'Playing for Change': buskers worldwide unite for peace

Can music bring together the entire human race? That's the belief of "Playing For Change", a group of young Americans who travel the world recording buskers, amateur choirs and singers of every nationality, and then put them on the same record.

The project began ten years ago when a group of friends took off on a music-themed road trip. It's since become the subject of two independent music documentaries, one of which was presented at the Tribeca Film Festival. Clips posted on YouTube by the group have been viewed over 10 million times and have spread like wildfire across MySpace and Facebook. Now, thanks to money raised through the popularity of the project, the group has launched the Playing For Change Foundation, set up to build music schools in ghettos and shantytowns around the world.

The musicians featured in the videos were filmed in the street, listening to the tracks recorded before them. None had heard or worked with the other musicians before.

Contributors

Marc Johnson

"Stand by Me" on world tour

Musicians from New Orleans to Johannesburg, passing by Toulouse.

"Music is the best way to fight prejudice"

Marc Johnson is a sound engineer and music producer, and co-founder of Playing For Change.

Our belief is that the outdoors is the most natural environment for music. In street performances there are no barriers between the musician and the audience: no stage, no tickets, no security, no door etc. So we decided to travel around the world to document as many of these street performances as we could.

A lot in life is just about showing up. In the beginning we would save up enough money to get plane tickets and just show up somewhere and meet musicians. Then other contacts came through word of mouth, people telling their friends or directing us towards other musicians. It was all very organic. Sometimes I would research on the internet to find all sorts of different styles and instruments, and try to bring them together.

For the Stand by Me video, it all started with our recording of Roger Riddley in New Orleans. We asked him if we could record his performance and use it in a worldwide project, and he looked at us as if we were crazy but said go ahead. We used his performance as a basis for what other musicians heard and played over.

I think the project can promote peace in the world because whoever hears these songs realises that the peoples of the earth should focus on their connections instead of their differences. I want to use music as a door-opener, to show people that before we were different, we were all connected in the same human race. Then we created our differences, so we can easily create our connections. I think music is the best way of showing how men can overcome their differences to unite their voices.

YouTube has allowed us to spread our project and music much further and faster than at the beginning, and also allowed all the musicians who participated in the projects to see the final results. We have even brought together nine of them from across the world to participate in benefit concerts for our foundation, which aims to build music schools in impoverished areas and connect them with webcams so children from South Africa, for example, could learn music with a child, say, from Nepal. Hearing other voices at such an early stage would do away with much of the prejudice and stereotypes that caused so much harm today.

So far the foundation has built just one school but we have plans for many others. Just like the Stand by Me video begins by one guy and his guitar, the playing for change foundation beins with one school that will eventually be connected with many others across the world."

Marc Johnson