(Amnesty)

Founded in Sydney in the 1990s, the Freedom dance parties supporting Amnesty International helped pioneer the dance-for-a-cause movement. Since those early years, Freedom has continued to grow from strength to strength. 2003 saw the Freedom Festival go national, with Melbourne and Canberra joining the cause, and in 2005 the number of cities involved has increased to seven. 2005 also sees the release of the festival’s inaugural CD, simply titled Freedom Festival 05.

This year’s Freedom Festival is focusing on Amnesty International’s global “Stop Violence Against Women” campaign, so it’s apt that this year the festival is headlined by Philadelphia’s Ursula Rucker. Updating the beat tradition of combining poetry and jazz, her lyrics are astute socio-political observations from a feminist perspective. Her first contribution to the album is the impressive track What A Woman Must Do. A simple track, it features her strong vocals accompanied by the simply nu-jazz beats and melodies of Jazzanova. Showing that feminism isn’t dead, she sings, “until you have walked, run, fought a mile in her shoes, don’t you dare stand in front of me and tell me what a woman must do.” She also teams up with A Guy Called Gerald for Millenium Sanhedrin.

In addition to Rucker’s contributions, many of the other tracks on the album develop a theme of strong female vocals. Fellow headliner Ben Mono’s track, The Empiricist, is a bleepy broken beats track featuring a female vocalist who sings “happiness was made for everyone”. On Breathe Me, the vocals by Adelaide-born Sia Furler, who doesn’t appear at this year’s festival but still contributed to the album, are sweet yet strong. The vocals on Inja Lijeström’s atmospheric Phoenix also stand out. A soulful direction is taken in the female vocals on tracks by Deepchild (What’s Going Wrong? featuring Andy B) and Vassy (the Katalyst remix of Cover You In Kisses). Meanwhile the style is more upbeat and electronic on tracks from Velure (Do I Know You) and Lanu (the Latin influenced Beijo do Sol). The Mortal Coil mix of Rumn’s Wish is simply a beautiful piece of electronica.

The hip-hop end of the dance music spectrum is also included. First up on the album is the appropriately titled Freedom, from last year’s headliners, The Procussions. The Farside, from The Scratch Foundation, is a darker style of hip-hop, while the Resin Dogs contribute the catchy Gunshot Dub, remixed by Salmonella Dub. In addition to the contributions from Resin Dogs and Sia Furler, the CD is completed by two more tracks from artists who didn’t appear at this year’s festival, Hatching a Plot, from Wicked Beat Sound System, and the Tangleray remix of Girls Can Be Cruel, from Infusion.

As one of the album’s contributors, A Guy Called Gerald, states, “music is a powerful voice that communicates better than anything else.” Whether you want to support Amnesty (with all profits from the CD going directly to Amnesty International Australia) or simply want an album of quality tunes, buy this CD and listen to the message of freedom that these artists have to deliver.