A Unique Take on World Music

While I normally reserve this silly little blog to posting nonsensical stories and pictures from our family, every now and then we encounter something so wonderfully different that it ends up here.

And this is the case with the videos from Playing for Change.

A record producer, Mark Johnson, heard this street musician in California playing a unique version of "Stand By Me" and decided to record him. He took that recording and complemented his work by adding other musicians from around the world. The amazing thing is that none of these musicians were ever in the same place at the same time. They each listened to the recording of the previous artist then added their unique take to the song.

I first saw it a few months ago on Bill Moyer's Journal (which is another reason why this show is very the best news analysis program on television) and they've now released a DVD of the music.

These are a couple different videos they put together. Enjoy...