Kindness teams up with Red Cross for album based on real-life refugee stories
Kindness is one of a group of artists working with British Red Cross on a concept album about real-life refugee stories.
The British Red Cross are launching a new music project called The Long Road, which partners musicians including Kindness, the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars, and Scroobius Pip with a refugee to write a song for an album uses their life story as the basis for each track. BRIT Award-winning producer Ethan Johns will be producing the record.
Kindness's Adam Bainbridge will be working with Ayman Hirh, a refugee who fled Syria when the fighting broke out in 2012. Bainbridge holds a personal connection to the international charity work performed by Red Cross and similar organisations – his grandmother Amina Desai was South Africa’s longest serving female Indian political prisoner for her defiance of the apartheid regime. "I’ve seen with my own eyes that anyone’s life can be turned upside down overnight; that expressing an opinion can be enough to make life unliveable in the place you call home, and eventually force you to leave it," he said, "So when I was told about the project, I had to be involved. Getting to know Ayman has been fantastic and I’m looking forward to telling his story in the studio."
What's more, it was actually Bainbridge who approached Red Cross about being involved in the album rather than the other way round.
The announcement kicks off this year’s Refugee Week (June 15th-21st), a programme of events celebrating the contribution of refugees to the UK and aiming to promote better understanding of why people seek refuge.
To find out more, head to the Red Cross website.
