yusuf islam's gaza charity record

The Gaza charity recording of George Harrison's The Day the World Gets 'Round by singer and guitarist Yusuf Islam (fomerly Cat Stevens), together with the German bassist and one-time Beatles collaborator Klaus Voorman and others, can be downloaded - or donations made directly to the charties concerned - via Yusuf's website:
www.jamalrecords.com/gaza/
Proceeds go to UNRWA, Save the Children and Small Kindness.

Yusuf recalls meeting Harrison, "the spiritual leader of the Beatles", and and John Lennon in the early 1970s at photographer David Bailey's studio. He pays tribute to Harrison's 1 August 1971 Concert for Bangladesh, which was "the first of its kind".

Yusuf chose the song from Harrison's 1973 US No 1 (for five weeks) album 'Living in the Material World", on which Klaus Voorman played bass. More than 35 years on there's a sense of a circle being completed. The song is a good choice for the Gaza record, both lyrics-wise and in terms of its appealing melody and interesting harmonic shifts. Yusuf is in great voice, tender and soulful. It's the most "poppy" I've heard him since his gradual easing back into instrumental and vocal music.

It is reported by Rolling Stone among others that Yusuf has recruited Paul McCartney, and many others to work with him on his forthcoming album, as yet untitled, due out late spring. This is the follow-up to his 'An Other Cup' album of 2006 which, as Rolling Stone puts it, "represented the singer-songwriter’s most secular batch of songs in decades." Yusuf has made a fascinating musical as well as spiritual journey over more than three decades.

Yusuf Islam (front L), Klaus Voorman (beside him) and the rest of the recording team