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Ludwig Van Beethoven once said that “music can change the world.” And so did Jimi Hendrix. The 2013 How Weird Street Faire showed again that music and art can bring thousands of extremely diverse people together to find common ground and celebrate peace.

Weirdi Gras – Carnival of peace!

The How Weird Street Faire uses music, art, and dance to connect across divisions. Traditionally, dance has been one of the primary expressions of human culture, used for communication, community building, social interaction, healing, and religious ceremonies throughout the world. Preceding the spoken and written word, dance is a global language, transcending barriers and differences. And so is music.

Music crosses all bridges, borders, and time zones. Music transcends all ideologies, politics, religions, languages, cultures, and wealth. Music is oblivious to race, gender, age, and appearance. Music connects us all and reminds us that we are human.

The How Weird Street Faire is a world-class music festival that takes place in the streets of downtown San Francisco. It features a wide range of electronic dance music, uniting all the diverse communities of the Bay Area.

Fed up with the violent conflict that has recently engulfed their country, musicians in the west African nation of Mali have come together to call for peace. More than 40 of Mali’s most talented musicians gathered in the capitol city of Bamako to record a song for peace and unity called “Mali Ko” (which means “For Mali”). They collectively call themselves the Voices United for Mali.

The song’s lyrics state, “It is time for us artists to speak about our Mali. Malians, let us join hands because this country is not a country of war. Dont forget that we are all of the same blood. The only way out of this crisis is the way of peace.” …

“War has never been a solution,” the lyrics say. “We don’t want war! Not in our Mali! War destroys everything in its path. We want peace. Peace in Africa! Peace in the world!”

Cultures of Resistance attended Mali’s legendary Festival in the Desert in 2009, and produced a short video called “Playing for Peace in the Sahara”. They describe how “in the Malian desert, musicians meet to build mutual respect by sharing cultures. Artists share their music and dance to emphasize what they have in common, rather than what separates them. This short film highlights the event’s approach to promoting cross-cultural expression as a means of overcoming the threat of divisive conflict.”

The 2013 edition of the Festival in the Desert will be a touring Caravan of Peace, called the Festival in the Desert in Exile. It will be a caravan of artists promoting peace and national unity in Mali, travelling from Mauritania to Mali and onto the Tuareg refugee camps in Burkina Faso. The caravan will last from February 7th to March 6th 2013….

The largest gathering of humanity is taking place in northern India, a unique event that blends religious and cultural features, in an atmosphere saturated with the scent of burning incense, and the sound of chiming bells, Vedic hymns and mantras, and the beating of countless drums. More than 100 million people are expected to attend the two month festival and bathe in the waters of the Ganges River. For more than 2,000 years, the festival has been the main meeting point for the Hindu sadhus or holy men, giving people the opportunity to meet with the devotees of the various religious orders, and learn from the many religious teachers and spiritual masters….

In 2001, the last time the Kumbh Mela took place, more than 40 million people gathered in an area smaller than 7.7 sq. miles (or slightly larger than San Francisco). This year they are expecting over twice that number, making it the largest gathering of humanity ever held. Yet in spite of all the people and chaos, it is a peaceful event.

Psychologists from St. Andrews, Dundee, and Lancaster Universities in the UK, along with several Indian institutions, completed a study in 2007 into Kumbh Mela in Allahabad. What they found along the banks of the Ganges River overturned many long-held beliefs about crowd behavior. Professor Steve Reicher, of St. Andrews, stated that “the mela is much more than a wonderful spectacle. It promises to unlock the secrets of how large communities can live together in harmony”.

The Kumbh Mela brings together the equivalent of over 20 times the population of the entire Bay Area in one place, yet there is virtually no disorder, crushes, or rioting. And even though people at the festival came from very different castes and social backgrounds, there was a strong sense of common identity. This positive outlook stemmed from a lack of the “them-and-us psychology” which is often at the root of social conflict.

Dr. Clare Cassidy, from St. Andrews University, explained that “many people argue crowds are bad for you. But in the Mela we found that people become more generous, more supportive, and more orderly rather than less. This is the opposite of a ‘walk-on-by society’, it is a community where people are attentive to the needs of strangers.”…

The 14th annual How Weird Street Faire takes place Sunday April 28, 2013 from Noon to 8pm in downtown San Francisco, centered at Howard and 2nd Streets. This year’s theme is “Weirdi Gras: A Carnival of Peace”.

The How Weird Street Faire is our experiment in creating peace, and a fundraiser for the World Peace Through Technology Organization. It has brought many different types of people together to celebrate peace. It has let people experience the reality of a place where cooperation is favored over competition, where diversity is celebrated, and where people can see that our differences are far fewer than our similarities. The How Weird Street Faire has made learning the foundations of peace fun and exciting.

For its 14th year, there will be 13 city blocks of art and celebration, including many stages of world-class performances and electronic music, marching bands, food and drinks, vendors from around the world selling unique and creative wares, and non-profit organizations to educate and inspire. Filling in the faire will be performance artists, thousands of people in colorful costumes dancing in the streets, and more parades than any street fair in the world.

For more information visit the website – www.HowWeird.org

“Twenty-first-century arts festivals ask the audience to be a player, rather than a passive spectator,” says David Binder, a Tony award-winning theater producer. In his TED Talk earlier this year, he explains the new face of arts festivals, which break the boundary between audience and performer and help communities express themselves, something we’ve been doing for 13 years, with the 21st century festival we call How Weird. The How Weird Street Faire is an experiment in creating peace, in bringing strangers together and enabling them to form a common bond of understanding and appreciation.

“Festivals promote diversity, they bring neighbors into dialogue, they increase creativity, they offer opportunities for civic pride, they improve our general psychological well-being.” As Binder explains, “Artists are explorers. Who better to show us a city anew?”

What happens when you bring together 32 musicians from 21 countries on 5 continents, almost equally divided between men and women, to write, produce and record original music and take it on the road for American audiences? That was the idea behind OneBeat, a new international cultural exchange that celebrates the transformative power of the arts through the creation of original, inventive music, and people-to-people diplomacy….

“Some might ask ‘What difference can a folk singer from the Blue Ridge Mountains make in a tortured place like Afghanistan?’ It’s a valid question — partly answered by one of the State Department officers who said our visit did ‘more for diplomacy between Afghanistan and the United States than any diplomat had done, more then any road that was built, or any power plant that was constructed in the last year.’ Because of music we were reaching people at a level you don’t usually reach,” explains Peyton Tochterman, the U.S. folk singer who became an unlikely cultural ambassador.

“If nothing else, we are returning home reassured that music really is a universal language that can unite diverse peoples. We have proven to ourselves and others, there are no borders for good music. We are all connected through music and we must continue to celebrate this connection, this language that is so important not just to our own culture, but also to cultures around this fascinating world of ours.” …

Our new project Code4Peace launches today at the 13th annual How Weird Street Faire in downtown San Francisco. Stop by the Info Booth + Peace Pavilion at the center of the faire to find how you can get involved.

Code4Peace will serve as a global portal for the creation and distribution of peace software, showcasing new tools and solutions. There will soon be a series of Code4Peace events that will bring programmers and peace workers together to create practical and valuable tools that can be used by people around the world. We’re looking for computer programmers, software engineers, and people from technology companies who want to use their talent and resources to help bring peace to this planet.

Mother's Day has its origins as a peace holiday, so it's appropriate that this year's How Weird Street Faire occurs on Mother's Day. The 13th annual How Weird Street Faire takes place on Sunday May 13, 2012 in downtown San Francisco. The faire is a celebration of peace, bringing a diverse collection of people together to find similarities and overcome differences. The How Weird Street Faire is a project of the World Peace Through Technology Organization.

The history of Mother's Day is also rooted in peace. In 1858, Ann Jarvis, a young mother from West Virginia, started organizing Mother's Work Days. These were initially focused on improving sanitary conditions. After the Civil War, they focused on reconciling former enemies of the Union and Confederacy, and honoring mothers who had lost family in the war.

From the words of the original Mother's Day Proclamation:

"From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: 'Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.' Blood does not wipe our dishonor, nor violence indicate possession."…

In honor of all mothers, and all those affected by war, we gather in peace.

(from the first Mothers Day for Peace)

A new documentary called Alive Inside explores the healing power of music. The film, which premiers this week in New York City, looks at the mysterious way music functions inside our brains and our lives.

Alive Inside follows Dan Cohen, executive director of the non-profit Music and Memory, as he brings iPods to a nursing home. The transformation in barely responsive, seemingly lost patients was remarkable. As seen in the clip below, the music worked like a jolt of electricity for patients, transporting them back in time and even allowing them to speak energetically after the music had ended….