WisconsInnovation

Recently, I learned about Playing For Change:Peace Through Music. PBS presented a documentary about this new innovation led by Mark Johnson on the Bill Moyers Journal. The innovative product is music that has been co-created by musicians across the globe. The driving force of the film is to find a way to inspire the planet to come together as a human race through the universal language of music. Johnson and his team want to focus on our connections rather than all of our differences. They believe music can break down the walls and barriers between cultures, and raise the level of human understanding and connection.

The project took three years to complete. As the team traveled around the world, the idea was to get as many different cultures and races to sing songs together to inspire the world to come together through music. Roger Ridley, a street musician in Santa Monica, CA, caught the attention of Mark Johnson. Ridley's voice intrigued Johnson to the point that he asked him for permission to come back with recording equipment to video tape and record him as he sang "Stand By Me." Ridley agreed.

The co-creation happened as each musician added to the song "Stand By Me" without meeting any of the other musicians. First, Johnson recorded Roger. Next, he went to a Native American Zuni reservation, put headphones on the natives, let them listen to Roger sing and play the guitar, and then they sang and played the drums over Roger's recording. Afterwards, he went to South Africa and put headphones on a Zulu choir situated on a mountain top, they listened to the new version of "Stand By Me," and they played on top of it. This continued across the globe. Johnson's final product ended up featuring approximately thirty-seven musicians who never met, all playing "Stand By Me" together, live, outside, and around the world. He and his team use the music to inspire the planet, and have created a foundation to build music schools in some of the communties of the participating musicians. Visit www.playingforchange.com/pop.html for more information and to watch the video. Once on the website, click "enter," then "click to play