Stand By Me, Wherever You May Be
In the midst of a hectic day, a student sent this video splicing together musicians from around the world as they perform “Stand by Me.”
At this rate, November 2008 will go down in my history as The Month Beauty Kept Making Me Cry. I swear, I’m not usually a crier.
If you have the time, watch the whole PBS show where this video was featured. It’s great.
Bill Moyers Interview with Mark Johnson, PBS
Here’s a transcript from a portion of the interview:
Bill Moyers sits down with Mark Johnson, the producer of a remarkable documentary about the simple but transformative power of music: PLAYING FOR CHANGE: PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. The film brings together musicians from around the world — blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, chamber groups in Moscow, a South African choir — to collaborate on songs familiar and new, in the effort to foster a new, greater understanding of our commonality.
Johnson traveled around the globe and recorded tracks for such classics as “Stand By Me” and Bob Marley’s “One World” — creating a new mix in which essentially the performers are all performing together — worlds apart. Often recording with just battery-powered equipment, Johnson found musicians on street corners or in small clubs and they would in turn gather their friends and colleagues — in all, they recorded over 100 musicians from Tibet to Zimbabwe.
The unique composition of the film which has musicians playing together yet in their own traditions, made Johnson think anew about what world music means:
“Just thinking in my mind… what would be unique instruments to juxtapose against each other that had never been heard before: a talking drum and a tabla, they’re very similar but they never really come together, or a sitar and a dobro, very similar but how often do you hear them play together? The idea was to go to places that would have some sort of instruments that they could add to the spectrum of the global music that we were trying to find.”
The Playing For Change Foundation provides resources (facilities, supplies, educational programs, etc) to musicians and communities around the world. The foundation is working with South African poet Lesego Rampolokenga to build the Mehlo Arts Center in Johannesburg, South Africa and building and supporting the Ntonga Music School in the South African township of Guguletu. In addition, Playing For Change is working to enhance and rebuild Tibetan refugee centers in Dharamasala, India and Kathmandu, Nepal. You can find news about their benefit concerts and programs, and listen to additional songs, on their Web site: Playingforchange.com (for Flash users) or Playingforchange.org.
There are some guitar skills you can only teach by nagging. Again and again, you remind the student, until finally, they start reminding themselves.
I’ve followed every crisis in my life with a transformation. I was bullied in middle school until my parents finally transferred me to a different school, where I made friends and discovered my love for the theater. After a bad breakup with a girlfriend, I found a counselor who taught me how improve my relationships with everyone I loved. And after three brutal years of teaching high school English, I quit and, after two years groping in the dark, found my dream job teaching guitar.
As many of you know, I hurt my arms this past spring by simultaneously cramming for the first performance with my new band (three days after joining it), preparing for my students’ Coffee Shop Jam (which happened two weeks later), and, in a fit of vanity, trying to do as many push-ups as I could at the gym. Writing that last bit hurts almost as much as my arms did.
I’ve just added 32 new chord charts to my website, and made improvements on a handful of others. It’s a veritable cornucopia of carefully crafted chord chart compositions!
Dear Faithful Heartwood Beat Subscribers,