it began with songs, words + music.

music + word of mouth can change this world: a most heartening sentiment. a little while back, i found + wrote about a great website [playing for change | peace through music], which was connecting the world through music. more recently, i stumbled across the voice project. the project is an attempt to support the incredible women-survivors of war, rape, disease and abduction, and the peace movement, in uganda. it is an effort to see how far a voice can carry:

"A peace movement is an incredible thing, people coming together, mobilizing like an army, and in this case armed not with guns but with songs and something more powerful than any bullet; compassion, the strength of human will, and determination.

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."

artists pair up to cover 'chain episodes' to spread the message. earlier in the year, andrew bird paired up with the extremely talented amercian singer|songwriter cass mccombs to cover 'meet me here at dawn'. it can be seen|heard here.

other pairings include: peter gabriel covers tom waits [hoorah!], soko [she's just too cute live] coversdonovan, joanna newsom + billy bragg, edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros + gulu women's choir, the beautiful jesca hoop does an awesome cover of bon iver's 'flume', and steel train + la roux

brilliant.