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Oct 28, 2008

"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife." --Kahlil Gibran

Playing For Change: Peace Through Music

Mark Johnson is 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.