Hot Musicians Collaborate to Cool the Climate

BRISTOL, UK, October 31, 2006 (ENS) - A group of high profile bands – U2, the Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, Coldplay and Kaiser Chiefs - have collaborated with members of the Buena Vista Social Club to create a compilation album in support of the charity Artists Project Earth, APE, which funds natural disaster relief and climate change awareness.

APE's first music project, the album Rhythms del Mundo Cuba, will be released on November 13. For every album sold, money will be donated to Artists Project Earth.

Through music and the arts, Artists Project Earth aims to achieve permanent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; reducing them to levels which can be sustained, and which result in no further degradation of ecological systems and human livelihood.

APE recruits internationally known musicians and artists through albums, concerts, art exhibitions and art related projects to raise awareness of climate change and funds for campaigns and disaster relief.

British multi-platinum singer-songwriter Dido performed at three of the Live 8 concerts on July 2, 2005 - performing in London, then at the Eden Project in Cornwall, before flying over to Paris to join that show. (Photo credit unknown)

Hawaiian musician Jack Johnson, also featured on the album, said, "Short term upside - less jackets in the winter. Long term downside - a potentially uninhabitable environment due to our lack of awareness.

Jack Johnson has established the Kokua Hawaii Foundation to bring environmental education to Hawaiian elementary schools. (Photo courtesy Surfrider)

Government is a key to solving the urgent issue of global warming, says Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke. "We need a law, we need to have the government put climate change in its place," he said. If you leave industry to sort it out on a voluntary basis, that’s never going to happen."

The Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 that left nearly 230,000 people dead and missing was the catalyst for the Rhythms del Mundo project, and APE says on its website that the Sundance Film Festival was the project's birthplace.

The cover art for Rhythms del Mundo Cuba (Photo courtesy APE)

The late Ibrahim Ferrer, who passed away in August 2005, a popular Afro-Cuban musician in Cuba and a member of the Buena Vista Social Club is featured on the album along with fellow Buena Vista Social Club member Omara Portuondo, a Cuban singer whose career has spanned half a century.

All the musicians associated with the Rhythms del Mundo project recognize the urgency of lowering greenhouse gas emissions now to limit global warming, which is already being felt in melting glaciers, heat waves and an increase in extreme weather events.

Nick Hodgson of the Kaiser Chiefs says, "The latest reports show there's only a decade before the effects of climate change on the world are irreversible. The disastrous consequences of this are far too great for a sound bite but put it this way, in 10 years there would be no polar bears!"

Visit www.apeuk.org and the album's official site http://www.rhythmsdelmundo.com where clips of the songs are offered.