In one fell swoop, we all feel a bit better about the countless $4 coffees purchased from Starbucks.  The company created their Love Project when on December 7, 2009, citizens of 156 countries united and sang “All You Need is Love” by the Beatles to spread AIDS awareness.

On December 3, 2009, Starbucks posted this notice on their YouTube channel:

In one amazing moment, the world will come together to sing about the one thing we all have in common love. People from around the world will sing the legendary hit “All You Need is Love” in a single voice on December 7, 2009 at 8:30 am EST.  The global sing-along is part of our continuing efforts to help fight AIDS in Africa.  In just one year in partnership with (RED)™, Starbucks has generated money equivalent to more than 7 million days of medicine to help those living with HIV in Africa.

You can watch the event, and lend your own voice, when you visit [StarbucksLoveProject.com]. Watch streaming video from countries around the world and then join in by singing “All You Need is Love” yourself.  For each video submitted, Starbucks will make a contribution to the Global Fund to help fight against AIDS in Africa. You can also help increase the Starbucks contribution to the Global Fund by submitting a drawing to the Love Gallery.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said: “Among the many forms in which the human spirit has tried to express its innermost yearnings and perceptions, music is perhaps the most universal. It symbolizes the yearnings for harmony, with oneself and with others, with nature and with the spiritual and sacred within us and around us. There is something in music that transcends and unites. This is evident in the sacred music of every community – music that expresses the universal yearning that is shared by people all over the globe.”

Love is truly all there is…

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It’s Been a Long Time Coming, But a Change Is Gonna Come

The producers of Playing for Change and the musicians around the world continue to inspire.  This is the second video I have posted on this, my legal blog.   Yet, how can I not? For they are literally changing the world one song at a time, by uniting  the world’s citizens through our universal language – music.  Besides, who can resist Grandpa Elliott?

We each in our way must find a way, every day, to help to correct our course.   Things have got to change.  They just have to…

This performance consists of the musicians from Stand By Me who meet and perform for the first time. This song was recorded live in New Orleans, and features Grandpa Elliot, whom the producers sought out in the French Quarter for Stand by Me, and Clarence Bekker on vocals. Thousands of people witnessed the soul and conviction of two men who make us all believe a change is going to come.  It just has to.

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1. Stand by Me by Playing for Change

As John Chow stated in his blog John Chow dot Com: Tuesday is normally the second worst day of the week after Monday. But I got the cure for those Tuesday blues with an awesome remix of Ben E. King’s classic, Stand By Me. The video was produced by Playing For Change and I got tell ya, if it doesn’t bring a tear to you eyes, then you are one heartless bastard.

Director Jonathan Walls first described the inception of the project in 1999 on Huffington Post last spring.  The background story of this extraordinary project is also fascinating, involving a dream, childhood friends, couch surfing and the perseverance of a love of storytelling.

Jesus Diaz featured the video in his blog, The Best Article Every Day explaining: This cover of Stand By Me was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Ellitott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley’s base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz’s added some metal percussion to it.  And from there, it just gets rock ‘n’ rolling bananas: The producers  took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video.

Playing for Change has produced a number of these videos.  On their website their inspiration, production and the effect are as follows:

The Inspiration

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.

The Production

We built a mobile recording studio, equipped with all the same equipment used in the best studios, and traveled to wherever the music took us. As technology changed, our power demands were downsized from golf cart batteries to car batteries, and finally to laptops. Similarly, the quality with which we were able to film and document the project was gradually upgraded from a variety of formats– each the best we could attain at the time—finally to full HD.

One thing that never changed throughout the process was our commitment to create an environment for the musicians in which they could create freely and that placed no barriers between them and those who would eventually experience their music. By leading with that energy and intent everywhere we traveled, we were freely given access to musicians and locations that are usually inaccessible. In this respect, the inspiration that originally set us on this path became a co-creator of the project along with us!

The Effect

Over the course of this project, we decided it was not enough for our crew just to record and share this music with the world; we wanted to create a way to give back to the musicians and their communities that had shared so much with us. And so in 2007 we created the Playing for Change Foundation, a separate 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation whose mission is to do just that. In early 2008, we established Timeless Media, a for-profit entity that funds and extends the work of Playing for Change. Later that year, Timeless Media entered into a joint venture with the Concord Music Group through the support of label co-owner and entertainment legend Norman Lear and Concord Music Group executive vice president of A&R John Burk. Our goal is to bring PFC’s music, videos and message to the widest possible audience.

Now, musicians from all over the world are brought together to perform benefit concerts that build music and art schools in communities that are in need of inspiration and hope. In addition to benefit concerts, the Playing for Change band also performs shows around the world. When audiences see and hear musicians who have traveled thousands of miles from their homes, united in purpose and chorus on one stage, everyone is touched by music’s unifying power.

And now, everyone can participate in this transformative experience by joining the Playing for Change Movement. People are hosting screenings, musicians are holding benefit concerts of every size, fans are spreading the message of Playing for Change through our media, and this is only the beginning. Together, we will connect the world through music!

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