What people are saying…
“She sings the silent scream”
Andrew Starr,
Director Crossroads Central Asia
Kazakhstan
“There are some artists who occasionally support noble causes, Helen Mottee’s whole life is a noble cause. Her music is a reflection of the values she carries in her soul and lives out every day of her life as she fights for justice on behalf of the world’s oppressed poor.”
Bob Scott
Director Compassionate Justice International
USA
“I first came across Helen’s music while attending the Refugee Run simulation at Crossroads in Hong Kong – the powerful lyrics, combined with the compelling but simple music, tell stories in a way that I have not known since the ‘protest songs’ of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in the Vietnam War era. Helen’s music takes us back to a time when music was the message and it could change the world (or, at least, the perceptions of the listeners). Given the urgency of the situations about which she writes and sings, Helen’s music needs to reach a much wider audience – and quickly!”
Professor Alasdair White,
Business School
Brussels, Belgium
"Helen Mottee's music is among the most inspiring and thought-provoking I have ever heard. Beautifully sung, her songs offer amazing reflections on our broken world. Her passion for justice and compassion for the poor and oppressed are at the heart of her songs."
Ben Rogers
Author, journalist, human rights advocate
UK
“Helen walks the talk. She not only writes about refugees, she takes them aid in the jungle. She not only talks about abused women, she visits them in war torn areas. She not only sings about abandoned orphans, she goes to them in far flung corners of the earth. No wonder her music is a tour de force. It is ablaze with her unflinching honesty, unswerving integrity and unstoppable dedication. Her lyrics ask the questions we don’t want to face, probe the ways we justify our apathy and empower us to act. Music like this can change the world.”
Sally Begbie
Director Crossroads Foundation
Hong Kong
“Helen’s songs (starting with “This is Africa”) have moved us since we first met her at a conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2006. Helen’s songs continue to inspire us and we have had the opportunity to give her albums to people we have met in Africa, Asia and Latin America”
Jame and Leanne Lewis
LEWIS HOLDWAY LAWYERS
Melbourne, Australia
“Helen’s songs and music have a great anointing and flow from a heart of compassion for the oppressed, the victims of brutal and harsh regimes, and those treated unjustly.”
Dr Martin Panter
Cairns, Australia
“I have been privileged to share Helen’s poignant and challenging CDs during the training sessions for the NZ Refugee Services Resettlement Support training programme. I play the music as course participants reflect on the Refugee Journey. The lyrics and haunting melodies are very powerful and moving, and stimulate much discussion”
Judi Bastin,
Resettlement Support Volunteer Training Coordinator for New Zealand Refugee Settlement.
“Helen sings with a passion that provokes her listeners. You can’t fail to catch the spirit of her songs as you listen to this anointed singer. I recommend her music, you will take a move when she sings, and ask for more“
Robert Sessanga –
Pastor and author
Uganda
“Helen’s music reminds me of the power of communication, when it is done with admirable talent, skills and above all, a passionate heart.”
Donna Chu, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication,
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
” Helen Mottee’s unforgettable Letters from the 5th Estate could well carry a small cautionary label that says NOT FOR THE FAINTHEARTED OR LUKEWARM! In memorable songs that reveal the heart cries of refugees and child soldiers, listeners will experience having their complacent pillows ripped out from their armrests, and find themselves face-to-face with a world that spares no one, not even children. Helen’s haunting melodies and earthy vocals will stir slumbering consciences and spur distracted saints into action worthy of their name.”
Tim Peters
Helping Hands Korea
Seoul
‘Helen impresses audience not only by her professional skills in music, but also with her care for the plight of refugees. Helen’s music is a powerful tool to communicate messages of care and concern. Her style of presenting music is unique as she sings with a downpour of emotion at points where she is not even aware of her own strong cry. I treasure very much the opportunity to enjoy Helen’s live performance, as I feel more about what it means to be humanitarian when she brings audience’s love to flee from custody and get connected with vulnerable people around the world.’
Lum Kwok Choi
Head of Fund raising, Hong Kong Office,
UNHCR
‘Helen captures the essence of the struggles refugees are facing globally and powerfully educates us all about the predicament refugees face . Helen helps us enter and step into their world without masking what we are about to experience in their world.Helen goes to the scene where it really is taking place. There Helen allows herself a personal confrontation with what refugees are really experiencing, and then writes with passion and pathos about it , so we as citizens can understand and be moved to make a personal response’.
Angie Andrews
Waiters Union, Australia
www://westendetwork.com
‘The two international meetings I saw and heard Helen’s songs have been an inspiration to me. Many Africans have been moved by Helen’s songs.‘
John Wesley Kabango
pastor
Rwanda
"Helen's songs are poetry set to music, deeply reflective, and thought-provoking. The messages keep coming back long after the music player is turned off. Helen's music is such powerful advocacy, moving people to action."
Chato Olivas Gallo
CSW Hong Kong
‘I celebrate Helen’s music ministry to the marginalized . She sang her songs at our Singapore Methodist Social Concern Conference and impacted us in a profound and personal way. Grab her!’
Rev. Gabriel Liew
Kampong Kapor Methodist Church
Singapore
“Helen Mottee chooses to locate herself alongside those who live in the heart of darkness and sings of the light that she sees there shining in the faces of the people who confront their brutal circumstances with a dignity, integrity and grace that is unbelievably beautiful.”
Dave Andrews
author /speaker
Australia
‘The songs of Helen Mottee have deep meaning for us in the Free Burma Rangers. Her words describe our world and the lives of the displaced. Her songs are of love, and dignity for all people, Helen’s words move our hearts and we hope move the hearts of those who hear them. The people of Burma have a champion in Helen and her music brings hope.’
David Eubank
Director-Free Burma Rangers
Burma
‘The power in expressing feelings about refugees through music is immeasurable, beautiful and contagious. Listening to Helen is so moving, you can see it comes from her soul’
Margaret Warren
volunteer
Hong Kong
Helen Mottee Bio
From Wauchope, NSW, Helen has been writing songs since her late teens, and has worked as a professional pianist since the age of 21. Of her songwriting, she says: “ideas and stories come and I have to express them in what I feel is hopefully the most poignant way I can. I have been told by many that I am a storyteller in my music and I guess that’s a dominant focus in my songwriting.”
Helen’s poignancy comes through her songs, and her capacity to convey ideas in an original way was one of the things that earned her the title as the 2001 ASA Songwriter of the Year , with ‘They Told me “This Is Africa”’, winning ahead of 650 songs in the Pop/Ballad category, and ‘Two People’, winning first prize in the Sacred category.
‘They told me “This is Africa”’, was directly inspired by the 13 months she spent living and working in Zimbabwe. In December 1990, Helen gave up a full time piano bar job in a hotel in Sydney for a teaching position in a little school in Eiffel Flats — a mining town about an hour’s drive west of Harare, Zimbabwe. Ironically, it is this transition which helped her to become the 2001 ASA Songwriter of the Year, as Africa provided the life experience which produced her winning song.
Helen formed a singing duo with an English girl while there, and it was her singing partner’s comment about something Helen saw whilst travelling back to Eiffel Flats that became the title of the song. As Helen remarked on something, her partner said “Helen, my love, This is Africa!” The song was written about 2 weeks after returning to Australia in 1992.
“Two People”, Helen says, “was inspired by a true story told me by my close friend Shelley about this peasant women in Russia and how she had found God, and a science report I saw several years ago where the physicist was doing just exactly what I’ve described in the song. The idea of combining their 2 stories fermented in my mind for quite some months before I sat down one afternoon and the whole song lyrics and music came within an hour.”-+