October 10, 2010, would have been Daniel Pearl’s 46th birthday. In tribute, FodFest, a home-grown annual concert series honoring the memory and life of the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter, made a series of school visits in Israel's Negev Desert. The multi-cultural peace-through-music project continued all week, with concerts scheduled in Arad (October 11), Be’er Sheva (October 12), Tel Aviv (October 13), Ramle (October 14), and Jerusalem (October 14). The performers include Palestinians and Jews; the program’s mission is to build community through sharing music, and it continues through 2011 with concerts and education programs in the United States, as well as in international venues.
Daniel Pearl: Wall Street Journal Reporter and First-Rate Violinist
Founder Todd Mack began the FodFest (it stands for “Friends of Danny”) as a low-key annual birthday party in honor of Daniel Pearl, who was a close personal friend and bandmate. In addition to being an international reporter, Danny, as he was known by his friends, was a musician with perfect pitch who could play a classical sonata, fly through a fiddle tune or sit in a rock ‘n roll jam.
“Danny believed in the power of music,” says Todd Mack, a musician and recording engineer who owns the Off the Beat’n Track recording studio in Sheffield Massachusetts. “I wanted to remember him that way, not for the way he died. I wanted his ideals – that people sharing music could bring people together – to live on, and I wanted to bring that message to communities where it could help in healing.”
Before Danny was a Wall Street Journal reporter, he worked for the Berkshire Eagle, the paper of record in western Massachusetts’s Berkshire County, a creative community where it sometimes seems every second person is a musician or an artist. Danny fit right in as a writer and violinist, and after a day reporting and writing, headed out to play music in local clubs.
When Todd started FodFest, Danny’s old band mates and people he’d met through his music showed up to pay – and play – tribute. Since then, thousands of people have volunteered as musicians, roadies, publicists, stagehands, organizers, merchandise salespeople, and fundraisers.
FodFest: From Backyard Jam to International Peace Mission
Since beginning on Todd’s deck in 2005, FodFest has grown year by year. What began as a backyard jam became a recorded radio show, then an East Coast tour, then a national tour. It went international in 2009 with a tour of Taiwan, and in 2010, went to the Middle East.
But this is no ordinary concert tour: For one thing, the musicians playing together (in in the case of concerts in Israel and the West Bank, Palestinians and Jews) are local volunteers. Most have never met before, nor heard each other’s music. Basically, the concerts are arranged as song swaps, where the performers take turns leading a song. After a quick introduction, everyone joins in to back up the lead performer, contributing rhythms, bass lines, harmonies, chords, counterpoint, leads, solos, and anything else they can think of to do – usually on a song they’ve never heard before.
Suffice it to say: No two concerts are alike. But on one night, in at least one auditorium in the Middle East, Arabs and Jews sang in harmony.
FodFest is affiliated with the larger non-profit Daniel Pearl World Music Days, sponsored by The Daniel Pearl Foundation. The concerts are free, although donations are gratefully accepted to offset the cost of the concerts.
Karen Berger - Karen Berger is the author of 15 books. Please click on her name to read her full bio.
