From left: Todd Bragg, Jeff Miller, Garett Buell, Danielle Young, Andrew Osenga, Cliff Young and Josh Moore stand in front of an abandoned mission outside of Otavalo, Ecuador.

Folk rock band Caedmon's Call has made a career of touring America and connecting with audiences. But over the last year, they've taken their music beyond the usual Stateside borders, witnessing first hand the poverty and oppression in countries like Brazil, Ecuador, and, most recently, India. That last trip awakened the band to the ugly truth of caste discrimination and religious persecution. We talked with lead singer Cliff Young, drummer Todd Bragg, and percussionist Garett Buell about their experience and how it plays into the band's forthcoming album.

Can you start by giving us some background about the current religious climate in India?

Cliff Young: Hinduism is just crushing India today—the caste system in particular is killing the country. The Brahmans, the upper caste, represent about 25% of the population, and they have all the power and the money. At the other end of the spectrum are the Dalits, referred to as "the unborn." They also make up around 25% of the population.

Todd Bragg: Hinduism is why the Indians are so peaceful. They believe that everything they do is going to come back to haunt them some day. So they're always trying to make peace to make up for their past.

Young: Christianity is nothing new to southern India, going back to the Roman Catholic Church and the work of Mother Teresa. But northern India is another story because the radical Hindus control it. Gandhi supposedly eliminated caste discrimination, but he didn't eliminate the system. The problem is that discrimination is inherent in the caste system that is taught by Hinduism.

The upper caste children in northern India wear school uniforms, but the Dalit children go to school wearing rags and dirty clothes. They have to go sit at the feet of the upper caste students—they aren't allowed to sit at desks. The Dalits even drink out of their own clay cups that they have to break when they're done, in case an upper caste might accidentally drink from it.

Now the gospel has come to northern India, and the Dalits who have been taught all their lives that they are absolutely worthless are suddenly hearing that God loves them. Most of the Hindu gods carry weapons and are about destruction and fear. There is no god of love, so this is a revolutionary concept for the Dalits—to learn that they don't have to live that way. India is on the verge of genuine revival because of it.

The rest of the country can't be looking on that too kindly, right?

Young: Yeah, as a result, they've passed an anti-conversion law in northern India [prohibiting conversion] from Hindu to Christian. Most people don't realize what kind of persecution is going on over there. Churches are being burned and believers are being killed for their faith. There are actually Hindus faking conversion and then killing everyone in line with them to be baptized. It's unbelievable! Obviously the Christian believers over there are pretty radical. There's no grey area—if you're a believer, you really are one.

What led to your passion and involvement in this matter?

Young: For a long time, we've been supporting a pastor friend from India who's actually one of the few Dalits in the United States. He talked to me about the discrimination that still goes on in his country today through the caste system, in the form of the oppression and persecution of Dalit believers. It was a real eye opener for me, so the rest of the band and I started talking about getting involved. And now we're working with a group called the Dalit Freedom Network, based in Denver, Colorado.

Thanks to groups like the Dalit Freedom Network and Operation Mobilization, all of a sudden the gospel's coming to the families and homes of the Dalits. They've helped start schools for the Dalit children, which the Indian government frowns upon, to say the least. We visited a school in which the Dalit children were wearing uniforms and sitting at desks. They're learning about Jesus, learning Scripture, and they're being taught English, which is a powerful tool because it's the one language common to all of India. There are 1,300 spoken languages spoken across the country, so if you know English, you can get somewhere. It's amazing to see these kids succeed because of the gospel coming to India.

Where does Caedmon's Call fit in all this?

Young: Our goal is to help raise awareness of what's going on in India, as well as other Third World nations. We're recording a world music-influenced record, and with the new music and the upcoming tour, we're trying to start two new Dalit schools and get children sponsored to fill those schools.

World music? How will that fit with the band's sound?

Young: We've always been into world music a little bit, especially with the percussion stuff that Garett has used. We've always loved this stuff and made attempts to incorporate it in the past. Our kind of music lends itself well to world music, more so than other pop and rock styles. Our roots are really in folk music—acoustic and organic—which isn't too far off from other world music styles.

We started by hearing different musicians and styles from multiple countries. When we decided as a band that we needed to go to India, we planned the trip and put out word to find Dalit musicians in India in hopes of finding a few to write and record with for the next album. We set up our recording gear in Lucknow, and we ended up finding more than 70 musicians and groups. There were people taking trains for three days to get to where we were, standing up the whole way.

Garett Buell: It was really something special. A lot of the music these musicians play isn't heard anywhere outside of their villages. They had instruments unique to their own region or caste. And it was traditional music, but not the traditional music that people usually think of with "Indian music." They weren't using the high-class instruments of the upper caste like sitars or tables. It was more a mixture of harmonium, guitars, some drums, and a lot of vocals.

Bragg: Music is not just entertainment for them. There's more meaning to it. It's really stuck into their culture and social system. It's how they record their history.

Young: One of the sub-castes in a particular village did nothing but play music—and the rest of the people in the village supports them. They spend their days walking out among the workers in the fields and everywhere else. These guys are basically telling the story of their caste and the plight of their people through music. Sometimes, one of these stories would be a single 90-minute piece of music. It was amazing—we'd just record the whole thing straight as they acted it out and talked along with it.

Another village had some straw huts on the outskirts, and that's where the musicians lived. When we came into town, all the villagers poured in and sat around those huts, and the musicians would sit up on this small wooden stage, performing their story for them. The funny part is that it's all participatory. The singers would sing, but then the villagers would react with affirmation, or then elders would argue and shout out, as if to say "You're telling it wrong! That's not the way it was!"

How did they react to having you guys there?

Young: Here we were in the middle of India with recording equipment, computers, Pro Tools, video cameras and microphones. The kids were amazed. One of us was listening to the recording through a pair of headphones, and you should have seen the looks on people's faces when they heard themselves for the first time. We even had a photographer along with us who took a picture of some little girls, and they were scared because they had never seen themselves before—they don't have anything shiny enough to serve as a mirror to see their reflection. They absolutely freaked out.

So fans will be able to hear some of what you experienced and recorded?

Young: Yeah, we recorded all these groups, and used pieces of their melodies—writing songs with musicians there. We're using some of them as background vocalists on some songs. There are songs inspired by what we saw while we were there. The album will probably feature 11 full songs with 25 tracks of filler and snippets.

We're also planning to bring the best of these musicians with us on the road this fall—maybe four from each country that we've visited recently. They'll play on some of our songs and perform some of their own. And they'll also speak about what's going on in their countries.

Tell us about some of the other countries you visited.

Bragg: We also went to Ecuador and Brazil, which we got involved with through Compassion International. Everyone knows that Compassion starts schools to meet the medical and educational needs of the children. What people may not realize is that when those kids grow up, Compassion offers them scholarships to go to universities and raises up leaders through LDP (Leadership Development Program).

It's amazing to hear from these older kids and adults that have been sponsored through Compassion and are in turn affecting the world for Christ. We sought out the musicians among the Compassion kids, and we heard about four brothers from Ecuador that have a band—three of the four were sponsored children. They play traditional folk music from their region, and we're hoping to have them tour with us later on.

Brazil was the shortest of the trips, but we hope to get back there soon. Garett and I have been into their music for a long time. At one site, we met with a school of junior high kids. It was such a poor area that the school couldn't afford instruments, so they made their own instruments. And this was a site fortunate enough to have a music director to guide them. It was cool to see how he'd been teaching the kids traditional rhythms played on old metal cans, two-liter soda bottles, and coffee cans turned into shakers.

How do you hope fans of your music will respond to this new creative direction?

Young: It's one thing to stand up on stage and tell people about the oppression and poverty, and another to get people to experience it. So the idea is to take people on a journey and get them to fall in love with Third World music and culture. It's sort of the same way we got into it—first the music, followed by the desire to experience the people and the culture, and then the issues came to our attention.

I'd love for awareness and money to be raised, but more importantly, I hope it inspires thousands of people to go on mission trips to these countries and serve. Revival starts out of desperation, and we're either not desperate enough, or we don't realize that we're desperate. India is so secular, but it's so close to being changed around through the gospel. We just hope we can somehow be near when God makes that change.

Share the Well is the title of the next Caedmon's Call album, which will be in stores October 12. For more about this band, visit our site's artist page for them. In addition to an up-to-date biography and discography, you'll find past interviews and reviews, including our take on their recent hits collection, Chronicles. Visit Christianbook.com to hear sound clips and buy their music.

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