Teaming up with the non-profit organization Mercy Corps, the students, faculty and alumni of Berklee College of Music have reached out to aid the women and children of Darfur by creating a benefit CD of Berklee artists, now available on iTunes. Through the production and distribution of the full-length compilation album, "We Are All Connected: Berklee College of Music Reaches Out to the Women of Darfur" Berklee students believe they have had a unique learning experience with a strong global impact.
The project grew out of a 2005 visit to Darfur made by Linda Mason, wife of Berklee College president, Roger Brown, and chair and founder of Bright Horizons Family Solutions, an international family support organization. As part of a small student competition, the Berklee songwriting department selected "To the Sudanese Women" by Farah Siraj and "We Are All Connected" by Andrea Whaley to give as tokens of compassion and respect to the women of Darfur. According to the president and his wife, there was no better way to show Berklee's concern and admiration for the people of Sudan than to share the gift of music.
Before Mason departed for Darfur, she left the Berklee Women's Network, a group of female faculty members, with the challenge of coming up with ideas for a more inclusive project to benefit Darfur. What arose was a larger songwriting competition, resulting in a full-length compilation CD to benefit the Mercy Corps Darfur Fund.
Sixteen songs were selected in addition to the two tracks brought to Darfur in 2005. The selection committee included Mason, songwriting department chair Jack Perricone, professors Leanne Ungar and Karen Wacks, staff members Shannon Kim and Lynette Gittens, and Laura Guimond of Mercy Corps.
First and foremost, the Women's Network wanted the project to be a learning experience that encouraged the strengthening in musicianship of all students involved. Through hands-on experience, they came to understand the full scope of Berklee's mission, which, according to the college, is "to educate, train and develop students to excel in music as a career."
Equally important was the power of the album to reach out interactively to the women of Darfur. To achieve this, voice recordings of the women of Darfur, brought back by Mason, were incorporated into many of the tracks.
The women were amazed that there were people across the world who cared about them enough to "not only write songs about them, but also to include their voices on the record," said Lynette Gittens, assistant director for Berklee City Music Programs. Through the CD project, participants were able to form a "women-to-women, across-the-ocean sort of link," said Gittens.
The combination of lyrics and voice recordings gave the album a raw and authentic a cappella sound that was brilliantly "westernized," according to Gittens, who performs on two tracks. The successful world-music style of the album alludes to the human bond made possible through music.
Professor Sheila Katz was inspired by the album to finalize earlier plans to introduce a course that promotes dialogue amongst students on race relations and cultural diversity. Gittens said, "['We Are All Connected'] made Sheila strive even further for this course to be added to the liberal arts curriculum."
Having worked in the past as volunteers for the Peace Corps and as board members of Mercy Corps, Brown and Mason continue to share their passion for humanitarianism with Berklee students in their support for the Darfur CD project. Helping others is a cause that Gittens believes "[Brown and Mason] have been championing for a very long time. It is just a fabric of who these people are."
According to Associate Professor of Music Therapy Karen Wacks, "this project has been successful and will continue to be successful. This project brought many together for a unifying reason: to help make the world a better place through the gifts that each had who participated."
