HERE COMES the rain again, the weatherman said, and indeed it poured the weekend before Annie Lennox was to set foot in Hong Kong for the very first time recently. Then suddenly the skies cleared. Chances are, she willed the sun to come out.

The Scottish singer?known throughout her 34 years of pace-setting career for speaking her mind and getting things done harmoniously (melodiously, too) and with impressive results?had an urgent message for her fans in the former British colony that should be delivered in the most favorable environment possible. And they were each going to pay HK$2,000 (P12,200) to hear it.

?When you decide to take some responsibility for the world,? she would tell a handful of Asian journalists prior to the fund-raising showcase, ?you?ve got to believe in infinite possibilities.? Including a climate change overnight, why not?

The showcase, not a full concert, would have Lennox accompanying herself on the piano to perform 10 songs (at least two of them from her chart reign with the 1980s super-band Eurythmics) deftly woven into a video presentation of her two-year-old campaign, SING, for HIV/AIDS awareness.

A few years ago, she told the journalists, she ?personally witnessed? South African president Nelson Mandela addressing the world from his former prison cell on Robben Island. ?His message was that the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa was, in fact, a genocide. I resolved to do as much as I can to bring attention to the crisis. I?m coming out from behind my singing to express myself in broader terms and help give a voice to those who don?t have the same opportunities as I do.?

It is an awesome singing voice, to begin with, a compelling contralto that has sold over 80 million albums. As for those ?opportunities,? Lennox is one of the most influential female artists on the planet.

The American music industry bible Rolling Stone named her one of ?The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.? CBS? VH1 music TV channel proclaimed her ?The Greatest White Soul Singer Alive? and gave her the ninth slot in its list of the ?100 Greatest Women of Rock ?n? Roll.? Also, Lennox has had 34 hit singles, won four Grammy Awards, 11 Brit Awards and five Ivor Novello Awards, plus an Oscar and two Golden Globes.

Gay icon, decorated activist

Her pop culture icon status is backed up by numerous music videos that saw heavy rotation on MTV during the cable channel?s early years. She continues to enjoy a prominent following in the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community, as reported by The Advocate (US gay-lesbian newsmagazine), which cited her ?provocative onstage persona.? (In 1983, she wore a man?s suit and danced about with a cane on her ?Sweet Dreams? video; she reprised this in 2005, on the promo video for ?I?ve Got a Life.?)

And now she?s a decorated activist. She recently received the Red Cross Services to Humanity Award and was named 2008 Glamour Inspirational Woman of the Year. She is also an ambassador of Nelson Mandela?s 46664 (the number of his former prison cell) Campaign.

Lennox sang for Mandela?s 90th birthday celebration last year in London and was honored at the 2008 Youth AIDS Gala in Virginia.

Asked about the wellspring of her ?good intentions,? Lennox said, ?It?s really a response, something I can?t avoid ? I can?t put it down, seeing that life is so cruel to so many people.?

Lennox was born in Aberdeen, Scotland on Christmas Day, 1954 and lived with her parents in a block of flats with communal laundry facilities. It was a music-loving family and she was an only child, but their financial circumstances nearly precluded music lessons for the talented girl. Still, she said, nothing in this far-from-privileged childhood prepared her for Africa.

Not going away

She recounted: ?I went to South Africa in 2003, and it was immediately evident to me that women and children were widely infected. I was horrified, and I thought, why isn?t this on the front pages of every newspaper?like the swine flu? We all know there isn?t a cure for AIDS and it?s not going away anytime soon. Worse, there?s still a stigma attached to it.?

In July 2005, Lennox was invited by British screenwriter filmmaker Richard Curtis (?Four Weddings and a Funeral,? ?Bridget Jones? Diary,? ?Notting Hill, ?Love, Actually?) to help shoot a film, ?Make Poverty History,? in Uganda, East Africa. the film would be shown during the BBC broadcast of the ?Live8? benefit concert.

She described her Uganda experience to the journalists:
?We came face to face with people whose whole families were wiped out by AIDS. We were staying in a comfortable hotel, of course?hot and cold running water, shower, nice breakfast?and then we?d go off to the shoot. It was like going into deep water? all day long, swimming in this water, which is the environment of another world that you don?t inhabit. At the end of every day, you sort of come out and decompress ? in private. You try to process all the images and all the experiences on your own, ?cause you can?t get really emotional in front of people; it?s kind of almost disrespectful.?

If this was the film shown during the showcase, it was clear she did not succeed at keeping it in. She apologized to the well-heeled audience at the very exclusive MO (Mandarin Oriental) Bar in HK?s Central district for being caught on cam in tears. She had just said goodbye to ?a very brave boy, too dignified to cry in the face of his misery,? she said.

Early evening on weekday, devoted followers in their 30s to 60s packed the MO Bar till there was hardly enough room to even snap their fingers to the beat of the tracks on ?The Annie Lennox Collection.? (See review at left.) But the music videos were beyond entertaining; they were stamped with the Lennox signature: Artistic, sleek, riveting.

When the diva appeared, in a body-hugging red outfit and a black velvet hat, the bar heaved, then broke into enthusiastic shrieks and whistles. With every song, Lennox commanded full attention and got nothing less, her voice giving credence to all that?s been written in praise of it?rich, intense, stunningly textured.

The short but carefully thought-out set list: ?There Must Be An Angel,? ?A Thousand Beautiful Things,? ?Pavement Cracks,? ?Here Comes The Rain Again? (a slow, emotive version), ?Cold,? ?Only Castles Burning,? ?Little Bird,? ?Sisters Are Doin? It For Themselves,? (the Grammy-winning) ?Why,? and ?Sweet Dreams.?

They listened

Each number?including the surprise cover of Neil Young?s ?Only Castles Burning??was punctuated with wild applause at the end. But with every video clip, the audience grew just a little bit quieter than the last. They heard.

(The event raised US$60,000 for SING.)

Lennox took a few questions from the audience. Why was she doing this? And what exactly did she want them to do?

?I?m taking my experience and showing other people [that] this is what?s going on, but not in a pornographic or voyeuristic way. I?m only one person trying to get this message across to you. You can give money or just encourage others to learn about HIV. Or learn for yourself. This is not one isolated African child I am talking about.?

During the pre-showcase interview, Lennox was quite the master of repartee, attentive and quick-witted in turns, alternately funny and purposeful.

She had just come from Thailand where she had ?a lot of rest and healing.? (She had a spine surgery in August last year.)

In her first public appearance three months later, she received the Special Award of Merit at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles, joining the ranks of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and Johnny Cash. She has every right to retire, secure in her music legacy and, after all, she is this close to ruling out the possibility of touring yet again. Plus, she?s 54.

This last observation proved engaging. She has come to consider herself, she said, as much a ?communicator? as a famous singer-entertainer/recording artist. Though ?really very shy,? she noted, she has accepted that her current role requires her to ?talk to the world.?

Letting out a big sigh, she said, ?There?s never a time when we really feel good about ourselves?which is probably a condition for being human. We?re just never old enough. When you?re young you wanna be old; when you?re old you wanna be young. By the time you?re 50, maybe you have a chance to finally shed your own expectations of ?Now I have to be young, now I have to be beautiful ?? Women above 50, especially, have so much inner resource that they often don?t value enough. We should learn to do that.?

Huge difference

Without question, she said, women over 50 were in the best position to help everyone else. ?They?re the ones who have the big compassion, the understanding, the drive and experience and the big heart.?

Turning pensive, she continued: ?We?re only in the present; that?s what all the great sages tell us and I think they?re right. But we keep projecting into the future or back into the past.?

Two online resumes describe Lennox as ?unhappy? in at least two significant periods of her life?as a child, and as a piano and flute student at the Royal Academy of Music. Has she found happiness?

She quipped, ?What makes me happy now? Wearing a red T-shirt with letters that sparkle.? She was, in fact wearing one such shirt, and the letters spelled, ?Happiness.?

Apart from the red tee? ?Things that can?t be bought make me happy. A beautiful day, a sunny day ? friendship? a hug? a warm shower? the smell of coffee? seeing children in their precious place of innocence?? Ah, especially this last one, thus SING, ?my lifelong commitment.?

Would she eventually take SING out of Africa? ?I?m focusing on Africa because it?s the place of my realizing and one of the countries with the highest incidence of the virus. I play it by ear, taking opportunities as they come. I support grassroots organizations?I?m in a very good position to do that as an Amnesty International ambassador. I can also work with Unicef, or sing with Alicia keys for her own work, ?Keep a Child Alive.?

Once more, she was challenged: Not everybody, whatever their age, could go to Africa.

?Oh, not everyone needs to. Look in your own backyard,? Lennox urged. ?Go any place where children want your care. Go to any orphanage. Hundreds of toddlers, with maybe a couple of caregivers ? you sit down on the floor and the babies all come ? because they need to be touched, to be hugged and held.?

Once, speaking at the British Parliament, she appealed directly to the children of the United Kingdom to help children in Africa who were afflicted with the debilitating virus.

Almost imperceptibly, Lennox?s eyes misted over. ?Well, that?s just one of the small things I did. But, really, you keep doing these small things because you just never know how far that would go. You may touch one person, who will touch another ? and another, until everybody is finally hearing you.?

Her own sweet dreams are made of these.