Here's what Playing For Change says about themselves...
That's the spiel, here's some music. You'll recognise some of the faces.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.
Creating the videos motivated us to form the Playing For Change Band—a tangible, travelling representation of our mission, featuring musicians met along our journey, and establish the Playing For Change Foundation—a separate 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to building music and art schools for children around the world. Through these efforts, we aim to create hope and inspiration for the future of our planet.
[BBvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph1GU1qQ1zQ[/BBvideo]
We’re excited to share our newest Song Around The World, “The Weight,” featuring musicians performing together across 5 continents. Great songs can travel everywhere bridging what divides us and inspiring us to see how easily we all get along when the music plays. Special thanks to our partner Cambria® for helping to make this possible and to Robbie Robertson, Ringo Starr and all the musicians for joining us in celebrating 50 years of this classic song.
There are more Playing For Change videos on YouTube, and their website is worth a look too.[BBvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UHHc7POovg[/BBvideo]
I remember having a daydream about the opening acoustic guitar part of “All Along The Watchtower” ending with a Native American scream and a big native drum on the downbeat. That was the spark to assemble one of our biggest and deepest Songs Around The World. From Beirut to New Orleans to the Lakota Nation, musicians play and sing like a musical army determined to stop suffering and greed all over the world. As a society, we need to get back to our roots and connect deeper with our ancestors and native people in general so we can find the wisdom we need to move forward as a human race. As Jimi Hendrix once said, “If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.”
-Mark Johnson, PFC Co-Founder