One of the biggest phenomena in the past few months has been the buskers’ project called Playing for Change. I lost count of how many emails I was sent, with the note: you must see this!. I duly looked, and found a man in the street singing ‘Stand By Me’, a song I had heard too many times to welcome another version. But, persevering, I saw that after a minute or so somebody else was singing it, while listening to the first version on headphones. And so it went on, a round the world relay, with harmonica here, slide guitar there and a South African gospel group to finish it off. Brilliant. But would it translate to record sales in the old fashioned sense? In the week that I met Mark Johnson, the man behind the project, the album had gone straight into the Billboard top ten albums, carrying a DVD in the same package. Has it ever happened before that a bunch of entirely unknown buskers have surfaced in the American best-selling charts? I doubt it. Forget about the trivialities of Facebook, this is where YouTube and MySpace show their worth.

CG & Mark Johnson, outside BBC Studios at Maida Vale
[photo by Dean Craven]
Reading Mark’s commentary on his own website www.playingforchange.com I was a little uneasy at his expression of hopes that this togetherness of music might somehow be a way to bring peace to the world. For me, music is a thing on its own, not an alternative to guns. But I invited him to come and play Radio Ping Pong anyway, hoping we would avoid getting into too righteous a mode. We never came close, because Mark is a very straightforward and unpretentious man, who not only followed up his own brilliant idea of following several songs around the world but took a camera crew with him to document what happened. Some of my favourite moments in the film are when passersby and watching kids spontaneously start dancing around to the music of the buskers.
As a notorious curmudgeon regarding current English folk music, I have argued that the true folk music of our times is made from the popular songs that come to us out of the radio, and here’s the project to illustrate what I’ve been trying to demonstrate; music for the people, by the people, which so-called folk music rarely manages to be. In preparation for the ping pong, I sorted out two types of contenders: artists who might themselves be classified as buskers, and other songs that might fit the concept. In the end I was unable to fit the latter into the available time, but slipped Miriam Makeba’s ‘Malaika’ into the songs I played after the game was over. It feels like the perfect universal song to transcend language and nation. Mark had not left the studio yet, and sat entranced, promising he would follow up the idea.
Since our encounter, Playing for Change played at Glastonbury on something called the Jazz World Stage. What is jazz world? The audience at Glastonbury seemed to have no better idea than the rest of us, and most stayed well clear. Who was going to choose that obscure corner of the site, when Bruce Springsteen was on the main stage? Not many, is the unsurprising answer. Like tonight’s programme, the Playing for Change set began with Tinariwen and blossomed from there. Hopefully, a reader will report first hand in the forum at www.soundoftheworld.com

Bonga at Maida Vale
[photo by CG]
In a perfect world, the Angolan singer Bonga would have been available to be in our studio on the same day, but he came a couple of days later and we slipped his performances into the sequence. Lacking a common language, our conversation was not as comfortable as usual, but Bonga’s story is extraordinary, his voice a thing of wonder and I am very glad we were able to honour one of the great figures of contemporary world music. Wondering what he might make of them, just before it was his turn to sing I played two songs with a Lusophone connection, including a track from a new compilation of songs recorded during the 1960s and 70s in Bombay specifically for the population of Goa, the former Portuguese enclave on the west coast of India. Bonga looked merely disdainful as the voice of Lorna filled the studio, but did warm to the familiar voice of Amalia Rodrigues, Portugal’s biggest star in the years just before he made his own remarkable debut in 1972.
The programme is first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 11.15 pm (23.15) on Friday 3rd July 2009 and remains online on iPlayer for seven days at www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/worldon3
Charlie Gillett
Seq - Artist - Song Title - Album - Country - Label - Cat no
1 - Tinariwen - Tenhert - Imidiwan (Companions) - Mali - Independiente -
2 - Andre Williams - Cadillac Jack - Sound of the City: Chicago - USA - EMI - 7243 539459 2
3 - Lorna - Lisboa - Konkani Songs: music from Goa, Made in Bombay - India - Trikont - O395
4 - Amália Rodrigues - Maria Lisboa - The Art of Amália - Portugal - EMI Hemisphere - 7243 4 95771 2
Bonga in session with guitarist Djepson (from Guinea Bissau) (Part One)
5 - Bonga and Djepson - Bairro - In session - Angola/Guinee Bissau - -
6 - Bonga and Djepson - Mona Kingi Xica - In session - Angola/Guinee Bissau - -
- Radio Ping Pong with Mark Johnson of Playing for Change (*) - - - - -
7 - Playing for Change - Stand By Me - Playing for Change - various - Wrasse - WRASS 242
*8 - Paul Simon (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo) - Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon's Greatest Hits - USA/South Africa - Warner - WE 833
9 - Geoffrey Gurrumul - Marrandi - Gurrumul - Australia - Skinnyfish - SFGU080201
*10 - Otis Redding - I've Been Loving You Too Long (live) - Live in Paris & London - USA - Volt - STX 30892
11 - Moondog - Sextet (Oo) - More moondog - US - Honest Jons records - HJRCDDJ106
*12 - Victor Démé - Cheri - Victor Démé - Burfina Faso - Chapa Blues - CPCD01
13 - Group Doueh - Fagu - Guitar Music from Western Sahara - Morocco - Sublime Frequencies - SF030CD
*14 - Manu Chao - Amalucada Vida - La Radiolina - France/Spain - Because - 34 26092
15 - Playing for Change - War/No More Trouble - Playing for Change - various - Wrasse - WRASS 242
Bonga in session with guitarist Djepson (from Guinea Bissau) (Part Two)
16 - Bonga and Djepson - Omen de Saco - In session - Angola/Guinee Bissau - -
17 - Bonga and Djepson - Mulemba Xangola - In session - Angola/Guinee Bissau - -
18 - Miriam Makeba (with Harry Belafonte) - Malaika (My Angel) - Her Essential Recordings - South Africa/USA - Manteca - MANTDBL502
19 - 17 Hippies - El Dorado - El Dorado - Germany - Hipster - HIP 013
20 - Khaled - Raikoum - Liberté - Algeria/France - Wrasse - WRASS 239