Are You Listening? A Love Song for Haiti

When we empathize with the pain of others, we give them a small taste of Jesus’ love. We learn that lesson through the new song, Are You Listening: A Love Song for Haiti.

Jesus with Skin On

It came from Kirk Franklin, who was moved to act while watching the horrific images broadcast on CNN Wednesday night January 13 from his hotel in Nashville. The next night he took the stage of an already planned prayer service of gospel industry professionals and insiders to make an impassioned personal plea to his fellow artists: to take part in the recording of Are You Listening: A Love Song for Haiti to raise funds to help those in Haiti so desperately in need.

“We see these people as God’s children,” Franklin said. “We want to do our part and I just want people to know that the gospel community can respond to a powerful natural disaster.”

The Gospel’s Answer to We Are the World

The response was overwhelming for what Franklin had dubbed as the gospel community’s answer to We Are the World, with more than 150 participants swiftly joining the cause. BeBe & CeCe Winans, Yolanda Adams, Marvin Sapp, Natalie Grant, Donnie McClurkin, Mary Mary, Shirley Caesar, Jeremy Camp, Marvin Winans, J. Moss, Smokie Norful, Dorinda Clark-Cole, Karen Clark-Sheard, Kiki Sheard, Donald Lawrence, Bishop Paul Morton, Micah Stampley and James Fortune would participate in an important endeavor in addition to the one that brought them to Music City, the 2010 taping of the 25th Annual Stellar Awards.

Franklin contacted Don Jackson, executive producer of The Stellar Awards, to request that the Gospel Music Channel television network, which is premiering The Stellar Awards on Feb. 28, send cameras and crews to capture the historic recording event. GMC did so and produced the official music video for Are You Listening: A Love Song for Haiti which world-premiered in a one-hour special presentation on GMC Friday, Jan. 22 at 7:00 p.m. (ET), immediately before GMC’s airing of the global Hope for Haiti Now telethon (8:00 p.m.). The commercial-free special was hosted by Lisa Kimmey-Winans and featured exclusive interview footage with Kirk Franklin from the recording session interspersed throughout multiple runs of the music video.

“It’s a great song,” said Verity Records president Jazzy Jordan, whose label released the song both digitally and commercially. “This is going to be a very strong tribute effort. Kirk has really laid himself out here and the industry has responded. Everyone is donating their time and their contributions, from the artists to the engineers and the studio.”

Franklin said:

“It’s a song God gave me after 9-11 but by the time I finished it, the timing had passed and I was just never able to marry it to anything. But as I watched what was going on in Haiti, the Lord brought it to my attention that it would be perfect. We recorded it as quickly as we can so that we can have it to radio and other outlets with all of the proceeds going to the people of Haiti.”

Being the Extended Hands of God

CeCe Winans believes it’s only fitting that gospel artists lead the way.

“That’s what the gospel is about…” Winans said, “Loving people and being the extended hands of God.”