World Wisdom Council

Mike Lindup

In my new single ‘Atlantia’ I directly question my identity – on the face of it, I am the progeny of a black mother and a white father. Growing up I have struggled to identify as either one of those, and the more I travelled, the more I observed the commonality between us as human beings, fellow travellers through time to all corners of this Earth, free to identify ourselves as we choose but fundamentally all made of the same stuff: we are all shards of the divine. “Returning to Atlantia” is inviting us to return to who we really are. 

David Bowie        Pat Metheny   

This Is Not America" was the result of their collaboration. Bowie watched an early screening of The Falcon and the Snowman and took notes on lines and themes that they might use; "This is not America" is a line said by one character to another, and both Bowie and Metheny agreed it was interesting. Metheny later noted that Bowie's lyrics were "profound and meaningful—and absolutely perfect for the film." 

 David Darling     

Daviid Darling was an American cellist and composer.  

In 2010, he won the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. 

He performed and recorded with Bobby McFerrin, Paul Winter Consort, Ralph Towner and Spyro Gyra and released many solo albums. Among these were 15 recordings for ECM.

Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks is an American poet.

Although he neither speaks nor reads Persian, he is a popular interpreter of Rumi, rewriting the poems based on other English translations. Barks  was a student of the Sufi Shaykh Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.  He makes frequent international appearances and is well-known throughout the Middle East.  Due to his work, the ideas of Sufism have crossed many cultural boundaries over the past few decades. Barks received an honorary doctorate from University of Tehran in 2006.  He taught literature at the the University of Georgia for three decades.

Pat Metheny           Lyle Mays

"Has Pat ever done anything that wasn't monumental? He's light years from anyone. Good lord, what a talent. A million years from now this song will still pull you to places you've never been. Just awe-inspiring, like all of Pat's work. Genius doesn't even begin to describe him. 

And that includes Lyle too..." -  Rick Johnson 

 Herbie Hancock’s star-studded The Imagine Project was several years in the making, recorded in seven countries with musicians from all over the globe. Much of what’s here is interpretations of well-known pop, folk, and soul songs. This album was recorded in various countries throughout the world, in multiple languages, and with various international artists in an effort to show the power and beauty of global collaboration as a golden path to peace.

Joni Mitchell composed the song based on what she had heard from her then-boyfriend Graham Nash about the Woodstock Music and Art Festival. She had not been there herself, since a manager had told her that it would, instead, be more advantageous for her to appear on The Dick Cavett Show. She composed it in a hotel room in New York City, watching televised reports of the festival. "The deprivation of not being able to go provided me with an intense angle on Woodstock," she told an interviewer shortly after the event.  David Crosby, interviewed for the documentary Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind, stated that Mitchell had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had actually been there. The lyrics tell a story about a spiritual journey to Max Yasgur's farm, the place of the festival, and make prominent use of sacred imagery, comparing the festival site with the Garden of Eden ("and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"). The saga commences with the narrator's encounter of a fellow traveler ("Well, I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road") and concludes at their ultimate destination ("by the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong"). There are also references to the horrific "mutual assured destruction" of the Cold War ("bombers riding shotgun in the sky...") contrasted against the peaceful intent of the festival goers ("...turning into butterflies above our nation").