Generally speaking, Jonathan Stanton is a musician. So when he was turned on to a multimedia contest to draw attention to the situation in Darfur, the region in eastern Africa currently listed as a humanitarian crisis because of the ongoing war, he did what he knew: gathered a band and wrote a song.
Called “Direction of Change,” the song was written with help of bandmates Nathan Jacobsen, Hilary Dial, Jordan Beyer and Peter Richardson and a video was filmed at Stanton’s Kent home, along with a section filmed in downtown Seattle.
“As soon as we all got together,” Stanton said, “that’s what came out.”
Together, the group’s video was named a finalist in the Citizens for Global Solutions contest, earning Stanton and his crew national recognition.
Citizens for Global Solutions is a grassroots organization working to abolish world in the world, through educating Americans about global interdependence, according to a description on the group’s Web site. More than 2300 artists, designers, poets and activists participated in the organization’s multimedia contest.
The Kent group’s song, a ballad urging listeners to stand together, help each other and take a step in the direction of the change, came together over a series of rehearsals, with Dial and Jacobsen singing lead vocals over a riff Stanton wrote on his guitar.
“We just kind of got together and wrote lyrics,” he said. “It was great.”
Stanton, 18, admits he did not know a lot about the Darfur situation before researching the song, but Jacobsen had written a report the year before and together, the two passed a lyric book back and forth until the song was complete.
“It just kind of brought light to again,” Jacobsen, 19, said.
Jacobsen said for inspiration, he tried to focus on the issues in Darfur “and put that into terms musically,” though they admit it kept changing right up until the time Dial laid down the first vocal tracks.
“We had it changing until the moment she started singing it,” Stanton joked.
Their purpose, Stanton said, was simply to draw attention to the problem.
“The point is that we have to do something,” Dial, 18, said.
Stanton said the group, all of whom know each other through church, where they make up part of the worship team at the Faith Baptist Church in Kent, also pulled inspiration from the bible, specifically a lyrical section urging “love thy neighbor.”
With four weeks to complete the project (“Which is crazy,” said Stanton), the most difficult part was gathering the band together for sessions and then recording.
In the end different parts were recorded at different times and then mixed all together into the final song. Stanton, who graduated from the Kent Mountainview Academy in 2008 and is headed to Northwestern University to study music, interned at a recording studio. Jacobsen, a Kentlake Class of 2008 graduate, also is studying music at Green River.
Dial is a senior at Kentwood High School.
Larger plans for the video were nixed by the region’s unpredictable weather, but the video was eventually shot in Stanton’s parents’ living room and creates a simple, straight-forward approach that puts the focus on the music.
“Seattle rains a lot,” Stanton said with a shrug.
The second section, with Stanton walking through Seattle, was shot on location near Pike Place Market during a break in the weather. Stanton’s brother Joshua helped with filming and editing.
“I said my speech about a million times because I couldn’t remember,” he said.
Working on the video also rekindled interest in Darfur for the teens, especially Dial, who is also studying the region during the year.
“I’m a lot more passionate about it especially now that we’re learning about it in school,” she said.
All three said they were pleased with how the project turned out.
“Musically it turned out great,” Stanton said. “I thought we were going to win.”
“I was stoked,” Dial added. “It was really exciting.”
To see “Direction of Change” visit http://multimedia.globalsolutions.org/digital-video/direction-change.
To learn more about Citizens for Global Solutions, go to www.globalsolutions.org
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