Unity tends to be the name of the game once the hells are decked with boughs of holly, but that call for togetherness never truly runs stale. There is always a need for friendship and doing a kindness for one’s neighbors, and when communities engage in being, well, communities, magic tends to happen. This idea is central to HuDost’s ‘Rise Together’, the lead single from the Montreal-Kentucky band’s forthcoming 2019 release, Of Water + Mercy.
Co-written with Jars of Clay’s Dan Haseltine and featuring the entire Jars of Clay ensemble, the track moves ever-onward as lead singer Moksha Sommer soars, delivering its uplifting message with effortless poignance. Its music video offers a look into a performance of the song from all involved, filmed by Craig Hill and edited by Jemal Wade Hines and Sommer.
On ‘Rise Together’, Sommer says:
“We met Dan Haseltine from Jars of Clay not through music but through our shared work in political advocacy acting on behalf of people living in extreme poverty. Through music and advocacy we have witnessed incredible and real change and know the astonishing power of collective voices on behalf of those who do not have the ability, and sometimes even the rights, to be heard. Songwriting with Dan was a wonderful process of the three of us contributing all that we could and being attached to nothing. I think the result is quite remarkable and reflects the very thing the song is about…rising together through shared vision and action.”
Haseltine says:
“When I wrote the beginning lyric to ‘Rise Together’, I was exploring the ways we all share a common human value and a common thread of life and loss and rebirth. In the face of an ever-divided life, and in light of so many messages pitting us against our neighbors, it seemed like a worthwhile exercise to strip all the market trappings away and get back to the core of what connects us.”
Words by: Jonathan Frahm (@jfrahm_)