was time to make a change to prepare for her daughter.
To Hope, that was the next step in her journey...
Hope's connection to nature began as a child and continues to flourish.
She has been drumming for over twenty years. Her first teacher was Babatunde Olatunje, who encouraged her to keep playing, and to always play with love. Drums have taken her around the world; Hope studied with teachers in Brazil, Peru, and West Africa. She shared the drum with children in India and taught rhythm to youth groups in Guatemala. Hope has taught over 2,500 students of all ages; she uses drums to facilitate empowering women's voices in workshops and confidence building with at-risk youth groups. She is honored to channel the mystical sonic fusion created when using indigenous instruments on a modern stage. Drums are a powerful connection to our ancestors. As ancient healers have always known, when infused with positive vibrations & intentions, drums are potent medicine.
Much of her artistic passion is expressed in rich color and paint.
Painting since she was a child, Hope studied art at the university level, and has experimented with nearly every artistic medium she could get her hands on. As a result, many of her works incorporate poetry, stone, metal, feathers, pencil, marker, watercolor, acrylic, spray paint & and mixed media to create textures of natural earth elements to tell the story of her journeys and create the magic and worlds seen through her dreams, travels, and visions. Hope often wields powerful bold swaths of color and delicate lines to tell a story of women's power, strength, and beauty. Creating images of empowered women has been a lifelong devotion; in response to being raised in a world where women have not been treated fairly or equally to men, and the earth has been ravaged due to this imbalance between masculine and feminine forces.
Her newest works in progress include a series of large acrylic paintings on canvas (5ft.) and a miniature SpiritKeeper series of meditations and avatars in mixed media on paper (10" to 14"). Hope's art is currently shown at the beautiful Wild Heartist Gallery in downtown Hilo, Hawaii.
Hope loves to teach and give back to her community
Join her- at one of her juicy upcoming workshops
Wild & Natural Birth Retreat
5 Day Birth Retreat DONA Certified Doula Training with Jesse Remer of MotherTree Birth, mothertreebirth.com
All three workshops will be on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Questions: hopemedford@gmail.com
From the article "Spreading Hope"
by Noah Fish of Face Forward,
a professional artist collective based in Minneapolis.
Face Forward is dedicated to humanity through art:
"The rare energy Hope drums with is rooted in the vitality she acquires from the world itself. She pulls inspiration from the spiritual places she's traveled along her journey, ranging from tribes in Africa to Indian Reservations in New Mexico. She is a hand percussionist, and performs playing the Afro-Peruvian box drum, called the Bajo Cajon, and the West African Djembe drum."
"Hope is the percussionist for Medicine For the People; a dynamic collaboration that began in 2008 when she and Nahko discovered a transcendent connection while playing music together around a campfire. Since then, Hope and Nahko have remained the innovative twofold of a band continuously adding new members and instruments. They began as an acoustic, single drum, and horn ensemble and years later added an electric guitar and drum kit. I was blown away by the onstage energy the first time I saw them at Project Earth this summer. Nahko has a folklore-like voice that makes each song a story, which is fed by Hope’s thumping backdrop on the drums. Medicine For the People is unlike any other band I’ve seen live. Their energy is formed to make a vessel for the audience. It’s music for the people. Hey, Medicine For the People, I get it now."
Hope is also a conservationist with an extraordinary resume that most recently includes serving on the board of directors for Honor the Earth, a Native-led environmental justice organization run by Winona LaDuke and the Indigo Girls. Winona LaDuke is one of the most prominent environmentalists of our time and ran as Ralph Nader’s VP for two separate elections. Hope was added to the organization to use her art to promote conservation. She’s perfect for the position, as she credits the environment for her artistic capability."
"Hope’s artistic calling ignited with painting.
Her work is displayed on the covers of her albums. Her paintings are evocative and entail significance alongside the visionary beauty she crafts with mixed materials such as stone, cloth, paper, wood, metal, and acrylic paints. Each of her paintings has sentimental value. One of my favorite pieces is Faith, which shows a figure soaring freely through the air; expressing how liberating life can be when you have faith in your instinct."
'Faith' published in We'Moon Calander 2012
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