MMHP Teams-up with Local Folk Musician, Vanessa Torres

Recently, Vanessa Torres held a CD Release show for her new album “Without Sight” . As part of her performance, she collaborated with MMHP to create a slide show that paired images of migrant farm communities we serve with one of her songs, “Nameless.”  The slide show created is a photographic essay reflecting the wide range of migrant farmworkers who MMHP serves as an organizationThe song itself highlights the working and living conditions of an often-times overlooked population. The slides used for the collaboration were part of a 2007 project of Earl Dotter (earldotter.com) and Tennessee Watson, Farmworkers Feed Us All which featured farmworkers in Maine and the work of MMHP.

Here is the final product: Vanessa Torres sings \”Nameless\”

Here is an excerpt from a recent interview of Vanessa Torres by Aimsel Ponti of the Portland Press Herald:

What inspired the song “Nameless”?
“This is one of the songs dearest to my heart on the album. It was inspired by the work that my partner LuzMarina Serrano does as part of the organization Maine Migrant Health Program. They are a nonprofit dedicated to providing health care and health education to the migrant and seasonal farm worker community across the state of Maine.
The song speaks to the millions of undocumented people living and working in this country who are criminalized and condemned for doing some of the hardest work in our economy. I wanted to write a song that gave a snapshot of these faces that are all around us, one that spoke to the silence that accompanies the fear of deportation and the language barriers that face so many of the undocumented people working here.”

 

In recognition of National Farmworker Awareness Week, we wanted to share this slideshow and song, release Friday March 23rd at her C.D. Release. Please share widely and help us to encourage conversation and sharing around this important topic.