Sunday, December 14, 2008

Peace Through Playing for Change

"The last person who knew why we're fighting
died a long time ago."


I have to share something I just saw that I had Tivoed earlier this week.

I just heard Bill Moyer's (second) interview with Grammy award winning producer and engineer Mark Johnson, who has just completed making a documentary film entitled "Playing for Change: Peace through Music".

It took him ten years to complete, and features one hundred musicians, each of whom he recorded playing their music from their own unique and particular neighborhoods.

In a subway station in New York, he experienced music's ability to touch hearts, to uplift spirits and to bring people together. Listening to a street musician, playing in his neighborhood, Johnson had another epiphany: he would film individuals making music together. He would travel the world to film them as they performed from the familiarity of their own neighborhoods.

Johnson said that in his travels (which, as Moyers pointed out, included visits to some of the darkest and bloodiest places on our planet), he saw the beauty of the people he met, and he saw a deep longing that all of the peoples of the world would "unite together".
Johnson told Moyers that he remembered hearing someone say: "The last person who knew why we're fighting died a long time ago."

The only choice we have, says Johnson, is to come together. We don't know how long we get to be alive here in this world. So, "While we're here, let's make a difference together!"

Johnson is now building music schools in some of the neighborhoods he visited while filming. He wants to provide opportunities for more people across our planet to share the joy and hopefulness of making music together.

9 comments:

  1. GR8 post, Em!

    I can't get that beat out of my mind, and don't want to! I guess I know where my Kris Kringle is going to this year!

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  2. I saw it on Moyer's program too. It was exciting to hear from all over the word singing saw we all knew. And they sand and played with passion.

    Thanks, Vigil.

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  3. I'm sorry I haven't been visiting much lately. This isn't my best season. Once the holidays are over and we have a new president and the promise of spring. You are dear to me. I hope you two or ten are doing well, happy, healthy and not losing your house.

    Aren't you proud of me that I've learned the difference between your and you're. I'm still working on bare and bear. And that damned it's. I don't know why that one's so hard for me to find in my fiction and correct. Want an unpaid job as copy editor? You and Stella were my first readers. Without you two I probably wouldn't have kept at it. On January 6th I will have been holding this job one year. A new new year's eve for me.

    Love,
    Peggy, that savage one in Utah

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  4. Utah "it's" means it is. Whereas "its" means everything else.

    Examples: It's cold outside. Its paws were cracked and bleeding from the ice.

    Oh yes! Nice post Em. Like Vigil I can't get that beat out of my mind:-)

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  5. I agree with Peggy, once this year ends hopefully some real changes will come for us all. Great post Emily.

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  6. Season's Greetings, Everyone.

    That said. I'm depressed.

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  7. Well then, shake yourself out of it, V-man!

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