- Artists will be invited to create a short video of their message / song and submit it on You Tube.
HEAL THE RIFT
Art and Music has the power to tell stories, inspire compassion and foster understanding between cultures while deepening the bonds that form communities. This call for peace through art and music is as diverse as the work itself.
The Great Rift Valley is Rocking the Cradle of Humanity
We aim to Rock Humanity and HEAL THE RIFT - through music and the creative arts all along the Rift Valley.
The Great Rift Valley is a 6,000-mile crack in the earth's crust, stretching from Syria in the north, to Mozambique in the south. It has formed some of the highest mountains and deepest lakes in Africa, and some of the most stunning scenery, fauna and flora and home to some of the most culturally diverse people on planet earth. It has been for centuries and still is a battleground over resources - especially water, and political and cultural divides.
The Great Rift in the south, and constitutes one of two distinct physiographic provinces of the East African Highlands physiographic division. The northernmost part of the Rift, today called the Dead Sea Transform or Rift, forms the Begaa Valley in Lebanon separating the Lebanon Mountains and Anti Lebanon Mountains. Further south it is known as the Hula Valley separating the Galilee Mountains and the Golan Heights. The River Jordan begins here and flows southward through Lake Hula into the Sea of Galilee in Israel, then continues south through the Jordan Valley into the Dead Sea on the Israeli -Jordan border. From the Dead Sea southwards, the Rift is occupied by the Wadi Arabah, then the Gulf of Aquaba, and then the Red Sea. Off the southern tip of Sinai (Sinai is the birth place of the 3 greatest religions on earth) in the Red Sea, the Dead Sea Transform meets the Red Sea Rift which runs the length of the Red Sea. The Red Sea Rift comes ashore to meet the East African Rift and the Aden Ridge in the Afar Depression of East Africa.
Join us in waging peace!
Tell the world through your creativity. Submit your works of art such as:
Take a look at other pieces by the Tshuma family:
8 Goals for Africa was composed by Jimmy Dludlu and the lyrics written by Eric Wainaina, and is copyrighted to the United Nations. Helen Clark, the chair of the UN Development Group which brings together all UN agencies working in development, today launched 8 Goals for Africa, a campaign song by eight of Africa’s best known musicians, calling for commitment to achieve the Millennium Development Goals - a set of eight internationally-agreed goals designed to reduce poverty, hunger, disease, and maternal and child deaths by 2015. Listen to the song, here.
This is the fourth Song Around The World video featuring BONO. It is a follow up to the classics "Stand By Me," "One Love" and "Don't Worry." This unforgetable track was performed by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.
Emmanuel Jal fought as a child soldier in the Sudan. Rescued by an aid worker, he's become an international hip-hop star and an activist for kids in war zones. In words and lyrics, he tells the story of his amazing life.
We have initiated this HEAL THE RIFT creative arts project and when ready, winning works of art will be selected and marketed and an album of winning song submissions will be produced and recorded by Ken Thomas
It will be produced, recorded and filmed like no other album has ever been done before. It will be a compilation of selected, talented and diverse cultures who will spend time together in the Rift Valley identifying common values and concerns about Peace, People, Planet and Prosperity. Together they will create an album about peace, connecting cultures, celebrating the creativity inherent in cultural diversity and in so doing promote understanding and help to ‘heal the rift’ so visible between so many cultures.
Ken Thomas- well-respected record producer, recording engineer and musician, started in the 1970’s at Trident Studios, which were famous for artists such as Queen and David Bowie. Ken went on to encompass the days of punk, engineering such bands as Public Image, Wire and Cocteau Twins. During the present decade and before, he has worked alongside Sigur Ros, M83 and has just returned from New York (February 2009) where he mixed Moby’s latest album, Ken has also produced Dave Gahan, Clinic, Suede, among many other groups and artists.
HEAL the RIFT is a core component of our Culture Conscious Conservation programmes.
Working with the Peace Parks Foundation the ResponseAbility Alliance initiated the first Culture Conscious Conservation conference. It was held in Matobo Hills - Zimbabwe in 1999, with delegates from 5 'Peace Park' countries attending.
Nelson Mandela is one of the three Founding Patrons of Peace Parks Foundation, the other two being the late HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and the late Dr Anton Rupert. Dr Mandela actively supports the Foundation's work. Read More
Ken and Gary, have been friends since school days in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Their home town of Bulawayo, abuts the outstanding Matopos National Park at the edge of the Kalahari Desert. This landscape along with the Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park to the North, and the mountains of the Vumba, Chimanimani, and Inyanga to the East, not only inspired their creativity but helped them draw on the richness and cultural diversity of southern Africa. It seduced them into a world of exploration, creativity and an unrelenting passion to live Emerson’s’ words of to not go where the path may lead, but to go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.