Playing For Change

I happened upon this link from Gadling and was inspired and touched by the message. Film director Mark Johnson recorded about 100 musicians from around the world as they performed “Stand by Me,” which resulted in an amazing and moving arrangement. There is a foundation behind this project, Playing For Change, that seeks to promote and connect music around the world by providing local musicians with the resources to do what they do best. They’ve built schools and music facilities in South Africa and Nepal and created a documentary making the film festival circuit right now.

Definitely the type of charity and group that I love supporting.

My ears have always had a thing for exotic instruments and sounds. One of the people that I always thought had the coolest job is Russ Landau, composer for Survivor and many other of Mark Burnett’s reality shows. I think the Survivor theme song is one of the best television themes ever. It is so fitting to the spirit of the show, and each season, Russ travels with the Survivor crew to these remote locations and interacts with the locals to gather new sounds and instrumentation of the local culture. He mixes those sounds with the same basic theme melody (an ancient Russian chant, I believe) to capture the location into the song. To confess, I look forward to the new theme song every season as much if not moreso than the rest of the premiere. Every Thursday, that song gets me pumped. Here’s the latest season’s theme (Gabon, Africa).