To organize a star-filled benefit concert in response to a calamity is to run a logistical obstacle course. But to work up a musical response by the victims of the calamity, especially when they are spread across several nations, poses even greater challenges.
Responding to the great tsunami of 2004, director Sonya Mazumdar met that challenge with her documentary film, the Laya Project, which recorded sounds and voices of coastal communities from Indonesia through India. The music, issued on a CD by the EarthSynch label, runs those voices through the blender of a contemporary electronica mix. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the project was the involvement of tsunami victims from Myanmar (Burma), whose hermetic military regime at first discouraged foreign aid, much less foreign documentation.
