Damhnait Doyle Checks In

I am sitting in my hotel room in Ottawa overlooking the Rideau Canal, trying to breathe, reason and well, breathe again for a million reasons. In a month I head to Rwanda with group of artists and a record producer to make an album with local Rwandan Musicians for ” Song For Africa” as well as set up and teach them how to use a recording studio and film a documentary about it. Even more pressing on my mind is that tomorrow I head up to Parliament Hill to interview Canadian Senator General Romeo Dallaire about his insights into Rwanda, it’s people and it’s children and I am more than a little intimidated. In 1994 Dallaire was offered the UN command post for it’s Peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, he accepted and ending up flying into a whirling dervish of simmering racial tensions that was set up by Colonialists and funded by the French. Despite Dallaire’s pleas for more troops and requests for permission to raid the massive store of weapons that pointed to a very well planned mass slaughter, the powerful countries of the world decided that Dallaire’s mission should remain a peacekeeping one and ordered him to forget about the cache of weapons for fear of upsetting the balance. This inaction by the UN directly led to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 that killed at least 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It is easy in the western world to turn a blind eye when you hear words like Hutu and Tutsi, almost as if it is something from a book, but if you substitute the words Catholic and Protestant and imagine losing 800 000 souls on the island of Newfoundand in 100 days, anyone in their right mind wouldn’t believe for a minute that the world wouldn’t intervene to save us. But alone with a small band of soldiers Dallaire stood and tried with all his might to do everything he could to change the tides of civil war. From my understanding the years after he returned from Rwanda were mired in deep guilt and regret about every step he took and didn’t take and how the mission failed despite his greatest efforts, weighed down by what if’s and I should have. My question is how do you tell a man that will never believe himself a hero not only for the thousands of lives he did save and for the lives of their children’s children, that he is in fact a hero? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Perception can be reality

Perception can be reality. I admit this entry is being spurred on by the frustration of the week but it seems that lately truth gets trumped by prejudice or by one’s own preconceived notions of how things are. I’ve realized It is our job then (SFA’s) to better dramatize what happens with our aid money to Africa.

For today I would like to highlight a couple of myths:

” for all the aid money we’ve given Africa, we haven’t seen any results.”

This is simply not true. There has been tremendous progress within the continent. This year alone the US will take 14% of its oil imports from Nigeria and Angola. The continent itself before the economic downturn was growing at a rate of 6% per year which is remarkable when compared to Europe at 2.2% and considering the disadvantage of erroneous trade barriers. The problem is that comparatively the rest of the world is starting from a much higher base. Second, it admittedly was a learning curve on how to effectively disburse aid in its various forms. For many years we as a society negated the local needs and opted for a “father knows best” attitude when disbursing aid flows which was not always effective, efficient or optimal, but that has vastly improved over the years. Lastly, for this entry I would argue that our aid budgets are in reality dismal when we no longer conflate them with our defense budgets. For example, as it stands our true aid budgets for international development stands at roughly .35 of 1% of GDP and the US is close to .1%. With G8 economies reaching trillions of dollars, we are essentially throwing our pocket lint to the poorest people on the planet and wondering why this hasn’t been enough yet to spurn the return on investment needed.

” aid money just gets funneled into corrupt leaders.”

While there is some truth in this, what gets left out in the traditional media is that we are also complicit. During the Cold War era we famously prompted up our favourite tyrants and turned them into corrupt dictators in order for them to hold our interests so to speak. One of the best examples of this is Mobutu from the DRC (formally Zaire), which I’ll go on about at length at another entry. Secondly, corruption is bred from desperation which is obviously rampant in Africa. Lastly though is the lack of positive media stories when democratic progress is made. For example, the post-election violence in Kenya made headlines around the world but shortly thereafter Ghana held very successful democratic elections with an internationally recognized run-off but made very little splash in the mainstream media.

We’ll get it right one day.

- Darcy, CEO

George Pettit Interview with SFA @ EdgeFest

Alexisonfire recently just recently played an enthusiastic and rousing set on a rainy and gloomy Saturday at Edgefest. At the all day TO festival, lead screamer for AOF George Pettit sat down for a brief chat before taking the stage prior to their evening set at Downsview Park. With Metric cranking out the crowd pleasing anthems in the background, I got a chance to catch up with George, where the SFA supporting artist gave up some time to chat about his internet tv personae, the new AOF record, and how sometimes he just feels like a crotchety old man…..

Art and music have such an incredible ability to influence attitudes and behaviours, how do you feel about their ability to create real, as oppose to perceived change? If anything, what music can do, I think that it’s done before, and it did for me, is that it causes people to think differently than they would of if they had not heard it. Bands like the Dead Kennedys and Crass, hearing those bands when I was 16, it was really important in shaping the way I thought about things like politics. In the end it’s just music….it’s just music. The people who are going to make a difference are the people who are getting involved in politics, or activism. And these are probably better ways to change things. Art and music can only go so far….You will never change the world as an artist, but you can change it as an activist. It’s very easy to sit around and point out what’s wrong in the world, very few people have any sort of idea of how to change it or what to do….alot of the things you point out that you want to write about motivate you. Well at least AOF gets involved in ways in which you see fit…. Yah I know, I mean we vote. It’s almost overwhelming, easy to get discouraged. It’s tough to find something to devote 100% of your time to. The big picture is, the world is in peril and can look like a really dooming place, but there is a lot of hope as well. It is equally as beautiful as it is fucking terrifying. Your music kind of reflects this…..Yeah we sing about this on our new album a lot. We live in a very polar world. Sometimes bad things serve as perspective, so you can actually appreciate the good times. It can give you perspective. This contrast also appears in the title of your songs and your new album (Old Crows/Young Cardinals). How are you feeling these days, more like the former or the latter? I think they are both fitting in different ways. In a lot of ways we are young pups still, we always feel like we are perpetually sixteen years old. The older we get, we have more adult responsibilities, but in a lot of ways we are still kids and we enjoy stupid jokes and stuff like that. But then at the same time, you get out on the road, and you kinda feel like the old crow; you are well traveled, and have seen more than most, that can have a different effect on you. There are definite times when we feel like crotchety old men, but in the end we can come back around and realize we are all just kids. So you guys are touring Europe coming up (headlining Leeds and Reading), what is like playing there, compared to playing your home crowd at Edgefest? We did the main stage last year (Leeds and Reading) and it went over amazing, it was great. It’s growing there, it’s maybe not the same as it is here (fans), but it is definitely growing, it’s our second biggest place to play. They like music in general there….sometimes they care too much, the media is unstoppable. Aside from AOF, you are involved in numerous other projects….Yeah I played bass with Fucked Up at 2 shows (show with Vivian Girls and Women @ The Phoenix July 16th link). They are one of my favourite bands for sure. I played with them on some of their 7 inches, and I actually sang on the last track of that record, and we’ve become good friends. And you also have this internet tv program Strange Notes, where you take the time to hang with these artists and you really seem like a fan.…..I am a fan, it’s hard not to be! We’re songwriters, we’ve looked at all of those bands, they are on the same level. I wanted to see those bands talking on tv talking about what they do musically, and not get relegated to a 5 minute segment on a new music program. That’s one thing I thought was lacking; that there were very few television media points where a band like The Constantines, or Ladyhawk, or Jon-Rae Fletcher, could go and you could just talk to them for a half hour and let them talk about where they are from and what they do. You see a lot of bands go on tv, and they are on for like 5 seconds, and they do a potato sack race and then they are done. I don’t feel like I am any more emotionally invested in the band, and I am really invested in all those bands, I love them, I think they are fantastic. We just shot a new part Fucked Up episode. We are going to do an hour long episode on them, we also shot Julie Doiron interview. That one turned out really well too.

Much thanks goes out to George for this, check out more pics from Edgefest here. See y’all at Warped Tour this Friday!

- Peter

SFA at MTL and TO festivals this weekend

Julie and the crew at Osheaga last year in MTL

We are all pretty excited about being at Edgefest and Virgin Festival in Toronto and Montreal, respectively, this weekend. On Saturday we will be mixing it up at Edgefest supporting the boys in Billy Talent and Alexisonfire, and are looking forward to hearing their new albums live and having a couple words with these dudes backstage, great group of guys for sure. Check out Alexisonfire’s making of their new vid for Young Cardinals (link below), filmed on the Maid of the Mist in the Falls. AOF’s set is at 5:40 and BT is headlining the whole shindig at 8:50. Looking forward to hearing MTL’s Beast too….

Come say what’s up to Becky and Julie who will be holding the fort in Montreal, supporting SFA artist Eva Avila who is performing on Friday. Can’t believe Throwing Copper is back in the mix too…who knew.

Be sure to stop by our booths this weekend as we have some exciting stuff on the horizon and would love to hear what you guys think about it, and any spare change in your pockets that you could donate would go a long way to helping out our Scholarship students. See you out there this weekend, going to be a good time!

“Young Cardinals” Video (Behind the Scenes)

Song for Africa re-airing Documentary

We are pretty excited to have the SFA documentary re-air for the 3rd time tonight on Bravo!  It will air at 9 pm EST, so set your PVR, or just take the traditional approach and actually sit down live to enjoy it.  For those unfamiliar with SFA yet (this is basically our first blog posting), we created this documentary in the summer of 2007 with the help of acclaimed director Derek Horn, and Canadian artists Ian D’sa (the guy with big hair in Billy Talent), Simon Wilcox, Damhnait Doyle, and Luke McMaster (check out the trailer below).

The approx. 30 min doc will take you through some amazing scenes in rural Kenya as well as in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, situated in Nairobi.  Times are tough throughout the world right now, especially in Africa, where these economic shocks are felt harder than we could imagine, and to see the hope and joy on the faces of these kids facing the most dire of circumstances is uplifting and a reminder of how some of us have won the lottery of “where were you born”.

I look forward to hearing from you all and in turn I look forward to sharing with you what is goin in the SFA world concerning music, art, and our development efforts in Africa.