While on a break from recording R.E.M.’s fifteenth album, Mike Mills has gotten involved with The Voice Project, a coalition of artists and non-profits which is trying to raise money and awareness to the plight of the women of war-torn Northern Uganda. This is Africa’s longest running conflict and it has spread to Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo. According to TVP website, “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.”
The Voice Project’s two main goals are to AMPLIFY the message of these women’s songs in order to support the peace movement, and to assist them in their efforts to EMPOWER themselves economically in order to better their lives, create real social change, and to sustain peace. Mike Mills is among musicians who have recorded covers of anti-war songs, in an effort to draw attention to this project and invite the public to support the women of Northern Uganda. His song of choice was Billy Bragg’s “Sing Their Souls Back Home”, and the video clip was filmed on 26 February 2010 at Mike’s home in Los Angeles:
Mike Mills » Billy Bragg from The Voice Project on Vimeo.
If you are interested in supporting this project, here’s the contact info. You may donate via PayPal, and you can also follow TVP’s news and updates on Facebook or Twitter.
In site updates, I have finally uploaded the first batch of audio interviews, covering the period from 1983 to 2008. More to come!
Tags: Billy Bragg, Mike Mills, Northern Uganda, Sing Their Souls Back Home, The Voice Project
March 13th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Awesome clip – this goes straight to our Spotlight!
March 18th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Great video Ivana
Thank you so much for sharing. Mike’s house looks cosy.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Indeed!
And that piano makes my fingers itch — I soooo wanna play it!
March 13th, 2012 at 3:57 am
As well as this particular this might be not a few new fangled fraud.