I first worked with Ariana Delwari, one of the founding members of the LA Ladies Choir, about 10 years ago. I was filming a spec commercial in Joshua Tree and she was nice enough to lip sync White Snake’s “Here I Go Again” while driving through the desert. The LA Ladies Choir is an example of one of the great things music can do, bring so many different and incredible people together and when they perform, you can see the joy in that. They’re made up of a group of friends, artists and members of some of the great indie bands around LA and we’ve been really lucky to have them as big supporters of TVP. They’ve even made a connection with the ladies in Gulu, the two choirs teaching each other songs over Skype (looks like they learned the classic Acholi ululation that you always hear the Gulu ladies celebrate with at the end of a song). The LA ladies actually performed one of the Gulu songs at our last Roosevelt Hotel event…was amazing and connected everyone at the event back to where this all started in a beautiful way.

One of the great things about this whole process is when you tell someone about the story of what’s happened in Uganda, how music is being used, what some of the lyrics are and then talk with them about covering someone else, is to see where there minds go…to a friend they might want to bring in, a song that captures the same spirit as those being used to bring home the soldiers, or in this case, just the sublime beauty of the sentiment behind that message. I think Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah captures that as well as any song one could think of. — Ryan