Skip to main content

"Musicians for Haiti"

On Tuesday 12th of January, 2010, an earthquake struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti. It was the worst in two centuries, and thousands have died so far.

We are a group of friends and colleagues who are sharing with you our music and lyrics in response to this disaster. Haiti.bandcamp.com is a container for our efforts, and, following the steps of the rebuilding of the nation itself, will be a work in progress, a place to return to as new pieces get composed and uploaded.

And so Musicians for Haiti (M4H) was born.

In the weeks after the earthquake, a frenzied level of activity was clearly visible on the audio production website where people wrote and recorded music; provided feedback to these tracks; or simply offered words of encouragement. And now, on the two month anniversary of the earthquake, M4H is pleased to announce the availability of several, original tracks that were written by us specifically for the rebuilding effort in Haiti.

"We are quite happy with what we've been able to put together in such a short period of time," says Glyn Powell who initiated the project from his home in London following the quake and contributed to a number of the songs. "To have several quality tracks available in various genres is not something any of us imagined when this started. Better still, we already have commitments for at least four additional tracks to be released next month so people have every reason to circle back every few weeks to see what has been newly produced by the group."

There are several tracks currently available for download including the following:

Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child - this hymn, from one of the darker times in U.S. history, is an expression of pain and suffering that felt especially fitting given the situation in Port Au Prince.

Haitian Overture - an instrumental arranged for a full orchestra, this song changes in mood from melancholia to hope and finally ends on an uplifting note (pun intended).

Hunger - upbeat and uplifting, this song declares with horns a blarin' our thanks for all of the things people have done already and admonishes us to continue focusing on helping others in need.

This truly has been an international effort: the songs above represent the U.S., U.K., Amsterdam, and New Zealand. More songs - and more represented countries - are in the offing (and are in various stages of completion) so we implore you to not stop by once only. Instead, we hope that you'll drop by every few weeks to see what other music has made its way there.

All money collected will be donated to Partners In Health, a relief agency with over 20 years of experience operating in Haiti and who has made that country the primary focus of their efforts during recent years. Furthermore, they have a very low overhead percentage, which was important to us since we wanted as much money to go to help the people rather than pay for administrative support.

M4H can be reached via the website, email (haiti.musicians@yahoo.com), our Facebook fan page, and soon to be launched YouTube channel.

Thank you in advance for your support!

Popular posts from this blog

"Ni jiang yi yang de hua ma?"

Last week, I wrote about the necessity of having a clear message . Because this topic is so important I decided to follow-up with another entry on this general subject. This week we will approach it from another angle. (For the curious, the title says " Do you speak the same language? " in pinyin, which is a transliterated Mandarin Chinese.) Recently, a good friend of mine (who is Chinese, ironically) and I were playing pool. He had to bank the 8-ball in the pocket to win the game, and since it was an informal game and bank shots are my area of expertise, he asked me for advice. I told him, "you just need to strike the cue ball with medium speed so that it hits the 8-ball right in the middle." He didn't believe me so we marked the positions of the balls, and then he took his shot only to watch the 8-ball sail past the pocket. "A-ha!" he exclaimed. "I told you it wasn't that easy." But when we reset the positions and I made an attemp

It's Easier to Fail at DevOps than it is to Succeed

Slippery when wet Since the term DevOps was coined in Belgium back in 2009, it is impossible to avoid the term whether in discussions with colleagues or in professional trade magazines.  And during the years while this movement has gained momentum, many things have been written to describe what elements of a DevOps strategy are required for it to be successful. Yet in spite of this, there is an interesting data point worth noting: not many organizations feel there is a need for DevOps.  In a Gartner report entitled DevOps Adoption Survey Results (published in September 2015),  40%  of respondents said they had no plans to implement DevOps and 31% of respondents said they hadn't implemented it but planned to start in the 12 months after the survey was conducted. That left only 29% who had implemented DevOps in a pilot project or in production systems, which isn't a lot. "Maybe it's because there truly isn't a need for DevOps," you say.  While that

Is No/Low-Code the Key to IT Nirvana?

 Unless you've had your head in the sand for the past year or so, you've seen the phrases low-code  and no-code  bandied about quite frequently everywhere you look.  You've probably wondered if this is something new that's here to stay or just a "flash in the pan."  Although the terms have been in the fore of the IT trade publications recently, Low Code Development Platforms (LCDP) (and the corresponding No Code Development Platforms) have been in existence since 2011.  Their roots can be traced to the 90's with 4th generation programming languages and GUI-assisted programming paradigms, e.g. IBM VisualAge for Basic, which was discontinued in 1998. For those of you who aren't familiar with either, the premise is that these platforms allow someone to quickly build applications using a WYSIWYG interface and a "click and configure" paradigm to Isn't this the source code to Roblox? rapidly build full applications with little or no coding requ