From Bill Moyers Journal:

Bill Moyers sits down with Mark Johnson, the producer of a remarkable documentary about the simple but transformative power of music: PLAYING FOR CHANGE: PEACE THROUGH MUSIC. The film brings together musicians from around the world — blues singers in a waterlogged New Orleans, chamber groups in Moscow, a South African choir — to collaborate on songs familiar and new, in the effort to foster a new, greater understanding of our commonality.

Johnson traveled around the globe and recorded tracks for such classics as "Stand By Me" and Bob Marley's "One World" — creating a new mix in which essentially the performers are all performing together — worlds apart. Often recording with just battery-powered equipment, Johnson found musicians on street corners or in small clubs and they would in turn gather their friends and colleagues — in all, they recorded over 100 musicians from Tibet to Zimbabwe.

You can read the rest of the story and watch Bill Moyers' interview with Mark Johnson here.

November 05, 2008 MSNBC
Kenyans took to the streets early Wednesday morning to celebrate Barack Obama's election to the White House as the nation's president declared a national holiday. In downtown Nairobi and in Kibera, one of Africa's largest slums, people dressed in suits on their way to work joined those who had stayed up all night watching the election returns to dance and chant Obama's name. Similar excited scenes took place in Kogelo, western Kenya, where many of Obama's Kenyan relatives had gathered at the home of his grandmother, Sarah Obama.

November 03, 2008 BBC America