Yahoo Music Interviews Clay

Yahoo Music has posted a new interview with Clay. The interview was focused on Clay's recent UNICEF trip to Afghanistan.

To read the complete interview, head on over to Yahoo Music. An abridged version of the interview appears below:

An Idol Who Really Gives Back

05/07/2007 7:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Laura Hertzfeld

Before charming the hearts of American Idol fans in 2003, singer Clay Aiken was a teacher, focusing on special education in his native North Carolina. Today, in addition to performing and recording, Clay acts as an education ambassador for UNICEF, most recently in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Still jetlagged, Clay told Yahoo! Music in his smooth drawl why Idol Gives Back won't solve the poverty problem, what it was like to grow a beard and wear long robes, and why he never sings when visiting schools abroad.

YAHOO! MUSIC: What were your overall impressions of Afghanistan?

CLAY: I think, more than anything, the trip to me was a stereotype-breaker because there are so many times in the U.S. that we see in the news the negative things that happen in Afghanistan. We see the headcoverings and we think Muslim, we hear about suicide bombings and terrorists, and we think "Middle East." Afghanistan's not in the Middle East, it's in South Asia, and it's not a desert. My friends were all, "It must have been so hot there!" But you can see in some of the pictures the snow-capped mountains. There are many parts of Afghanistan that are really quite a lush landscape. I had a lot of misconceptions about the country and about the people there.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Why education?

CLAY: Well you know, I was a teacher, so education is kind of important to me. I focus on education mainly with UNICEF on every trip that I take. A number of schools [in Afghanistan] were destroyed during the Taliban era. The schools that were around only housed male students--girls were not allowed to go to school. So now there are twice the number of students and there's just not enough room to hold these kids. They are sitting outside on the ground all day.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Did you perform for the kids you met in Afghanistan? How did they like your music?

CLAY: [Laughing] I made the mistake in Uganda of performing for some kids who were in a night commuter center, and they were singing a song and they were clapping. It was kind of a joyful, cheerful song. They didn't know me, but they had heard that I was a singer, and so they asked me to sing a song, and I couldn't think of what to sing. And someone whispered to me, "Sing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water.'" And so I got through maybe a line of the song before the kids started laughing at me so hard. They'd never heard any music like that before in their lives. So I've made it a point when I take these trips to never sing.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Do you have a favorite story of any of the people you met in Afghanistan or a moment during your trip that touched you the most?

CLAY: One of the things that stuck with me more than anything else was just the hunger, the thirst for education. I mean, these kids wanted to go to school. My social studies teacher [who accompanied me on the trip]--she was quite jealous. She's been teaching for 30 years and she's never had a class full of students who wanted to be there as much as these kids in Afghanistan wanted to be there.

YAHOO! MUSIC: How has your work with UNICEF influenced your music? What do you take back with you?

CLAY: Every time I come back from these situations, you take a look at what's important to you, and how privileged we are, and it's easy to take that back. But it's important to remember that we have to be a proactive society. It's interesting to me to look at Afghanistan and realize that there are countries all around the world that we haven't looked at because they haven't affected us and yet, one of these days it's possible that one of them could affect us. Had we taken a hard look at the needs of women and children in Afghanistan in 1996, it's possible that we could have prevented September 11, 2001.

YAHOO! MUSIC: I saw in pictures of you that you'd changed your looks a bit to fit in there.

CLAY: I wanted to be culturally respectful to the country and the people there. It's kind of part of their culture to be bearded and to be dressed appropriately. But that again is kind of part of the stereotype about Afghanistan, but there's quite a bit of what I guess we'd call "Western" attire in the country.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Why is it important for celebrities to be the face of UNICEF?

CLAY: I haven't necessarily heard too much negative, but I think the main problem is the media's attention. We are a society that only pays attention to in the media. We put too much emphasis on celebrities. And even though I am one and I don't mind the attention every once in a while, it's sad that you have to have a celebrity to bring attention to these causes.