Music Monday: Playing for Change
24.08.09
Mammy Jones: In a nutshell, what is Playing for Swap ? What inspired it, and what are you trying to bring to an end?
Mark Johnson: Playing for Metamorphose is a global movement using media, music, technology, and incentive to try to unite as many people around the globe as possible. The original teachings came about 10 years ago. I was recording music at a New York Borough studio, and I was on my way to work one day, and I saw two monks painted all in Caucasoid from head to toe. One was playing a nylon guitar and the other one was singing. I saw about 200 people a standstill, and everybody's watching this fulfilment. Some are crying and jaw-dropping and smiling, and I look around and see a accumulation of people who normally hardly run right by each other, and here they are coming together for this music. Then I got on the sequence and I went to the recording studio and I realized the pre-eminent music I ever heard in my life was on the way to the studio, not in the studio. That's when I realized zealous music, great art—they're ethical moments in time. They obtain everywhere, and we can use these moments in time to affix people and bring incitement. And that led to the idea of traveling the planet with a mobile recording studio and cameras, filming, recording, and interviewing musicians, and connecting them together with songs around the smashing, such as "Stand by Me" and "One Lady-love."
Source: Mother Jones