Playing For Change
Peace Through Change
Songs Around The World
Please visit this great website, great music and a wonderful cause!
CD and DVD also available
on amazon
Before I start discussing the music on this disc and DVD please allow me a bit of leeway to say that what they are doing here is worthy and deserves the support of all music fans around the world no matter the type of music they enjoy. This crew has traveled the world high, low and all places in-between and recorded musicians playing and put then it together as a cohesive whole. On the DVD, you get to see a concert in New Orleans by some of the musicians. They had never met until that day, and see how they produce and mesh together with nary a glitch. It is beautiful to watch. If you listen to the disc first, you hear the music but don’t see the interaction; and in the concert sequence you can see some of what is to come from this project.
This is truly world music, as played by musicians from around the globe, in all parts of the world. Many of the songs presented here will be familiar because they were ‘hits’ and popular in one way or another: from Ben E King’s smash hit “Stand By Me” to “One Love” by Bob Marley, through Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ Bout A Revolution” right up to the stunning Sam Cooke tune “A Change Is Gonna Come”. All the songs are powerful statements and relate to the theme of
this disc. Then there are the stunning performer /performances by those both widely known: Bono and Keb’ Mo, to the astonishing presentations by those you have probably never heard of but are going to want to follow up on: Clarence Bekker (Netherlands), Grandpa Elliott (USA), Tal Ben Ari “Tula” (Israel), Venkat (India), Roberto Luti (Italy), and the Bhekani Memela Choir (South Africa), to name but a smattering of those that contribute to this disc and DVD.
What comes through on this disc is the cohesive power of music, and how we all appreciate music no matter where we are from. You hear Arab and Israeli, black and white, known and unknown banding together with the common goal of making good music. If the musicians can play together and provide us with times of peace and beauty, why can’t people put aside their differences and play/work together and make this thing called life more a work of harmony than one of strife.