And join me, an ethnographer and award-winning singer-songwriter and scholar, for a week of slow travel and slow food, walking across northern Spain on the famed “camino de Santiago,” diving deeply into our sense-vaults as ethnographers, songwriters, artists and ‘scholartists.’ Accepting this invitation will help reignite your sense of wonder, joy and creativity in the world, life, and most of all, yourself.
About the Workshop and Retreat
Songs of Santiago” is for musicians, creative writers and intrepid travelers who want to reconnect with their creativity, experience deep cultural immersion, and develop their voices as songwriters who desire mentoring, encouragement and “permission” to do so. “Songs of Santiago” offers a culturally immersive songwriting retreat, led by an anthropologist, singer-songwriter and Fulbright scholar, in rural, one-of-a-kind locations around the globe, immersing you in the sounds, sights, flavors and languages of that place. This is slow travel at its best. Unlike other songwriting retreats, the “Songs of Santiago” experience plunges songwriters into local village life along the historic Camino de Santiago, hosted by local families, and introduces music, culture and foodways into guided daily writing prompts. Retreats are co-facilitated with local singer-songwriters, and songwriting in multiple languages is supported and embraced. Participants will leave this retreat with an increased sense of connection to their authentic voice as creatives, songwriters and performers, with a felt connection to a new and exquisite part of the world.
About the facilitator:
Kristina Jacobsen, PhD, is a singer, songwriter, ethnographer and ‘peregrina’ who leads the Songwriting Major at the University of New Mexico. In July 2022, she completed the Camino Francés and received her “Compostela” (certification of completion) when she walked from Burgos, Spain to Santiago de Compostela, Spain (498 kilometers). A Fulbright Artist and Scholar (Italy 2019-2020), Kristina has been nominated for three New Mexico Music Awards. As a long-time practitioner of mindfulness, Jacobsen completed her introductory MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) training at Duke University’s Center for Integrative Medicine and graduated with a Certificate in Mindful Leadership (with Mark Lesser and Nikki Mirghafori) from Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center in 2021. She enjoys bringing mindfulness into the songwriting process in beautiful places around the world. Kristina speaks Italian, Spanish, Norwegian and some Navajo.
Fifteen years ago, she was in graduate school studying anthropology. She was suffering from “analysis paralysis,” and felt like anything she wrote—academic or otherwise—would never be right, and would inevitably offend somebody. So why write anything at all? Then she went to her first songwriting workshop, and the floodgates opened. She started writing songs, and the words started flowing: in her songs, but also in her dissertation, which later would become books and recorded/published songs. Eventually, one genre of writing began to feed—and then become synergistic with—the other.
Kristina is the author of the award-winning book, The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language and Diné Belonging (2017), and the co-author of The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook: Exercises for Writing, Visualizing, Sounding and
Performing Data, with poet Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor (forthcoming, Routledge 2024). As a scholar and songwriter, Kristina is particularly adept at creating creative space for scholars wanting to transition into creative endeavors, providing the mentorship, support and accountability needed for making this transition. A gifted teacher, she is a huge believer in the power of walking and contemplative practice to deepen our songwriting craft and our sense of connection to nature, to ourselves and to one another.
website for ‘songs of santiago’ with all details of the trip itinerary, costs and logistics:
when: october 12-21, 2023
where: northern spain on the Camino de Santiago (begin Astorga, end Trabadelo)
deposit deadline: May 1st (deposit)
registration deadline: July 1st
Interested? contact kristina jacobsen at: kristinajacobsen@gmail.com to schedule a conversation and to register.