Out of Berklee, a gift of music
Darfur inspires special project
The Berklee College of Music is well-known for reaching out to the local community, but that spirit of giving recently took an international turn with the release of "We Are All Connected," an 18-song CD inspired by the plight of the women of the Darfur region of Sudan, where thousands of people have been killed and displaced by three years of sectarian violence.
The project began in 2004 when Linda Mason , wife of Berklee president Roger Brown , traveled to Darfur with WBZ television news woman Liz Walker and Gloria White-Hammond, a local activist, minister and physician. When told that the group should bring a gift, Brown suggested that the school send music. So a songwriting contest was held among Berklee's students.
Of the dozen submissions, two songs, "We Are All Connected" and "To The Sudanese Women," were recorded by musicians here, then played for women and children during the trip.
The reaction was jubilant, with the women and children breaking into songs of their own. So when she returned, Mason called on the school to hold another songwriting contest, only bigger.
This time, the call went out not just to students, but faculty and alumni, resulting in an album that's a whirlwind tour of styles played at Berklee -- soul, world music, flamenco, spoken word, even country -- performed by a who's who of the Berklee community.
But one thing it's not, stresses a Berklee staffer who helped oversee the project, is a "best of" collection.
"We weren't really looking for the best Berklee person or songwriting; we were looking for people who really understood the topic, the subject matter," said Lynette Gittens , associate director for Berklee City Music, who performed on two cuts and was on the song selection committee.
The songs, several of which incorporate tape recordings of Sudanese women and children made during Mason's trip, needed to "speak to the women and children over there in a positive way, in a way that we encourage them to know that they're not alone, and that we're thinking about them, and hopefully we won't let anything happen to them, at least not on our watch."
Even though the performers are all veterans of studio and stage, writing about headline-making events far away was a new experience for many, and for Berklee as a whole, said Gittens.
"We've done a lot of things community-wise, locally, but on an international scale, we've never done that before as an institution," she said. "We hadn't thought about becoming this world-stage type player with a voice like this, but we knew from the response that we'd gotten with the first two songs that one of the best ways to reach out and to lend hope and support to the people who are suffering was through the music."
That mindset brought in two of Berklee's faculty, both of whom decided to submit songs for the contest fairly late in the process.
"I thought, 'Well, I don't really know anything about the Sudan, I'm a country writer,' so I kind of let it pass" at first, said assistant professor of songwriting Susan Cattaneo, of Cambridge. But some research on the Web led her to a topic -- a call by one Sudanese woman for people of the north and south of the country to come together -- and a title, "Where the White Nile and Blue Nile Meet."
The song, said Cattaneo, was her first with a political focus, but won't be her last.
"It raised a social consciousness in me that I really had not had before," she said. "I really feel very committed to helping that region in any way that I possibly can."
Damien Bracken , the school's director of admissions, scholarships, and student employment, initially gave the project a pass as well. But the native of Dublin changed his mind while watching a broadcast of last year's "Live 8" benefit concerts, held around the world and organized by his countryman Bob Geldof .
"I was particularly touched by the moment where he brought out the poster child for the original Live Aid concert, 20 years prior," said Bracken.
"He walked her out on stage as this beautiful young African woman, and he said, 'You see, we can actually make a difference.' "
To preview the songs or purchase "We Are All Connected," go to berklee.edu/darfur or cdbaby.com/ cd/berkleecom. 