Stand By Me - Street Artists

 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM]

A sound engineer friend of mine posted this to facebook yesterday. The point he was making was what an art form it was mixing all these recordings together. I totally agree, and I also see, as I'm sure he does, the art within the music, too. Another sound engineer, Mark Johnson, saw more than that.

Playing for Change is a music project put into motion by Johnson with Timeless Media Group, intended to bring together musicians from all around the world, working together. The project started with one artist, Roger Ridley, in California. His track was laid down (live on the street), and Johnson moved on to the next location, overdubbed another artists track, and then, mixed them all together to create the final project.

The project started as a way to bring peace to the world through music. As I've talked about previously, most noticeably in posts from the first of this month and May of this past year, music has the ability to affect one's emotions dramatically. Does it have the power to actually bring people together enough to bring "peace on Earth" as it were? I'd like to think it can.

For that matter, if it can bring the people of New York together and create enough positive energy to destroy the evil spirit of a seventeenth century tyrant named Vigo the Carpathian (AKA "Vigo the Cruel, Vigo the Torturer, Vigo the  Despised, and Vigo the Unholy", and possibly "Vigo the Butch"), who was, and I quote, "poisoned, stabbed, shot, hung, stretched, disemboweled, and drawn and quartered" before his "head died", I'd like to think anything is possible through music. Further inspiration is drawn when you realize the song that accomplished this feat was a rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" being sang by a surely drunken mob - it was New Year's Eve after all - of New Yorkers. Under this logic, world piece can surely be accomplished through real songs of inspiration easily enough. Let's get started.