Gifted: Women Of The World An Album By Real World Records * Co-founded by Peter Gabriel, Reebok, and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in 1992, Witness uses video and technology to fight for human nghts. Workng in partnership with activists around the globe, Witness documents abuses and brings the evidence before courts, governments, the media, and the world. Witness gives hope. Real World Records presents an album that brings together nine extraordinary woman singers from around the globe to celebrate and explore the themes of the female experience - from the contemporary, day-to-day to the all-powerful Goddess. From different cultures, with different languages and with their own individual spirituality and sensuality, these great vocalists have each created a unique and beautiful statement. A portion of the proceeds from sales of this album will benefit Witness*. This project evolved out of a relationship between Parfums Cacharel and Real World Records. Cacharel, the perfume division of L'Oreal, has created a fragrance called Noa, which has been marketed worldwide. Real World has created this album using music to explore the themes and values also espoused by the symbolic feminine Noa character associated with the Cacherel campaign - evoking immense inner strength, rediscovered wisdom, and the ability inherent in all of us to change the course of events in a world needy of hope, truth and optimism. Cacharel's relationship with this project has not been as a 'sponsor' in the conventional sense. Their support has allowed this music to be created with some extraordinary but relatively unknown singers. They will be using their marketing funds to ensure the widest possible audience for the project - an audience that is not normally exposed to world music or literary fiction. This concept behind GIFTED has also inspired a specially commissioned poem by the acclaimed Anita Desai. Daughter of a German mother and a Bengali father, Anita Desai has emerged as one of the most popular novelists on the Indian English front. Three times short-listed for the Booker Prize (Britain's highest literary award), her works center on the contemporary Indian woman - her loneliness, problems, joys and frustrations. This poem is printed in the CD booklet and was used as the source of inspiration for the singers when first introduced to this project. The idea behind GIFTED is to tell an old tale with new meaning Noa (as opposed to Noah) is a woman who in her own small way saves the world. Once upon a time, before a great flood, Noa was a woman who built a boat and ensured the continuity of life on earth. The woman Noa was no great hero. She was not a supermodel, nor a Moses-style leader. She did not part the waves, she did not walk on water, she did not disappear up a mountain to receive holy visions. She was simply a woman charged with the mundane task of building a boat to preserve the essence of all life on this planet. Today, the world is increasingly full of Noas. They (like Arundhati Roy in India) fight against dams being built. They (like Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma) keep the flame of freedom burning against all the odds. They (endorsed by Anita Roddick) enjoy consumerism without pandering to cruelty. Noa today can and does change the world simply by going about her day to day business. The gifted women involved in this wonderful project are... Eleftheria Arvanitaki (Greece) Eleftheria Arvanitaki has been one of the most important figures of contemporary Greek music for the past 15 years. The clarity and emotional depth of her voice, her magical stage presence, and the sincerity in her musical choices allow her to combine traditional Greek music idioms with up-to-date western rhythms and sounds. She has worked with the some of the most acclaimed composers, songwriters, Iyricists and poets, such as the American-Armenian composer and oud soloist Ara Dinkjian. She has released a number of albums (CONTRABAND, MENO EKTOS, TA KORMIA KEH TA MAHERIA, TRAGOUDIA GIA TOUS MINES), which have all gone platinum. During the last 3 years, Eleftheria Arvanitaki has been the most popular and hottest name internationally on the Greek music scene; she was featured on the November 1997 cover of Folk Roots magazine, she has given a great number of concerts, both in Greece and abroad, and has taken part in international festivals, such as WOMAD, SFINKS and the International Jazz Festival of Montreux. Her first international compilation ELEFTHERIA ARVANITAKI - THE VERY BEST OF 1989-1998 was released by the historical label Emarcy-Verve. Susana Baca (Peru) Susana Baca has dedicated herself to the preservation of the history and culture of her people; the African descended blacks of Peru. Born in the black coastal barrio of Chorrillos outside Lima, where the descendants of slaves have lived since the days of the Spanish Empire, she grew up in a musical environment (her father played the guitar and her mother was a singer). At school she formed an experimental music group, combining poetry and song. She started to get noticed and received a prize from the Institute of Modern Art in Peru and the National Peruvian Culture Institute, as well as a distinction at the prestigious international festival of Agua Dulce in Lima. She excelled in Afro-Peruvian songs and attracted the attention of the late Latin American composer and singer Chabuca Granda who encouraged her to record professionally. Her songs are tender, melancholic, upbeat and poetic, combining old and new for a meeting of generations. With her husband, sociologist Ricardo Pereira, she founded the Instituto Negrocontinuo in Lima, a center dedicated to Black Peruvian culture, including a library, archives and a dance hall. She also wrote a book with her husband, The Influence of Black Cuttural Heritage in Peruvian Music. Sheila Chandra (United Kingdom) Born in London into a South Indian family, Sheila Chandra discovered her voice at the age of twelve. From this " moment her chosen path was to be a singer, and as a teenager she honed her voice alone and as a labor of love. Her first taste of fame came when her band Monsoon's first single Ever So Lonely, with its irresistible but radical modern pop fusion sound, was a top ten hit in Britain. Before she was twenty, Chandra had made four solo albums further exploring her genre and decided to take a sabbatical. She emerged with an album that paved the way for her groundbreaking solo voice and drone trilogy on Real World. This work saw her drawing on vocal traditions from around the world and crossing continents - for instance, from the Arab world to Ireland - in a single phrase. In the last five years Chandra, who has been described as having "a voice that will stop you dead in your tracks," has sold over l/4 million albums. Assitan Mama Keita (Mali) Born in Bamako of a Malinke father and a Bambara mother, two of the 23 ethnic groups living in Mali, Assitan was brought up by her maternal grandmother as is the local custom. Her grandmother helped her to discover her singing talent and taught her the rhythms of West Africa and the Bambara melodies used to heal the sick. Spotted at an early age by a manager who asked her to join the local theatre group, Assitan's voice did not go unnoticed and she went on to become a soloist, firstly for the Bamako District Orchestra and then for the Badema National, Malis National Orchestra, travelling all across Africa. Since moving to Paris at the age of 22, Assitan has worked with Salif Keita, American pianist Hank Jones and the Malian keyboard player Sheik Tdiane Seick. In 1998 she joined the group Tama with Guinean singer Djanuno Dabo, Londoner Sam Mills, and Assitan's fellow-countryman Tom Diakité; their Bambara Iyrics rest specifically upon West African rhythms mixed with typical European sounds. Assistan is now working on her solo album, writing songs in Bambara and mixing jaz and techno influences to the traditional pentatonic scale. Yungchen Lhamo (Tibet) Yungchen Lhamo was born near Lhasa, Tibet at a time when the isolated 'forbidden kingdom' was caught in the ravages of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Her once wealthy family was punished and forced to endure desperate poverty. In 1989, she escaped from Tibet with a small group of friends to find refuge in India. Despite her perilous journey, she survived, encouraged by her profound determination to meet his Holiness the Dalai Lama, considered to be the living Buddha. She made the pilgrimage to Dharamsala, the place of exile of the Tibetan spiritual leader, where she succeeded in meeting him and receiving his blessing. It was then that she decided to communicate her ideal "to contribute actively to make things better' through her voice. In 1993, she immigrated to Australia where she had to overcome several obstacles being a woman, singing Tibetan spiritual songs a capella, not speaking English... But the public was amazed by the purity of her voice and by the power of her stage presence and in 1995 she received the Australian Record Industry Award (ARIA) for the best world music album with TIBETAN PRAYER. It was the beginning of international acclaim. In 1996, she released her first international album TIBET, TIBET (Real World) and toured the world. Her status as an international star has been confirmed by performing twice at New Yorks Carnegie Hall (alongside Michael Stipe, Sheryl Crow and Philip Glass) and at the Lilith Fair, also in the USA. She is recognized not only for her singing talent but also for her fight for the Tibetan people living under Chinese repression and she was the first Tibetan woman to be named in Marie Claires 'Women Who Changed Our World' series. In 1998, she released her album COMING HOME (Real World) with French artist/producer, Hector Zazou. In it, she touched on the themes of nostalgia and solitude but also hope, compassion and determination. Her songs were for the first time accompanied by instrumentation, giving them an additional dimension. Estrella Morente (Spain) Born in Grenada, Spain, into a family of flamenco singers and guitarists (daughter of one of the greatest flamenco singers, Enrique Morente, and of the flamenco dancer Aurora Carbonell), Estrella Morente has spent her life in an authentic flamenco and musical environment. She started as a flamenco singer (cantadora) at the age of 17. Her songs blend traditional and more unconventional flamenco. Her career had hardly started and she was attracting the attention of stars like Lenny Kravitz and also that of flamenco experts and purists. Her voice, her rhythm, her enthusiasm, her intelligence and her dedication have also been noticed by the major music journals. She has succeeded in becoming a part of the elite flamenco scene without releasing a single record. Susheela Raman (UK/South India) Susheela was born in London in 1973, to a Tamil family. From her childhood, she studied traditional Southern Indian music as taught by her parents. She grew up between two musical cultures Western and Indian. At the of age of 11, her family moved to Sydney where she started her singing career Her strong stage presence was soon noticed. Wishing to delve deeper into her Indian cultural heritage, she left for India to study with Shruti Sadolikar, a leading Hindustani classical singer. Back in Britain in 1997, she sought to combine Indian and Western musical styles. In 1998, Susheela started to work with Joi, pioneers of "Asian breakbeat fusionist" music and featured on their album ONE AND ONE IS ONE (RealWorld). In 1999 Joi won the BBC Asia Music Award. Susheela sang with Joi in Europe and the United States, supporting the Eurythmics at Wembley Arena and winning over audiences unfamiliar with the new Asian sound. Susheela's contribution to this album features musicians from Britain, France and West Africa. Shruti Sadolikar (North India) Born in Kurundawad, Maharashtra, Shruti Sadolikar is one of the finest living vocalists in the Hindustani (North Indian) classic tradition. Her name means 'knowledge transmitted through sound'. Her guru and mentor was her father, the late Pandit Wamanrao Sadolikar, a well-known exponent of Hindustani classical music. Through meticulous training, Shruti has accumulated all knowledge, which she has nourished and expanded by adding her own skill and versatility In classical Indian music, the voice is the focal point of the music, with the singer acting as a channel intensifying a shared emotion and bringing the audience into a more intimate relationship with God. Shruti has performed all over the world and has won many awards for her extraordinary talent. She has also formed a foundation in the memory of her father to promote and propagate music, arts and education. This website: Copyright © 2000 Dream World Media / Urban Mozaik Magazine. 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