Canadian musicians are waving the Maple Leaf
for Haiti, secretly recording a benefit single for the earthquake-ravaged country.
Famed Canadian music producer Bob Ezrin is spearheading the project,
which will include Somalian-born Canadian rapper K'naan, performing the
K'naan hit song Wavin' Flag .
The recording is taking place Thursday at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, which was founded by Bryan Adams.
The new Olympic anthem-in-the-making was recorded on the fly amidst all
the excitement of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
“They've pulled this together so quickly,” Adrienne Kakoullis of Holmes
Creative Communications said Thursday afternoon. “They're in the studio
right now.”
Although details are still sketchy, she confirmed that about 40
Canadian vocalists and performers had gathered to record a new version
of the song Wavin' Flag .
Bryan Adams, Nelly Furtado, Feist, Nickleback, Emily Haines, Ron
Sexsmith and Colin James are just a few of the Canadian performing
artists currently in Vancouver for the Olympic Games who may have lent their voices to the super-group recording which sounds similar to We Are the World , the 1985 charity single for African famine relief. Diana Krall is also in town, as is Broken Social Scene.
“All of Canada's best to record @iamknaan's Wavin' Flag for Haiti in
Van City tomorrow!” reads a post that went out on Twitter yesterday.
Mr. Ezrin, who is producing the Wavin' Flag project, worked on Pink Floyd's album The Wall . He recently made a new album with Peter Gabriel and owns the Nimbus School of Recording Arts in Vancouver.
The afternoon session was videotaped for a possible future television
broadcast by John Brunton of Insight Productions, the Toronto
production company behind Canadian Idol and Battle of the Blades .
“I'm not at liberty to discuss it at the moment,” said Mr. Brunton said
by phone on Wednesday, confirming that he was indeed in Vancouver to
film a major project.
“I'll probably have a better opportunity to talk about it tomorrow,” he added. “I'm muzzled.”
Wavin' Flag will also be featured as the anthem for this year's World Cup in South Africa. K'Naan sang the same song at Canada For Haiti , a broadcast telethon that raised $13.5-million for Haitian quake victims last month.
A similar broadcast telethon, Hope For Haiti , brought
Madonna, Coldplay, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and U2's Bono together in
live performances from London, New York and Los Angeles.
In Vancouver, two local radio stations, Red FM and Radio India, have
raised more than $1.5-million through individual listeners who came out
in droves to pledge donations for quake-torn Haiti.
Rumours of the project began swirling last week when K'naan posted this
message on Twitter: “Coming soon: Me & Bob Ezrin (producer of Pink
Floyd's The Wall) are working on something epic! But u didn't hear from
me ok?”
The Toronto-based hip-hop musician wrote: “Sadly, leaving Peru
already but heading to Vancouver to do something that'll hopefully help
some lives in need.”
Proceeds are to go to Free The Children, War Child Canada and World Vision.