Jazz Fest brings musicians from all over the world, sometimes as one band. One such group is Playing For Change, a collection of street musicians from different countries and diverse backgrounds. While the trip is a return home for New Orleans’ own French Quarter street singer Grandpa Elliot, it is a far journey for other band members Jason Tamba and Mermans Kenkosenki, both from Matadi, Congo. While the nine musicians who make up the Playing for Change band come from all over, the band members share a passion for something universal: music.
Playing for Change began in 2001 as a documentary project. Co-founder Whitney Kroenke says that her associate Mark Johnson got the idea while at the subway station in New York when he saw a group of monks singing. “Mark said it was one of those moments where it was like the world stopped,” Kroenke says. People of all ages and races stopped to listen to this group and were, however briefly, unified by music.
“There’s something so beautiful about the immediacy and the closeness of art that’s happening on the street,” Kroenke says. “And the bravery of the performer. And the intimacy of the relationship of the person who’s hearing it or seeing it and the performer.” The small team decided to create a multimedia project to, according to their website, “inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music.”
To capture the rawness of a street performance, the Playing For Change crew created a method that brought the studio to the performers rather than making performers from across the world come to one studio. “During the process of filming, we sort of organically discovered the way of making songs with musicians who had never met,” Kroenke says. “We decided to try that internationally.” Because of this, several performers for one song are actually in up to 15 different countries.
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After the success of the video of the Playing for Change version of “Stand By Me,” the founders of the organization decided to create a band, as well as a non-profit organization. “We wanted to do something that left the communities better than we found them,” Kroenke says. Playing for Change is currently funding seven music education programs across the world, and they hope to have 10 more by the end of the year. “One of our biggest priorities is to let these communities locally operate and decide on their own curriculum, so each one varies a bit in what they’re teaching and how they operate. It’s completely different in every location.”
Playing For Change also hopes to do good in cities in the United States, including New Orleans. “We’d love to do something in New Orleans because it’s been such a part of our soul and fabric for so long,” Kroenke says. “We’d like to try to get a couple of anchor programs in the United States in this calendar year even if it’s a low-cost high-impact program. Something where we engage musicians to teach in schools, something like that.” Koenke also admits that while managing a non-profit is gratifying, it’s not always easy. “To be able to do the work is an incredible gift, but it’s incredibly challenging in every area for different reasons.”
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Playing for Change’s second album, PFC 2: Songs Around the World, is due out at the end of May. It includes versions of “Gimme Shelter” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” and this time the composite performances also include sympathetic big-name artists, including Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’. Grandpa Elliot is back, and this time he’s joined by Washboard Chaz and former New Orleanian Roberto Luti, who added his parts from Italy.
“We’ve known Chaz since our first Playing for Change film in 2002,” Kroenke says, and she expects that he’ll likely perform at their shows as well. Around the same time, they met Luti, who’s left the country since then. “He’s been a friend of ours for a while.”
Trying to meld musicians from different cultures and aesthetics into a band that would tour the world was a challenge. Beyond the cultural differences, many were accustomed to playing solo, and many were used to being paid in cash immediately after the performance. “It was an adjustment,” Kronke says. “Everybody came from a slightly different background. They had to stick with stuff that everyone would know for a while, so they were doing a lot of covers.” Still, music brought this motley crew together and now they are like a “big family.”
This “big family” will be playing at Margaritaville on Friday, May 6 and Saturday, May 7 at 9 p.m. Playing For Change will also be playing Sunday, May 8 at 12:30 p.m. on the Gentilly Stage at Jazz Fest.
