Paul Ingles talks with Mark Johnson, producer, “Playing for Change.”

PI: Mark Johnson, do you always go into the field yourself to record every piece of every segment or do you have some team members in places around the world who do it remotely occasionally?

MJ: I would say that it’s 95% of the time that I go and do the recording. There is always some scenario where I can’t make it or we are able to get a local crew, but for the most part, we really just have our own process, so we just do it ourselves. It’s myself and a small camera crew.

I have the same mobile studio and I’ve been using the same equipment for 15 years. It’s really the same equipment we used to use with Paul Simon in the studio when I worked with him in New York City. The difference is what it’s powered by. In the beginning, it was golf cart batteries and then car batteries and now these little battery packs make it easy. The microphones and the [inaudible] are the same they’ve always been.

PI: So, things haven’t changed that much in terms of what you’re taking out and how you are doing this in 15 years?

MJ: No, I think you just get more experience as you go.

PI: It wasn’t as true in the early days, but nowadays, a viewer can really count on seeing several faces in the mix with the international players. Just to run down a partial list, you’ve interviewed, Keb’ Mo’, Bono, Keith Richards, David Crosby, Dr. John, Sara Bareilles, Jimmy Buffet, the Doobie Brothers and so many more. How did star players begin to come into the picture and now continue to be involved in playing for change? Do they reach out to you or do you reach out to them?

MJ: It’s a combination of the two.

The very first one to get involved was Bono was he sang our version of Bob Marley’s War, No More Trouble. It’s because we really wanted somebody like Bono to sing the line, “Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, everywhere is war.” I just thought it would be really cool to have somebody who could reach so many people with such a powerful line.

We first reached out to him through our great friend and partner, Norman Lear and we were able to get Bono involved. He was so humble about being a singer on these songs, singing with musicians from Kinshasa Congo and Ghana. He just felt really humble and that was a really cool thing to watch.

To be honest, the project has always been about music, so we started with the streets to get back to the voice of the people, which is what happens on the streets. As the project developed, it’s always been about all kinds of musicians; Native musicians, famous musicians.

The second really big one that came to us in a different way was Keith Richards. He had come to us because we had done our version of Give Me Shelter Around the World. He had seen that and was really moved by it and just felt like he wanted to be a part of that too. I was able to go to New York and sit down with Keith and talk about what kind of songs to do. We ended up doing a reggae song of his called Words of Wonder and then we segue-wayed that into Bob Marley’s Get Up, Stand Up Around the World.

PI: Remind us, did the Music Around the World video idea come up first just as a fun, amazing thing to do or was there always an idea that it could be a fundraising tool to build music and art schools around the world as it has become?

MJ: I think the original idea for the Songs Around the World was to remind everybody that before we were different, we were the same. We are all part of one group, humanity. We live in a world that has so many teams, based on how much money you have or the color of your skin or your religion or your political views. These things just divide everybody, but these songs, they remind people of how much we are all connected.

You can see people with a different races or religions playing so well together when the music starts. We always felt like that was the catalyst for the project; to really inspire people and connect people back to their shared humanity without having to preach or say anything, just let them feel it and see it. It was important that they see it though. That’s why everything had to be filmed. That was the original concept; to use these as a tool to connect humanity.

As you’re doing that, you realize it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t pay this forward and use this as a tool for the next generation. That’s when we created the Playing for Change Foundation as we were traveling, making the songs and realizing how much music could help offer hope to people. This has never been about being a great musician. Music can help you become a better person.

I remember my mother sending me a quote in the beginning from Mark Twain that said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrowmindedness.” I remember thinking a lot of people don’t get to travel and if they do, they don’t get invited into all these places like I do because I’m there for their music, so I wanted to show the world the way I got to see the world because this is their world too.

That’s why we make so many songs; there are always more people to connect, always more people to inspire and always more different types of music to use because everybody likes different kinds of music, but music is the through-line to help us reconnect our humanity.

PI: Importantly, as we mentioned in the first segment, years ago it seemed very important for you to place the artists outside often in the environment. It’s like a travel log experience when you’re watching the video.

MJ: Right. We first made a film called Cinematic Discovery of Street Musicians Across America. In that project we had made two songs across America, an instrumental and blues, to see how this concept could work.

I remember realizing the stories of the people on the streets and realizing that they play a song, and somebody can walk by, stop, listen to the song, see the performance and their life could change. It’s a place to put their bad day before they go home or find a little piece of inspiration when they need it most. We really wanted that kind of feeling to stay and when people play music outside, there is no separation between them, the audience and nature and it’s a very natural way of really representing music around the world.

PI: I want to share with you how my partner Susan and I use the videos. We keep coming back to them and the way that we come back to them is that we get a little bit frustrated with the news of the world or we might be a little bit down about something in our personal lives and we’ll look at each other and say, “Let’s see what Playing for Change has that’s new.”

MJ: That’s cool.

PI: Then we spend an afternoon catching up and frankly, crying. It’s a complete recharge. I think that’s what drives the popularity of it as you describe it.

I don’t want to get too far away from the spirit of it, but as a journalist, I do want to get a little bit into the weeds here. As the project has grown, how does the money come in to support the foundation? I can imagine there are quite a bit of expenses to travel around the world. Do the musicians always donate their performances or are they compensated? Give us a little nutshell about how the money comes into the project and how much of it can actually get to the school projects that the foundation has added to the endeavor?

MJ: From the beginning, what we decided to do was to combine our efforts and have it be a for-profit business and a separate 501C3.

The for-profit business goes out and makes the songs around the world. Back in the day, we would sell CDs. Now we license some of the music. The musicians in the videos are all paid. The featured artists also receive royalties and equity in the videos. That was a way to pay Grandpa Elliott or Roger Ridley or for Mermans Mosengo to make money for his kids to go to school. We use that as a for-profit business. That’s playingforchange.com. People can sign up and become members. They can buy t-shirts and do all kinds of things in a more formal business setting, a music business setting.

Then we have a separate 501C3 that now has built and supports 15 different music schools around the world. All of our schools are owned by the communities. They are all free and what we do is fundraise. We can do concerts and events, like we recently did in tow with the Doobie Brothers and Little Feet. They play a concert with the Playing for Change band and 100% of the proceeds go to the foundation to support music and arts education. That’s one way to raise money. The foundation also has traditional ways to raise money; different events and grants and individual donors. That’s a separate charity, a 501C3 non-profit.

The Playing for Change videos and albums and touring band is all a for-profit business of which, whenever they make money, a percentage goes back to help the foundation, but a percentage also goes to support the professional musicians that we’ve been collecting and supporting along the way.

PI: To parse it out a little bit, are most of the stars that are doing okay on their own often donating or are they partial partners?

MJ: Yes, completely donating. It’s amazing how much everybody believes in this and that’s why it’s so important to keep it really transparent and to give back to the communities that invite us into their homes and give us their musicians to perform, but also to the musicians who tour the world in the Playing for Change band, becoming the tangible ambassadors for the project, but also, for the future generation of kids who want to learn music and art and the communities that want to use that as a tool.

PI: I know that technically, you’re not the foundations’ spokesperson, and we did talk with Whitney in our first program, since we have you on the line, can you tell us some of the more tangible results of the programs and the schools that you can point to in a nutshell?

MJ: I’ll give you two that just blew me away. The first one was in the Village of Korena Mali, which is a 1,000-year-old village outside of Bamako in West Africa. This village is made up of musicians and hunters, the entire village.

I remember when we went there and offered to create a school with them, the family of Toumani Diabaté (who is a very famous kora player who has worked with Ry Cooder and Taj Mahak) asked us to go there and work with them on a school. We said, “Should we hire the people from the city to come in and build it?” They said, “Of course not! We are going to build it.”

For one week, they swam in the river with a bucket and a net collecting sand to make bricks. They said to me, “The chariots are coming today.” And all of a sudden, a little donkey with a two by four and a wheel comes. They put the bricks on the two by four and went across the river and built the school brick by brick.

Over 200 kids signed up for the school on the first day. Within a year, we were able to show people what we were doing. We entered them into some contests and they ended up getting, for the first time in 1,000 years, solar panels to give them light in the school, but also in the maternity ward. They were also able to get clean water. An organization came in and dug a well for them down by the school, so for the first time in 1,000 years, they had wells and solar power and light in the maternity ward all from a music school.

I think that’s a great example. It shows that music is the thing that brings the trust, but then it’s limitless what we can all do together.

The second example is in the Himalayan Mountains in a school we have in Tintinalli Napal, which is about 14-hour drive and a one hour walk from Katmandu. We had flutes donated from the city and we brought them to the kids.

The elders said to us, “How are we going to decide who the students are? We’ll line up the boys and whoever plays the best will become a student.” Our guide was a girl from Katmandu named Roshme and she looked at them appalled. She said, “What do you mean you’re going to line up the boys? What about the girls?” “No, the girls won’t want to be involved in this.” She said, “Wait a minute. She went hut by hut bringing out all these little girls. They lined up. One was so confident that she picked up the flute and obviously had as much talent as anyone else. The elders turned to us and said, “Wow, we’ve been wrong. We’re going to include the girls in the arts.” How many years had it been? What they needed was context without judgement. That’s what music offers people. By creating this collaboration, we created music rights in the Village of Tintinalli Nepal!

These things are extensions of what comes out humanity and music, which brings us back to our collective humanity without judgement. The schools are a catalyst to help build a better world and music is the tool we use.

PI: Mark, I run a non-profit organization and have for almost 20 years now to produce this program. I know that a successful non-profit is one that will stay alive. Our arc has been steady. If we make the same amount of money, we can do the same kind of thing every year and that’s what we’ve been able to do. Obviously, we’d like to be doing better, but we’re happy to be able to be consistent. The reason I’m setting it up this way is because I’m wondering if you could tell me honestly that Playing for Change is a steady spot of sustainability or does it appear to be on an elevating growth arc?

MJ: I would say that the most important thing is that if you open a school, you’re going to do everything you can to keep it open. For us, it’s never been about “how many” of anything, it’s what kind of an impact we can have on individuals.

Each of our schools, that’s why they are run and owned by the communities, they create the identity, the pay scale, the instruments and the process and how it’s all going to work. That offers up a great way to have sustainability because you’re really learning from the people. We’re using the examples that we learned from the people, but also the ability to record and film music and bring that component to villages and poorer places around the world. We can personalize them so that people can see them and be inspired by them and rethink how they look at the outside world.

West Africa is the home of the Blues. It shouldn’t be looked at as the home of the Ebola virus. The difference is how people see the world around them.

For us, by recording and filming the music and interviews and performances by the kids and teachers, we are able to personalize these things. Our YouTube channel is averaging about 200 million views a year in 195 countries. By constantly growing our audience around the world, we are also growing the ability for each of these programs to touch new hearts, find new supporters.

You’re right, running a non-profit is constant work to keep them open, keep growing. The economy may go down in certain places, but you’ve still got to keep the schools open.

For us, it’s about personalizing and inspiring our growing audience around the world. We have 15 music programs around the world and we won’t expand beyond that until we have the means. For right now, it’s about supporting those 15 and connecting them together.

We partner with a lot of people. We partner with Michelle Obama’s Turnaround Art across American in some of the poorest schools. They bring back music and art and then we connect those kids with the kids that we have around the world through the lens of music and art so that kids around the world get to see the world the way we get to see it when we travel with Playing for Change.

It’s not something that is ever going to be stable. It’s always growing because there are always more people who need support that we want to connect with and help, but we also do it at a rate that we can manage.

PI: There is a combination of expectation or hope for communities to add to the sustainability. It sounds like the foundation is trying to be there as needed to keep subsidizing long enough to keep it going so that you don’t just build a school, go away and then it closes in three years.

MJ: Exactly. We would never do that. What we do is personalize with the community and come up with a long-term strategy. Not all education is supposed to be sustainable, it’s supposed to be paid for by people.

PI: That’s interesting because when you were describing how they wanted to build it, it’s probably much more effective when the community is invested in even the building as opposed to having a prefabricated building brought in, which may be appropriate in some cases, but it’s that combination of this is ours, this is how we do it, this is how it should look in our community. We’ll take support, we love that, but we want to do it ourselves.

MJ: That’s right. It’s really all about empowerment and also offering hope. When we built our first school in Gugulethu Township in South Africa, I remember them saying to me that instead of their next child being a gangster, maybe they’ll be the next Nelson Mandela. The difference is that somebody believed in them.

These music schools and art schools are really about that; they’re about believing in the individuals. We do our best to empower the local community and then to use that as a catalyst to inspire the rest of the world to help support each other.

PI: Mark Johnson, is Playing for Change your only gig?

MJ: It is my life. Obviously, I produce music, but Playing for Change is my gig.

PI: Can you imagine doing anything else?

MJ: No, not after we’ve started this. It just becomes something that you want to go deeper into rather than trying to go into something else. We are tapped into something that is very relevant and I can promise everybody who listens to this that music is the one thing that can connect us in a positive way and has and does connect us in positive ways all over the world.

PI: How long can you see it going?

MJ: I think Playing for Change will go on long beyond me. It’s a tool for humanity really; using what we hear and what we see, combining that to remind us that we are all the same. There will always be more schools to build, more musicians to record, more hearts to connect. As long as that’s needed, there should be Playing for Change.

PI: Are you training lieutenants so that they can take over for you one day?

MJ: You know, the family is growing. Now we’re installing recording equipment and cameras in the schools. Our school in Mali is an ancient hut with a solar panel on the roof and full recording studio inside. I get the feeling we’re going to be in good hands in the future!