A Compilation Album for a Good Cause

As the United States and Canada face wave upon wave of protests, civil unrest and political upheaval following the brutal murder of black American George Floyd on May 25th at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, artists around the world have made their voices on the matter heard through donating large sums of money towards activist organizations and bail funds for protesters who have been imprisoned in the following weeks, as well as to speak out against racism and police brutality within their own communities.

You’ve likely already heard what we at Heavy NFLD think of the entire situation, and now it’s time we did something beyond just speaking out.

We want to create our first ever compilation album featuring artists from Newfoundland and Labrador (as well as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who may be living abroad) and donate all proceeds from said compilation album towards a local organization that tackles discrimination within our own province. We have not yet decided which organization we will be donating the funding too, however we are going to consult individuals from our own BIPOC community to find out where the funds would be best utilized.

This post is a call to all artists who wish to be part of this compilation album. We will, of course, be giving precedence to BIPOC, femme and queer artists for this compilation, but we invite everybody who wants to contribute to speak up and voice their interest. If you are a solo musician or a band who has a track that they would like to contribute please send us a direct message on our Facebook page. We also understand that most of our audience is 99% white people since Newfoundland is so homogeneous, but we want to take this opportunity to give BIPOC people a platform.

The songs that you submit do not have to necessarily be topical, or even originals. If you have a song that has already been recorded and released, you can submit it. If you want to record something completely new and original for this compilation, you can submit it. If you’d like to do a cover song of another artist, you can submit it. What you submit is up to you.

Once your song has been decided on we ask that you please forward the tracks to our e-mail address at heavynfld@gmail.com with a download link, the appropriate credits as well as lyrics (if there are any). The due date for this project will be July 15th.

We also want to reach out to our community to find a BIPOC artist willing to create the album’s cover art for this compilation. If you or someone you know is a BIPOC artist, please reach out to us through our Facebook page as well.

We hope that this compilation album can be a means to help bring an end to discrimination in our province since, as we have seen in the past few weeks, racism is still alive and well in Newfoundland and Labrador, and it’s our collective responsibility to stand up to it.

Full credit to James Moss (bassist of Ultimata) for coming up with this idea, and we’d also like to say thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in this project since then.

~ Akhenaten