Album Notes

Art is a tool, a self-defense strategy, a survival skill, and a way to envision liberation and bring communities together. Art and music have the power to move people, express emotion, and create social change. Art saves lives.

Home Alive began in 1993 in response to the rape and murder of Seattle musician Mia Zapata. We began raising money through art and music events in order to train others and ourselves in the art of self-defense.

From the beginning, we recognized that the benefit shows were not only fundraisers, but also ways to bring the music and arts communities together around tragedy, violence, and oppression, and find ways to proactively address these issues.

Today, Home Alive is a community-organizing project. Currently we offer free self defense classes and are committed to creating a broad based anti-violence movement. We encourage people to use art and music as a way to heal themselves from violence and work toward creating communities that are accountable and celebratory.

In our coalition work we want to share resources, support each other, and recognize that while we are all working toward liberation, we may have different projects and different ways of getting there.

The first benefit CD we put out was a powerful expression of how different people have different views about self defense, anti-violence, and even Home Alive. It was a tool for dialogue and a way to encourage community participation in using music to learn how to take care of each other.

This CD continues that commitment to dialogue. We hope as you listen to the music we can engage you in questions about what it means to be an activist, an artist, an audience, a producer of shows, a musician, and a human being working toward justice and liberation.

Thanks for buying this CD!