Tom Morello, Serj Tankian, Julien Baker, Cass McCombs, and more have teamed up with the Miraculous Love Kids, a non-profit organization that teaches music to young Afghan girls, to cover Morello’s Nightwatchman song ‘God Help Us All’. The organization was forced to stop its program after the Taliban took over government control in Afghanistan six months ago, and the single aims to raise awareness for the plight of girls in the country since the Taliban’s re-emergence. Listen to ‘God Help Us All’ below.
“It has been a hellish past six months trying to evacuate and relocate the girls and their families,” Lanny Cordola, the founder and director of Miraculous Love Kids, said in a statement. “Tom Morello’s soul hymn perfectly encapsulates this feeling. The convergence of all these talents truly shows how music can unify artists from different idioms and cultures to lend their voices to the vulnerable, marginalized suffering souls of the Earth. I also feel this song reaches out to the inner ache that so many are feeling these days. Tom has been a Godsend to the girls and I on so many levels. He allowed us to rearrange his composition to fit the girls’ style of singing and playing, which was very generous of him. He also enlisted Serj Tankian and Nandi Bushell.”
Morello added: “‘God Help Us All’ is a song both for and with some very special girls in Afghanistan who are in grave danger. Prior to the Taliban takeover, GIRL WITH A GUITAR took in street orphans and other girls in Afghanistan that have endured significant trauma and used music as a rehabilitation tool and means of working through their problems, their histories, and their hopes. I’ve had the honor of collaborating with these wonderful kids. Since the Taliban takeover, their school has been destroyed and the girls are in hiding as they are at extreme risk. This song, which features their beautiful playing and brave voices, is a prayer to the heavens and an appeal to the world to save them and all those suffering from poverty, danger and injustice.”
Other musicians featured on the song include Nils Lofgren, Victoria Williams, Beth Hart, Five For Fighting’s John Ondrasik, Nandi Bushnell, Aaron Lee Tasjan, William Dagsher, David Mansfield, Gary Griffin, and Frank Locrasto, and the trackwas produced by Lanny Cordola and Sarmad Ghafoor.