by Miguel Bronfman
For the Herald

“Let’s get together and feel alright,” Bob Marley used to sing in one of his most wonderful and beloved songs, One Love (People Get Ready), a true world-wide peace hymn that urged every soul in the world to unite and come together as one.
Marley died in 1980, and the world is far from being a better place these days than those of his lifetime. Technology has certainly improved and reached previously unimagined possibilities, though, and as far as recording techniques are concerned, it has achieved a level of sophistication Marley would have hardly even thought of. One of them is to make his dream, his visions of unity, come true; at least — and only, so far — in musical terms.
Universal Music has just released in the local market the album Songs Around the World, by the Playing For Change Foundation, a fantastic, arresting collection of mostly well known rock, reggae and pop songs recorded live by over a hundred musicians, literally, from around the world, in a four-year period. The result is just magnificent, but an introductory explanation is needed in order to understand what the album is about, and how it was made.
Producers Marc Johnson and Enzo Buono (the wizards and makers of this project) travelled around the world with a small film crew and recording equipment, as they say, “in search of inspiration.” What they found in the most recondite and previously unrelated places was incredibly great music, undiscovered talents; unknown, anonymous musicians playing and singing in the streets and small villages, ancient traditions and local musical idioms as well as instruments. They recorded them all, and brought their art together in this incredible album. But how?
The first thing that must be said is that they did it with a unique sensibility, a perfect taste and an imaginative, alluring musical ear, all of which make this album stand way beyond other similar attempts at mixing together different artists. What they did, in a way, was quite simple: they recorded — all the takes are live recordings — a given musician playing a given song, and then, as their trip took them to different places, recorded other artists playing or singing along that previously recorded track. For example, the opening track, Stand by Me, was firstly recorded by Roger Ridley, an unknown street singer and guitarist from Santa Monica, California (who sadly passed away before the album was completed). Listening to his austere version through  headphones, other artists played and sung along their own vocal version or accompaniment. The hardest work came afterwards during mixing. While this might sound quite simple, in this particular track over 35 musicians take part. And the result, far from being a nonsense-pastiche, is completely mesmerizing. To the original voice and solo guitar accompaniment of Ridley, the producers added three  singers (from the US, the Netherlands and South Africa) a tribal vocal choir of six men and four women from South Africa (singing in their own dialect), a washboard player from the US, a Congo drummer, a French percussionist, a Russian cellist, an Italian saxophonist, and so on. Of course they do not appear altogether and at the same time — nor all the time — throughout the song, but sound instead as an extended and well-arranged large group, each playing a singular line in harmony with the rest.
In Marley’s One Love and War/No More Trouble, musicians and singers from the US, Congo, South Africa, Israel, India, Nepal and Ireland are brought together, each of them playing traditional and local instruments. In War… U2 vocalist Bono appears —the only world-famous musician in the album — with a community youth choir from Ireland.
What is amazing about all these tracks is that, despite the different sonorities and that, for example, a youth choir is put together with a singer from Ghana, the music still swings and has that enchanting, steady reggae pulse.
The same Irish choir is featured in Peter Gabriel’s famous, moving song Biko, and again, the voices flow tunefully along three vocalists from Ghana and flutes and tablas by Indian musicians.
Chanda Mama, an original by producer Enzo Buono and one of the most joyful tunes in the album, was written around a folk theme from Chennai, India. The crew started the track in New Orleans and then continued to add musicians and singers from different parts of the world (including three Argentines: a singer, an accordionist and a bass player), finally taking the music to its place of origin, where they recorded the Oneness Choir, a vocal trio of girls from Chennai. One of the most rewarding surprises in the album appears in this track, Israeli singer Tal ben Ari “Tula” (also featured in One Love and Don’t Worry, another original), a girl with a fascinating, enchanting voice.
The album closes with a live version of A Change Is Gonna Come, featuring some of the musicians from the first track, Stand by Me, meeting and playing together in a live setting.
The album comes with a DVD, which offers the chance to see all the musicians featured in the album when they were recorded playing and singing their parts with the headphones on, and thus it’s great to finally see and understand how this marvelous and ambitious project was actually made. There are striking and beautiful images from all around the world, since all the musicians were recorded in the streets or in their villages, and it is really moving to see them perform, taking part in a process much bigger than themselves, and connecting to one another despite the distance, their idioms, customs, origins and nationalities, for the sheer joy of singing and playing music from their hearts. Though it has been repeated, this album makes it more than evident that music, there’s no doubt about it, is a universal language, able to bring positive energy to every corner of the world.

More
information

For more info about the Playing For Change Foundation visit www.playingforchange.com