In 2007-2008 I spent about a year living and volunteering at the Tumaini Children's Home in Nyeri, Kenya. Part of my efforts there involved facilitating music programs for the kids. It turned out there was a robust culture of songwriting---kids would create vocal melodies and lyrics and sing these songs to one another (mostly in the form of Christian worship). I worked with a number of these kids to add backing music to their songs, and recorded them. The resulting album was a really interesting mix of original East African folk melody (sung in Swahili or Kikuyu) and whatever influences I already had. All proceeds from the release of this album went/go to Tumaini!

Vocal melodies and words were written by the Tumaini kids. I did vocal harmonies, instrumentation, and album art (aww yeah matatu!)