Bostonist Interviews Jonathan Walls (Co-Director, Editor of Playing for Change.)

The Playing for Change Band -- which you may have seen on The Tonight Show or the Colbert Report, or everywhere on the internet, ever -- is coming to the Orpheum on October 22nd and the Calvin Theater in Northampton, MA on October 23rd. We spoke with Jonathan over the phone while he was working on another project in Philadelphia.

BOSTONIST: Tell me about your involvement with the tour and the Playing for Change Band.

Jonathan Walls: The band?

Bostonist: Yeah.

JW: Well, I was the co-director of the film, and the band obviously formed out of that. Right now, when the band travels -- it's when I film it, is when I get involved. I worked with Mark in conceptualizing who we wanted in the band. Along with [name is garbled.] On this tour, I'm not sure how much I'll be involved. I think I'll be following them for a week in the middle of the tour, trying to capture some of the moments they share on the bus. And we've never had a tour quite like this yet.

Bostonist: Yeah, I imagine, because you sat down and edited together all this footage of people who've never met, and now they're meeting.

JW: Exactly! Well, this particular band -- most of them have met, because we did a small promotional back in April or March. That was a five city tour. Most of them have met already.

Bostonist: So, the culture shock -- if any -- has already been mitigated.

JW: (Chuckling.) Yeah. You know, this particular tour is going to be more of a shocker, because they're all going to be living on a bus together for over thirty days.

Bostonist: Jeeze.

JW: It's a family!

Bostonist: Yeah! These kind of things have to be after a point.

JW: Exactly.

Bostonist: Now, what kind of equipment did you guys use out in the field? DVX? DVX-100? Or ... ?

JW: We started with the Panasonic DVX-100 at the beginning, then we caught up with technology, or technology caught up with us, or vice versa, and we started using the Sony HD Camera. That's what we're shooting with now. Mark has a very compact traveling audio-recording studio, basically. We started out -- when we started out, he had to power his equipment off of ... golf-cart batteries? Then we started using car batteries everywhere we traveled. At the first stop wherever we'd go, the first place we'd go to would be, like a Walmart, or a little market, and we'd buy a car battery! Power up. Charge it at night. Now Mark has these small lithium batteries. We travel pretty light.

Bostonist: Where did you guys get golf-cart batteries?

JW: (Laughing.) Golf-cart batteries! At the beginning, when we were designing the package that we travel with, there was a company out of Colorado -- Wind Over the Earth -- we asked them about powering our sound recording equipment, and they suggested golf-cart batteries. And they were heavy.

Bostonist: It's certainly a creative choice. It's definitely that.

JW: We also travel with an old 16mm camera and we use it to shoot to add texture to our performances.

Bostonist: Even though Whitney Burditt spearheads the Playing for Change Foundation, have you any word on how the foundations in Nepal, Mali, and Ghana are going?

JW: Yeah. Nepal. One of our colleagues William Aura -- he spearheaded the Nepalese school, and that is, actually, he created the school there, and the Playing for Change Foundation has a music program inside this school in a village called Tentali. And he just returned about a month ago, and everything is underway there. Class is in session. It's amazing. And the Ghana school has broke ground. They just found space for it. And they're starting construction. I don't know the latest on Mali yet.

Bostonist: It must be exciting in Nepal. Didn't they just get their first republic ever? For the first time in, like, 300 years?

JW: Right! Right. We haven't been back since that change. Yeah. And I guess this village -- from what William's explained to me -- is something like a 10 hour journey outside of Kathmandu, which is the capital. It's something like 10 hours by bus, and then two on foot to get to this area. It's very secluded. He's raised money to create the school and a medical building nearby to combat one of the critical problems in that village. So William and the Playing for Change Foundation have created an area for living in that community there.

Bostonist: Well, that sounds like the right thing to do.

JW: It is. We've also donated money to Tibetan Refugee Centers in Khatmandu to help all the refugees that come in to that area. To give them proper food and such.

Bostonist: I was thinking about whether or not you were at all struck by different languages in how they worked with the meter of a song lyric, and if there was one example that really stood out for you -- you know, like, in English, how it would be Hank Williams and "Cold, Cold Heart."

JW: You know, what struck me most was the choral music of South Africa. The a-capella. The sound of all these voices unified together becoming an instrument in itself. I was struck by that and has since really listened to it and researched it more. I really enjoyed that. Even when the South Africans were singing in their Zulu language, it would fit so perfectly with the English songs they were singing with.

Bostonist: And what did you find when you researched it more?

JW: I just found more groups.

Bostonist: Like?

JW: Well, I got really into Ladysmith Black Mambazo. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them.

Bostonist: Yeah, yeah. Paul Simon, and all that.

JW: Yeah. And our choir that's in our song -- Sinamuva -- I've been in pretty much monthly communication with them, trying to get them an album release.

Bostonist: You and Mark co-directed the film, and then you ended up editing it. Were there any particular beats that you wanted to hit? Anything you want to emphasize? Was it, "Let's show the best footage?" How did you approach the editing?

JW: When we were out there capturing everything, there were certain things we wanted to get -- how these communities persevered through struggle in hard times. We had that overall theme going, and then we set out to capture all that music, all these different perspectives from the musicians, and then when I got to the editing room, it was more about obviously trying to create a rhythm with the music and the images, and there were certain times when we were going to skip around from place to place to place instead of having blocks. How the movie is now is, you're in New Orleans, and then you go to Europe, and we made a decision to represent our journey, to have the audience learn exactly how we as filmmakers learned, so it became more of a journey instead of a structured narrative. That's what motivated the editing.