Annie Lennon Sings for a Cure continued...

Chris Allen: Sing is a powerfully moving song, not just musically and lyrically but in concept as well. Did the other artists participating fly to LA to record their parts or was that done in other studios then later added to the final mix? That would be a whole lotta divas in one room.

Annie Lenox: All the artists were doing their own thing in different parts of the world. Mainly New York, London, and LA. They recorded their parts wherever they happened to be.

It would have been something to have had everybody in the same room together. But that’s not really possible. I’m just glad that they gave me their endorsement. You can’t hear everyone’s individual take. That would have been too complicated. So we just cherry picked the parts that stood out, and used all the other voices as a collective “choir”.

CA: Thank you for recognizing HIV and AIDS as a pandemic. Because it is. So many people in this country seem to have forgotten or maybe have never known about what happened in America in the early, mid, and late 80s during the onset of AIDS and HIV in America. I personally witness the horrible deaths of hundreds of my friends, colleagues, and clients over that decade as I was coming of age and becoming an adult. So many of the younger ones today have never even heard of the AIDS Quilt. They have forgotten about Pedro from MTV's The Real World who died, literally, on camera for the entire country and world to see, allowing this for the purpose of education and activism. Since the new medications have begun to make it a disease one can live and survive with for a good while, it seems that many Americans have forgotten about the rest of the world as well. That there are other countries and continents where AIDS and HIV is not just still a problem, but a bigger problem than ever before. The numbers are numbing. So, my final question for you is, what can our readers do right now this minute to help stop the spread of HIV from mothers to babies and to raise global awareness of this problem? What would you have them do?

AL: I can’t pretend that the issue is so simple that there’s one easy solution. I have informed myself on the subject enough to realize that it is a proverbial can of worms, for many different reasons. There are three ways to tackle the crisis: Prevention, Treatment, and Advocacy. None of this is

straightforward by any means. Prevention requires education, and a complete turn around of people’s sexual behavior...a tall order, especially in countries ravaged by chronic and endemic poverty, where people have multiple sexual partners, and the abuse of women and children is commonplace.

Treatment in most places the drugs are not readily available. The roll out is not available, the medical system is on it’s knees , and NGO’S like Médecins Sans Frontières, World Vision, TAC etc., are essentially substituting what needs to be a more effective long term governmental response. In countries where corruption and poverty prevails, HIV Aids is just one more horrible ingredient in the casserole of human suffering.

What I would say to people is this. First of all, educate yourself as to what the HIV Aids pandemic is about. Don’t just knee jerk respond. Try to understand the

underlying reasons why millions of people have died and are dying increasingly from this. The information is available on internet. There are loads of NGO’S doing wonderful things on the front lines. Once you have a handle on it, then you can decide which area of the crisis you’d like to get involved with, in what kind of way and with which organization. All I keep saying is that “WE” the citizens of wealthy Western countries, don’t have to give up hope because the lunatics have taken over the asylum. We have the opportunities and resources to make our own personal contribution to the world, in our own unique way and doing something rather than nothing does help to relieve that internalized sense of hopelessness we all walk around with, consciously or unconsciously. So you do get something back.

Annie Lennox has set up a website so that you can find out how to contribute more. Check out www.annielennoxsing.com. You can also find this diva on MySpace at www.myspace.com/annielennox or the official Lennox site - www.annielennox.com.