In a lot of ways, our part in The Voice Project started with this song and this little video clip. Nine months earlier I’d been working at the camps and meeting with Womens groups in Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan, after the women would teach me some of their songs, they would ask me to teach them some, and Joe’s song “Suitcase” was always the very first that came to mind. If you know the lyrics maybe it’s obvious why, but it’s a song I had loved for a long time and meeting with the women, listening to them sing their songs and talk of what they were singing about, in some ways it took on a new meaning for me…but I wouldn’t say a “whole new meaning” as the essence of the original song to me, the quiet comforting, un-judging compassion in a private whisper, it’s intimacy is it’s universality. To me it’s the essence of love and compassion for another human being. The Women loved the song, adopted it as their own, and 9 months later when Nicole went back to tell them of the progress we’d been making on their behalf…it was a Sunday morning in Brooklyn when and I got a call, whole lot of numbers on the caller ID, I picked up and it was Nicole, “hold on a sec…” and then a chorus of the most beautiful voices singing that song as a “thank you.” One of the most beautiful moments you could imagine, captured on that little 25 second video clip, unbelievable. But also, the women once again showing us the way, a message delivered through song, and that’s how this whole thing came about. A few months later, I saw Joe Purdy at a wedding and showed him this same clip of the phone call, and so we began. We thought of re-recording this in longer form at some point in a more formal session, but in retrospect this is how we started, this is what it is, and we think it’s beautiful. — HH