A Mix of two Great Things

0Josh • 21st Apr 2009 • blog entries, featured websites

The combination of social movements or advocacy and music isn’t anything new…. as long as there have been causes people are passionate about, someone will be right there to write a song about it.  Sometimes though, the meaning behind a song as the original lyricist wrote it isn’t always the way it will be most remembered.

For my birthday this year Lydia got me tickets to “The Killers” concert in Seattle coming up later this week.  The Killers have become a favorite of mine over the last few years, often being my “go to music” regardless of mood or setting.  If you haven’t heard the band’s newest album “Day in Age“, go take a peek, every song stands on its own and is fun to listen to. It should be a great show…. you’ll have to ask me how it goes!

The social justice movement “Invisible Children” is focused on exposing atrocities around the world, specifically the exploitation of children in third world countries.  One of their main focuses and subject of the film that initially launched the whole organization is regular abduction of children in northern Uganda by a local terrorist group. This group then uses these children as soldiers in their long running conflict with the Ugandan government. As a response children between the ages of 3 and 17 will walk up to 12 mi daily from internally displaced person camps to larger towns in search of safety. In 2006 Invisible Children organized an event across the United States in order to draw US Foreign Policy attention to this issue, thousands of people in over 40 cities commuted to a central location in their town and slept outside. The demonstration drew significant media attention and was a powerful kickoff to the groups new voice in advocacy.

Merging the two: After the 2006 event Invisible Children created a online video to connect with those who participated, and recap what had been done. The video features a Killers song entitled “All These Things That I’ve Done” in which the anthem line ‘I got soul but I’m not a soldier’ is lip-synced by students in the US, along with children in Uganda. It takes the song from being background music to becoming the driving force behind the video, giving new meaning to the lyrics as it goes – making the song about the children in Uganda who struggle every day to avoid becoming a soldier in a war they don’t want to fight. Watching this video on the Invisible Children website a few years back was the first time I had heard the song and was thrilled a few months later when listening to “Hot Fuss” and realized what the connection was.

Take a look at the video below, its pretty sweet.

links:

(click here) for more info on Invisible Children, their movie and upcoming events

(click here) for full lyrics to “All These Things that I’ve Done” by the Killers

(click here) for more info on the band “The Killers”