A Song

COME, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

Some days I lament that perhaps music has a limiting factor on the help that it can do in developing nations but then I remember what an amazing galvanizing force it was/is. Dozens of musicians from Canada to Kigali all bonded over this mystical language that usurped any bonds of status or upbringing.

Life long comrades indeed..

iTunes album: http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/song-for-africa-rwanda-rises/id377195935

Everyone knows Ian D’sa as the oft big haired guitarist for the now Canadian vets Billy Talent – but what fans don’t know is what Ian and the rest of his BT boys have done to help great causes.  While Aaron Solowoniuk raises funds & awareness for the MS Society, Ian has been a staunch supported of SFA from the get go.  Participating in the first SFA doc back in 2007, Ian has continued to show his support of Song for Africa’s second project: Rwanda: Rises Up!  Although he didn’t join Tim Edwards, Sarah Slean, Damhnait Doyle, & Steve Bays on this most recent trip to Rwanda, Ian has provided one of the stand out tracks on the sister album (released to iTunes June 22nd on Sony Music!!) entitled “Land of a Thousand Hills.  The song is fantastic and Ian once again shows why he belongs to one of the great Canadian bands around these days.  Check out the lyrics below and please support SFA and our programs by purchasing the iTunes album!

Land of a Thousand Hills

by Ian D’Sa

For love and for country, it’s never the same

To men of high power, the two don’t equate

When leaders of nations, and brokers of hate

Continue to play the most deadly of games

They shuffle their demons, and deal out their sins

Hand out their weapons, like candy to kids

Pull on their people, like puppets on strings

To play out their war, in the court of the king

And the fires keep burning in the middle of the night

The rivers keep flowing like the tears from your eyes

You can still hear the voices of all those who died

In the land of a thousand hills

We drank through the summer, and soaked in the sun

While over the ocean, the killing begun

They followed their leaders, and fired their guns

We had no idea, of what was to come

And the fires keep burning in the middle of the night

The rivers keep flowing like the tears from your eyes

You can still hear the voices of all those who died

They echo, they echo, like shots from a gun

They echo, they echo, like the rhythm of your drum

For one hundred days, you could never see the sun

In the land of a thousand hills

(Guitar solo)

And years will have passed, ‘til the world would find out

The truth of unthinkable violence, so loud

It shattered the heavens, and silenced the crowd

The highest almighty, cannot save us now

Oh my brother, oh my brother, tell me what have you done?!

We’ll hide in the church, ‘til the bulldozers come

There are men with machetes, and children with guns

We’ll never forgive you, for what you have done

And the fires keep burning in the middle of the night

The rivers keep flowing like the tears from your eyes

You can still hear the voices of all those who died

They echo, they echo, like shots from a gun

They echo, they echo, like the rhythm of your drum

The rest of the world will expose all their lies

And all those you silenced will once again rise

For one hundred days, you could never see the sky

In the land of a thousand hills

For one hundred days, you could never see the sky

In the land of a thousand hills

The doc screening and album Launch Party happen this Thursday (June 17th) at the Tattoo Rock Parlour – with amazing performances by Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat), Sarah Slean, Tim Edwards (Crash Parallel), John Angus (The Trews) and Damhnait Doyle.

People are starting to spread the news as well…
Sarah Slean and Damhnait Doyle sounded wonderful on Canada AM this morning performing one of their songs from the album. And you can also look/hear some of us talking up the documentary and album on Etalk and Breakfast Television, and various radio programs around town this week. We’ll post more information when we get it.

Hope you’ll be able to come out and join us this Thursday!

http://samaritanmag.com/goods/rwanda-rises-up-documentary-and-album-coming-this-month

I hope you enjoy these collaborations that span the globe as much as I enjoyed putting them together.

Darcy Ataman

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

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