A Global Musical Statement - Stand By Me

[Selene]

Turn up the sound and enjoy a spin around the globe singing with one harmonious voice...

Stand by me

[caroljane]

Turn up the sound and enjoy a spin around the globe singing with one harmonious voice...

Stand by me

Oh, Adam. This brings back the ones who stood by me and still do, my heroes. You are making me cry you cad.

[George H. Smith]

Here is another video with a nice international flavor. This "Dancing Matt" video has gotten nearly 35 million hits on YouTube, so many OLers have probably seen it already. The music by Garry Schyman really makes this video work.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zlfKdbWwruY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Ghs

[syrakusos]

... nearly 35 million hits on YouTube, so many OLers have probably seen it already.

Nope, just another attribution fallacy from GHS, even though most people are not atheists.

Adam Selene, thanks! The real credit goes to the producer, granted that the performers had more than a modicum of talent. Such is the human condition when the spirit is liberated.

Watch it again for the off-the-shelf recording technology. We enjoy so much for so little because governments see no power and glory in consumer electronics.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Michael E. Marotta

[Philip Coates]

Music - and dancing - are a universal language. And people are just people all across the world.

I just bought the MP3 for "Praan"...and then I bought "Playing for Change" CD+DVD ...one gawdam song after another was really nice..."Stand By Me" in this version reaches me more than the original Be E. King version.

Beautiful music.

Happy, joyful dancing.

Exuberant joining together of people across nations.

I'm sort of a World Music Virgin, but I can see I'm going to have to expose myself -- don't go there -- a lot more.

Edited February 23, 2011 by Philip Coates

[Selene]

Music - and dancing - are a universal language. And people are just people all across the world.

I just bought the MP3 for "Praan"...and then I bought "Playing for Change" CD+DVD ...one gawdam song after another was really nice..."Stand By Me" in this version reaches me more than the original Be E. King version.

Beautiful music.

Happy, joyful dancing.

Exuberant joining together of people across nations.

I'm sort of a World Music Virgin, but I can see I'm going to have to expose myself -- don't go there -- a lot more.

Glad you enjoyed it Phil

[caroljane]

Music - and dancing - are a universal language. And people are just people all across the world.

I just bought the MP3 for "Praan"...and then I bought "Playing for Change" CD+DVD ...one gawdam song after another was really nice..."Stand By Me" in this version reaches me more than the original Be E. King version.

Beautiful music.

Happy, joyful dancing.

Exuberant joining together of people across nations.

I'm sort of a World Music Virgin, but I can see I'm going to have to expose myself -- don't go there -- a lot more.

Wonderful, Phil. You can help the Igloo combat the calumnies against your fellow Virgin Sidney C.

I still love "and then it goes back" from the World Cup by my homeboy the SomaliCanadianworldguy.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

I just saw this and that is one of the coolest goddam things I have seen/heard in a long time.

Thank you.

As a composer back in Boston University in the 70's, I had been involved in a precursor to this kind of thing, but it was a gigantic flop. So every time I ran across people making music together when they are separated geographically, I have stayed away.

I vaguely remember doing something in Brazil in popular music once over the Internet when it was just starting and sound was added, but this was in my drug phase and the memory is blurred for now. If I remember correctly, it involved musicians in different cities in Brazil.

But I have had prejudice all these years against what can be called geography music or distance music due to my initial bad experience.

Basically, in addition to trombone, I was a classical music composition student at BU, which meant I was constantly pushed to write avant-garde and 12-tone music. As a newly formed Randroid, back then, [preaching the glories of Rachmaninoff at that), you can imagine some of the fights I had.

Well, the composition department once got involved in a collective project to use the steeple chimes of a large number of churches and cathedrals in Boston during rush hour. The stuck cars were to be our audience. Each composer was assigned a church and had to write a 12-tone composition for it. Then the churches were to go off in sequence and overlap, building to a climax with all playing at the same time.

To start with, 12-tone music sounds awful by itself, but in church chimes, it just sounded like random bells chiming. Pointless. Then the churches were so far apart, you could not hear the others if you were near one. Then there were the car horns from rush hour. Like I said, total flop.

But the thing you posted was dynamite. Video greatly enhanced the emotion, too. I also have a soft spot for this song since it was one of the better arrangements I did and produced for JJ Jackson in Brazil.

Michael

[Selene]

Michael:

Thanks. I kinda had you in mind when I posted it because I thought you would have the musical sweep to appreciate it.

I played clarinet and had a real gift for it, but I unfortunately put it down at 12-13 to chase girls, politics, school and sports.

I really miss it and I might just pick it up again.

Sitars are based on 12 tones right?

Not synchronous to the western ear.

Adam

[caroljane]

Adam,

I just saw this and that is one of the coolest goddam things I have seen/heard in a long time.

Thank you.

As a composer back in Boston University in the 70's, I had been involved in a precursor to this kind of thing, but it was a gigantic flop. So every time I ran across people making music together when they are separated geographically, I have stayed away.

I vaguely remember doing something in Brazil in popular music once over the Internet when it was just starting and sound was added, but this was in my drug phase and the memory is blurred for now. If I remember correctly, it involved musicians in different cities in Brazil.

But I have had prejudice all these years against what can be called geography music or distance music due to my initial bad experience.

Basically, in addition to trombone, I was a classical music composition student at BU, which meant I was constantly pushed to write avant-garde and 12-tone music. As a newly formed Randroid, back then, [preaching the glories of Rachmaninoff at that), you can imagine some of the fights I had.

Well, the composition department once got involved in a collective project to use the steeple chimes of a large number of churches and cathedrals in Boston during rush hour. The stuck cars were to be our audience. Each composer was assigned a church and had to write a 12-tone composition for it. Then the churches were to go off in sequence and overlap, building to a climax with all playing at the same time.

To start with, 12-tone music sounds awful by itself, but in church chimes, it just sounded like random bells chiming. Pointless. Then the churches were so far apart, you could not hear the others if you were near one. Then there were the car horns from rush hour. Like I said, total flop.

But the thing you posted was dynamite. Video greatly enhanced the emotion, too. I also have a soft spot for this song since it was one of the better arrangements I did and produced for JJ Jackson in Brazil.

Michael

Michael, your student music experience really strikes me. Music, though seldom seriously addressed by Rand, is so vital to one's self=definition. I once knew a young Objectivist who told me he was writing a symphony - he could not actually read music but knew he could through application master the technicalities and fully express his sense of life. He loved great music and wanted to participate in that world.

I don't want to intrude again on personals, but the difference between your practical collision with Cage etal, and L. Perigo's theoretical one as he has described it, is what immediately struck me.

You went on to become a musician. He went on to decide that his sensibilities as a listener made him a superior human being.

Music sets us all at play in the fields of the Lord. And we're all the lords, knowing that few of us can be players.

[Selene]

Michael:

Did you ever see this performed in Brazil, it is the maculele, a martial art stick fighting "dance" which the sugarcane plantation slaves used to hide developing fighting skills from the overseer or the masters.

I watched an excellent c-span show on Saturday on the impact of sugar trade on history from New Guinea to India to Russia and the new world.

Long day, last post.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

I once worked on a martial arts film project to put capoeira on the map. The director chickened out in the end and made a kickboxing film.

Later, Jean Claude Van Damme started including it in his films.

I felt justified, but so what? I would have preferred to have worked on a capoeira film myself.

The reason capoeira was taught by dance instead of in an academy is that teaching slaves fighting skills was outlawed by plantation owners in colonial times. And they were not very interested in the mumbo-jumbo of the salves' social gatherings. So the slaves got away with learning how to defend themselves in a pinch by including the instructions and training in dance form.

It is a very interesting form of martial arts--based on constantly moving in circles, cartwheels, feigned slithering and so forth. And it's quite deadly when need be.

Michael