Sweet Water - Story Behind the Song
A Tribe of AIDS Orphans Sings in a Fresh Water Well
So how DOES a song for a tribe in Ghana Africa come to be, exactly? In this case, Diane visited my website and wrote a one-line email: “I’M SOLD!” and with that we were on our way. Diane discovered the small Village of Trom while she was in Ghana working on a project with Bentley College and HUGS International to build a school in a remote village. She noticed young children regularly walking into the village to gather water, and soon learned that they were walking an hour each day to deliver water to their even more remote village, called Trom. Their tribe consisted mainly of children orphaned by AIDS and their surviving grandparents, most of whom suffered from River Blindness (due to infested water). Diane arranged for a visit to the Village of Trom (no small feat) and there she met and fell in love with the villagers. She then decided to spearhead a personal project in which she and her siblings would donate all the resources required to dig a fresh water well right in the village of Trom. (Diane grew up on a farm in Utah where a well was the centerpiece, and upon the very recent death of her father, felt compelled to coordinate with her siblings an honorary “McKinny Well” for this small, struggling tribe of lovely, buoyant children and elders.) As Diane began working on her project, the idea of a song, to be written for and sung at the dedication, came into her head, and she reached out to me. The project took on some surprising new turns from there!
I am usually commissioned to write songs for situations in which the giver wants to find a way to have their own words and thoughts expanded and “made beautiful,” in song. That means the lyrics are very important, and often complex (I always say my music is very “lyric-intensive”—the kind of thing best enjoyed if you can really “stop the world” and focus on what is being said in the song). It also means that production quality is an important part of it—it is usually a recording that will be listened to over and over and over by the recipient, so it’s important to get it just right, and to create careful subtleties, so that on the tenth listening you can still hear something new. In this case, Diane wanted me to write a song that was absolutely simple and with zero production quality. Simple enough, that is, to be taught, live, to villagers on the spot. And memorable enough that they could sing the song amongst themselves long after the dedication of the well. In fact, she imagined a song that could be sung at other dedications, at other wells, all throughout Africa. The assignment was not for me to record the song, but rather to create something that could be taught and sung, LIVE, right there on the spot, (no electric plugs or CD players in sight to be sure) when the well was dedicated and the water began to flow.
WHAT'S IN THE SONG? IN THE STUDIO THE ARTIST [Back to SONG OF THE MONTH]
A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PRODUCTION ASSIGNMENT
IT'S JUST ABOUT TO HAPPEN
The song is indeed simple. But it also is flowing with references below the surface. Some you can find for yourself. I was moved to learn of how everyone in the tribe has lost someone—many people—to AIDS. Parenting yourself as a small child, and taking care of grandparents who have been blinded by the bad water supply, calls for the same kind of action as digging a well does: digging down deep—within the land, within one’s self. You’ll hear that refrain throughout. There is a line about “sons and daughters” rising up. This is both a reference to the young children of the tribe stepping into the much larger vacated shoes of their deceased parents and aunts and uncles, but also it is a subtle reference (she wanted nothing overt) to Diane and her siblings, who chose to use their inheritance money from their parents for the digging of this well, and in that way honor their memory in a unique and special way. Finally, I thought it would be meaningful to insert some words from the language of Ga—the primary language of the people of Trom (who also all speak English). The refrain bula nu refers to the words “well” and “water” and you can hear that as a counter-melody that builds in the alter half of the song.
It took a village to make a song on THIS end, too! Diane learned of this village because of her travels with Bentley College and HUGS International. We DID end up recording a studio version of this song, and I had the fun and good fortune of having the New School Singers from the New School of Music in Cambridge, Mass do all the call-and-response work, as well as learning al the additional parts, directed in inspired fashion by my good friend and frequent musical partner, Sandi Hammond. The New School Singers were joined by Cassandre Petit-Frere and Lekisha Benjamin from the Bentley College Gospel Choir, and both of these women will be singing the song live in Ghana for the dedication. The only instrumentation here is a number of percussive drums, played by another great friend, Catherine Birrer (who, by the way, has as one of my favorite claim to fame the facts that she was percussionist for the German version of “The Tonight Show” in the 1990’s). The song was recorded at The Moontower Recording Studio, and the whole gosh-darn sweaty thing (no AC can be on when the mics are rolling—oy!) was videotaped and is even now as we speak being turned into a documentary-style DVD showing our kids here in the US singing the song and then (soon!) the villagers in Trom doing the same on their end. How’s THAT for an across-the ocean interpretation of CALL AND RESPONSE!? 
Anna Huckabee Tull is an award-winning Boston Singer-Songwriter with five national releases to her credit, and a Master’s Degree in Spiritual Psychology and Applied Psychology. She is pretending at this exact moment that someone else wrote the above sentence, but it was actually her (“she,” for you English majors). What are the chances you are still reading all the way down here to the fine print, anyway? Extra points for you if you are!!! [More about Anna]
© 2006 Anna Huckabee Tull. The rights for this song are filed and registered with the United States Copyright Office as a Sound Recording by Anna Huckabee Tull. Copies of these songs may not be sold or bartered. But sharing? Sharing is all good!