Saturday, July 03, 2010

Embed and breakfast man: Billy Bragg

This is quite special - Billy Bragg, in a hotel room, covering Joanne Newsom:



This is part of the Voice Project, which works with women in Uganda:

For over two decades war has ravaged Northern Uganda. It is Africa’s longest running conflict and it has spread to Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo. Joseph Kony’s LRA has made abducting children and forcing them to fight his chief weapon of war, even making them kill their friends and family members. Many abductees and former soldiers escape but hide in the bush, afraid to return home because of reprisals for the atrocities they were forced to commit.

The women of Northern Uganda - widows, rape survivors, and former abductees have been banding together in groups to support each other and those orphaned by the war and diseases so prevalent in the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps. And they are singing songs. The lyrics let the former soldiers know that they are forgiven and that they should come home. The songs are passed by radio and word of mouth out into the bush, as far as the Sudan and DR Congo. And it’s working. Former LRA are returning and for the first time 24 years the region has a chance at real peace.

The Voice Project is an attempt to support these incredible women and the peace movement in Uganda, and an effort to see how far a voice can carry.

The project builds a song chain - Ugandan singers cover an artist, then that artist covers another, and they cover another and... well, you get the picture. We watch the videos, generating sponsorship and advertising revenue, and the money goes back to Uganda. That's a good thing.


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