Playing for Change

I saw this documentary tonight on a local public TV station and I thought it was wonderful. The director went around the world and had street musicians play well known songs and then put them all together to make one combined version. He also interviewed the musicians about how music is the great equalizer among cultures. I loved the first song they played, which was "Stand by me." The director just found people and said "play this song any way you want to" and recorded it. If you get a chance to see this, do spend the time watching it.

At the start, the director made a good point some of the best music isn't played by someone well known or even celebrated in the media.

Verb, there's a nice group of children singing hyms, and it made me think of you. The Omagh Community Youth Choir, from Northern Ireland. The founder spends some time talking about terrorism and how music helped them move on from a bad incident.

here's a link to go watch the "stand by me" video. A lot of the other musical pieces are easily found on the Internet.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8018743903334132825