Using music to increase peace and tolerance in the world may seem a fanciful ambition that should have died out with the hippies.
But a 15-minute conversation with Playing for Change’s Mark Johnson will remind you that this spirit is still alive and well in 2009.
‘Peace is essentially a state of mind,” says Johnson, whose argument is that if music can inspire individuals to reach inner peace, they will care more about the world they live in and the people around them.
Johnson’s project is a labour of love that has seen a small team traversing the globe to record and film musicians playing outdoors. These recordings have then been used to create global collaborations, recording famous songs by Bob Marley, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Sam Cooke with messages of peace, love and tolerance.
The result is street musicians such as Roger Ridley from California and Grandpa Elliott from New Orleans, with their rousing rendition of Ben E King’s Stand by Me, backed by a Louisiana washboard player, a New Mexican drum circle, a Russian cellist, an Italian guitarist, a Congolese drummer and a double bassist from Cape Town’s Gugulethu township.
Johnson says the project was initially inspired by a chance encounter with two monks playing music in a New York subway.’I was working as a recording engineer in New York City at the Hit Factory about 10 years ago and I was on my way to work when I saw two monks in the subway station, painted all in white,” says Johnson.
‘One of them was playing a nylon-string guitar and the other was singing and I saw 200 people stop and watch these guys — they weren’t getting on the train. ‘Some people were crying, others where smiling and laughing, and it occurred to me that the best music I had ever heard had occurred on the way to the studio, not in the studio,” says Johnson.
‘That’s when I realised that I wanted to build a mobile recording studio and travel the world, finding great musicians and connecting them through music.” ‘We went to 15 countries on five continents, but one of the most memorable moments happened in South Africa in Soweto,” says Johnson.
‘I was recording musicians on the street and there were two guys watching us, so I walked up to them and handed them my iPod Video. ‘They looked at me funny, but they watched the video and then gave it back,” he says. ‘Later my friend came over to me and said those guys are gangsters — normally they would have robbed you and taken your iPod, but when they saw what you were doing they said to tell you that they have got your back while you are here.”
Playing for Change features many South African musicians, including Vusi Mahlasela, who does a beautiful duet of Bob Marley’s One Love with Congolese vocalist Mermans Kenkosenki.
‘I was a big fan of Mahlasela after seeing the film Amandla,” says Johnson. Mahlasela introduced Johnson to poet Lesego Rampolokeng, who in turn introduced him to Zimbabwean guitar legend Louis Mhlanga.
Johnson has set up a foundation that is building music schools around the world, with the first one built in Gugulethu. ‘As we were travelling the world, people were welcoming us, inviting us into their homes, feeding us, and so we wanted to give back. That is why we started the Playing for Change foundation and we built the first school in Gugulethu,” says Johnson.
‘We are now working on more schools in Ghana, Mali, Nepal and New Orleans, and the idea is to put recording equipment and cameras into the schools, so you can log in on the internet and watch concerts and interviews with the kids.”
I ask Johnson what message he wants people to take away from his project and his response is simple. ‘We live in a world that creates difference and so we need to create our own connections,” he says.
Through the success of the project, more than 30-million people have watched a music video of Stand by Me on YouTube.
The Playing for Change: Songs around the World CD and DVD set is available in stores. Look out for the feature-length documentary to be released later this year