Imagine a street musician who, instead of playing solo, is backed up by a band of her best musical friends from around the world. One such band exists: Playing For Change.
The group’s songs feature a wide assortment of musicians, including a Senegalese guitarist, a Cuban percussionist and an Indian drummer. What draws them together is their passion for music and their desire to make the world a better place through it.
In 2002, Mark Johnson was walking through Santa Monica when he saw Roger Ridley play “Stand By Me” on his guitar. His performance was so moving that Johnson recorded it with his camera and began to develop the idea for Playing For Change.
Johnson teamed up with Whitney Kroenke and shared his vision for a global collaboration of street musicians. Kroenke had been working as a filmmaker in South Africa, where she was touched by the role music played in people’s lives all over the world. She knew Johnson’s idea would work and together they set out to find other street performers who shared their vision and love of music.
This is the official Playing For Change “Stand By Me” music video featuring musicians around the world recorded by the Playing For Change band.
This song was written by Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1961 and has been covered over 400 times by artists all over the world. The song has been described as “an enduring anthem of friendship.”
Now we have a version with musicians from over 30 different countries, including the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Italy, France, South Africa, Kenya and many more!
Playing for Change is a movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.
The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. From that belief, Playing For Change was born. The idea was simple: to record, by mobile studio, musicians performing the same song in places ranging from the streets of New Orleans to the villages of South Africa.
Playing for Change is an organization that is dedicated to bringing together musicians from different parts of the world on one song. They travel around with a mobile recording studio and get street performers to sing one song together. The organization asks people to support music education in schools by donating directly or purchasing products from their online store.
The idea began with a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. From that belief came Playing for Change, a multimedia movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. The idea was simple: by mobile studio record musicians performing the same song in places ranging from the streets of New Orleans to villages South Africa.
Since 2008 when it first surfaced on Youtube, playing
In September, 2007, the Playing For Change Band, featuring musicians from around the world united by music, performed an exclusive concert at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. This is a clip from that show.
Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.
Our primary focus is to record and film musicians performing in their natural environments and combine their talents and cultural power in innovative videos we call Songs Around The World. As these musicians are brought together to collaborate for the first time, both their music and the project’s mission of unity and peace become stronger.
We believe that by bringing people together from different places and cultures, we can create global understanding and help to heal the world through music. Thank you for your support, without you none of this would be possible.
For years, street musicians have been a fixture in cities around the world. In large part, they have been relegated to a position as background noise. Playing For Change is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people.
This video was filmed in November 2008 on location in New Orleans and features street musicians from all over the world including Clarence Bekker from Amsterdam, Mongezi Ntaka from South Africa, Tal Ben Ari (Tula) from Israel, and Luis Conte from Cuba. We encourage you to share this incredible experience with everyone you know!
We all know that the internet has reshaped the media landscape. But we’re only beginning to see how it will reshape our experience of culture.
Music is a good example of this. In the pre-internet age, music was a product that had to be bought in packaged form, like toothpaste or soap. You could buy it in a store, or by mail order, or order it over the phone. You couldn’t see it or touch it beforehand, but you could at least read reviews and ads, and if you had friends who were into music they could tell you what they liked, and what they’d heard was good.
But more recently the computer has made it possible for artists to distribute their work on their own terms. The result is an explosion of new music — people can distribute their work directly to their fans, bypassing the middlemen who used to stand between artists and audiences.
The effect of all this is not just a lot more music — which everyone agrees there is — but also a much wider range of musical styles than we’ve ever seen before. It’s easier than ever to find niche audiences for niche forms of music, so musicians have new incentives to explore unusual styles that might never have found an audience in previous times.
