If you’re feeling overwhelmed by never ending suicide bombings in Iraq, escalating conflict in Afghanistan, hand-to-hand (if unarmed) conflict over gay marriage, IRAs which once looked like giant pumpkins now the size of grapes, torture by the American government, and reporters who remain reluctant to portray it as a crime—if you need proof that, throughout all the catastrophes of the last eight last years, a much brighter side of humanity was still alive and well and thriving in every corner of the world—consider this story, which reached us through Bill Moyers:

Many years ago, Mark Johnson’s brother Greg—”a huge inspiration” for Mark—gave him a book called A Day in the Life of Africa. Greg had taken one picture out of the book and framed it. The caption read, “One of the more dangerous townships in South Africa finds solace through backyard jazz.” Mark kept the picture on his wall for years; eventually he learned the upright bass player in the band in the picture was Pokei Klaas, and that Pokei was also the leader of the band.

Fast forward ten years. Mark, now all grown up as a successful music producer, is walking underground through the New York subway. He comes upon two monks painted from head to toe in white, one playing a nylon guitar, the other “singing in a language that I didn’t understand.” And two hundred hurried New Yorkers stopped in their tracks by the performance. “It occurred to me that here is a group of people that would normally run by each other. And here they are, collectively coming together.” An idea was born. Now it just needed its soundtrack.

A few months later Mark was on the street in his own neighborhood, Santa Monica, one of the only neighborhoods in the City of Angels which enjoys actual street life—even pedestrians! Suddenly he heard the powerful tones of “Stand By Me” wafting towards him from more than a block away. Ben E. King’s hit from 1961 was being performed on the sidewalk by another soulful black man, Roger Ridley, and Mark ran over to hear the performance. When Ridley agreed to be recorded and filmed, Mark was launched on a ten year voyage.

For the next decade, he circled the globe to get dozens and dozens of musicians to contribute to a single performance of “Stand by Me.” To see some of the results, go here, set the embedded video at the 2:39 mark, crank up the volume—and prepare yourself for a four minute, twenty-five second tour de force.

It begins with Roger Ridley’s soulful California introduction from a Santa Monica sidewalk. Then Grandpa Elliott—”Though I won’t be afraid, though I won’t shed one tear”—comes in with a deep baritone, flowing out over a huge white beard and a belly shaking to the beat under his New Orleans overalls (with rhythmic back up from a smiling Washboard Chaz). Clarence Bekker, an astonishing black singer from Amsterdam, shouts out, “When the sky, that we look upon,” and six members of a native American Band called the Twin Eagle drum group join in on a single drum from Zuni, New Mexico. “I won’t cry, I won’t cry, no I won’t shed a tear,” Bekker wails while shaking his dreadlocks. François Vigulé, all in black, starts rapping his tambourine in Toulouse, as Cesar Pope strums a ukulele down in Rio. From Moscow, Dmitri Doganon is pulling his bow across his cello, just as Grandpa Elliott comes back in, and Robert Lui rocks out on his guitar in New Orleans. Geraldo (acoustic) and Dionisio (electric) strum their guitars on the street in Caracas, and Junior Kissangwa taps his white drum set lightly in Mboth (The Congo).

Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of The New York Times, and a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com.