i support heifer because i believe in their mission and i believe in their approach. the heifer program invites participation in both the communities that receive the gifts and in the communities that raise the money to help make the gifts happen. it's simple enough that i can explain it to a young person and finish by saying "you can help out too and here's how..." i've found over and over that when kids begin to understand that there are problems in the world like widespread hunger they naturally want to do something.

our new cd ¡nueva york! is the sound of my band and I collaborating with latino musicians here in new york on songs from mexico, puerto rico, nicaragua, colombia, paraguay, and the dominican republic. it's a collaboration and it's a celebration. for a while i was calling it a pro-immigration cd but then i thought why not call it a love your neighbor cd, that speaks more to the joyful possibilities that we find when we gather to sing and dance with each other. the songs that we played have traveled here from the south but they are now becoming an important part of the song bag here in the us of a. the parties these days are in english and spanish and the music is pulling us all together, shaping a new national identity.

and so, to thank you for your support, here is a free download of the song "colas" from ¡nueva york! although this is a son jarocho classic from veracruz, mexico, by the time we started recording it with our friends the villa-lobos brothers in my way over-heated brooklyn basement last summer, it was sounding a lot like a crazy rock-n-roll party tune. i'm constantly reminded that there are no walls on earth so high that the songs won't float over them and inspire people on the other side to say "who sang that? what do they feel? what do they eat? how do they dance? how can i meet them? when can we jam?

con amor