Story Behind This Album
As of June 1, 2013, I am on iTunes, Amazon and various other digital music stores online.
In the spring of 2001, I was about to graduate with my masters and wasgetting ready for solo one-year around-the-world-trip. Several countries on my list weren’t exactly popular touristic destinations. Places like Serbia, Gaza and Zimbabwe were going through uprisings, post-war economic depressions and presidential elections that could resemble a civil war (why and how I went to those countries is another story).
I thought, I could die during this trip. Recording an album was perhaps an attempt to leave something behind that is of me, in the
event of a worst-case scenario.
I polished up a few things I had written over a period of about five years, went to a recording studio one afternoon and four hours later, I walked out with an album. Perhaps because I didn’t feel like I gave it the time and the effort I should’ve, I’ve always been sheepish about this album.
But twelve years later, I am finally putting it “out there” because after having lived in many places and done many different things, I have returned to music and it is my way of owning up to the path I am on.
I am also putting it out there because since my return from Beirut in January 2013, I’ve been wanting to do something special for the children at Tahaddi Center (www.tahaddilebanon.org), where I taught music and English, raised funds for shoes and collected donations to give away. Working with them was instrumental (no pun intended) in my return to music as I witnessed how much dignity, joy and imagination a song could bring to a child who did not know where her next meal was going to come from. I can still envision them singing “do-re-me” from the side of my car as I drove into that godforsaken neighborhood where running water and electricity was scarce
and the army would randomly show up to demolish the illegal huts that were going up.
All the proceeds from the sales of my CD will go to Tahaddi for the purchase of shoes and music education.
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