Ring the Bells

by Melissa Etheridge and Salman Ahmad

We are grateful to Salman Ahmad and Melissa Etheridge for dedicating the music video of their song to Search for Common Ground; and to Participant Media for creating an inspiring music video using images from several of the countries where SFCG works.

Ring the Bells, released on Melissa’s Christmas 2008 CD (“A New Thought for Christmas”),  is a duet between Grammy and Academy Award winning Melissa Etheridge and Pakistani rock superstar Salman Ahmad (of Junoon fame). 

Melissa and Salman met in Norway where they performed at the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, at which Al Gore received a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.  Melissa recorded I Need to Wake Up  for Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth,” for which she received an Academy Award for Best Song of the Year.

That meeting turned into a friendship and that led to music sessions at Melissa’s house in Los Angeles.   Ring the Bells  was born.

The song is a cry for peace and change in a world of war and chaos.    Salman wrote “both of us were well aware of the deep divisions and fear that exists today between races, regions and religions.  We hope that Ring the Bells will confront feat with an alternative vision of hope.  When you can see with the heart, all the masks fall down.”

Ring the Bells music video was produced by Participant Media, the company responsible for great films such as An Inconvenient Truth, The Soloist, The Visitor, and many more films that entertain, inform, and move audiences to action.

Watch.  Listen.  Act.

www.takepart.com/searchforcommonground