Our Inspiration and Story – How It All Began
What a story! This is the story of one woman who wrote a song. It is the story of three more women inspired by Barck Obama’s message and the song, who rewrote it as an Obama anthem and organized the “Sing for Obama! Sing for America! Yes We Can” music video. It is the story of a community coming together for a larger purpose. And isn’t that really the Obama story? It provides a living proof that in the words of Barack Obama; “…one voice CAN change a room, and if one voice CAN change a room it can change a group, if ONE voice can change a group then it CAN change a community, and that one voice CAN then change a state and change the country”. Yes We Can make a change.
Here’s Our Story
Singer songwriter Ariel Thiermann leads women’s singing circles in Santa Cruz, CA. The circles are for fun, for developing community and for getting in touch with the joy and spirit of singing. One night, she was unable to attend one of her circles, but invited participants to show up and sing anyway. Only three of us came – Amie, Barbara and Pia — but we stayed and sang.
The three of us were singing a song that Ariel had written — one of our favorites — when Amie mentioned that she’s been so incredibly inspired by Barack Obama and the growing movement of support for him that she’s been singing, “I say yes we can” to the melody of this song. And that started an exciting, creative process of rewriting the song’s lyrics to become a pro Obama song.
Having just seen the YouTube Yes We Can music video created by Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas, we thought “why not bring together other local Obama supporters, teach the song to them and make our own grassroots, community created counterpart to that video?”
We didn’t stop there. We thought “why don’t we challenge people around the country to learn the song, get a group from their community together (small or large), video it and put it on YouTube.”
And what if we can get this done before the next big primaries in Texas and Ohio – just two weeks away!!!!
And it all came together. Ariel was 100% supportive and excited by the prospect, happy to give her song to the cause. Eric Thiermann (Ariel’s father), an award winning filmmaker came on board and will be recording the live music video.
Local Obama supporters came on board.
Ariel and her mother, Linda Arnold (a well-known children’s music singer songwriter), took our rough draft, polished the lyrics and created a new arrangement for the song. Pia then translated the lyrics into Spanish, so we could sing both an English and a Spanish version. It couldn’t have happened without all five women’s inspiration, creativity, love of singing and desire to support Barack Obama.
The event is now planned for Saturday February 23rd at 3:00 pm at Pacific Cultural Center in Santa Cruz, CA. It’s now Monday, February 18th and we’ve got a whole LOT of work to do in a very short time! We’ve got to get hundreds of community members out to the event. We’ve got to get lots of publicity and do lots of promotion over the next five days. We now have a website – thanks to Amie – and we’ll be adding more and more information and photos, so check back frequently. Oh, and let’s not forget — we have to actually get the music video shot, put together and up on YouTube…..
Yes We Can!!!!!