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Musical Songs

David Gordon's Songs Form the Soul of Peace Child Shows, Selection Tailored to Fit Each Story
Index:
[Click on the title to link to each Song’s home page where you can link to the lyrics, score, audio & video of each song]
INTRODUCTION
The songs written by David Gordon, form the backbone – some would say “The Soul” – of Peace Child. Some of them – Peace Day,  World, I have a Vision, Child for a Day – are used in almost every Peace Child show but which songs you include is up to you. They have to fit the story you are trying to tell.

Some cast members have written their own Songs. We encourage this – as some have written truly great songs which have been used again and again in many shows. We include FIVE of them here:


Chic was the Story-teller in our Santa Barbara show and his Peace in the Heart, written with his then girlfriend, Leslie King, is a particular favourite. It has been used in many Peace Child tours, and at every Peace Child Conference we have held, because it is an inspirational way to get a huge crowd of people on their feet singing for peace in five different languages.
 
David Gordon’s mega-star brother, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), sings the original version of Child for a Day which was included on IZITSO – his last album as Cat Stevens. Though copyright does not allow us to include his songs in this Peace Child Songbook, we have used several of his songs in different shows:

  • Peace Train – his classic Peace song – used in the UN Geneva show and probably available for use again, should a producer want it;  
  • Father and Son – which crystallises the inter-generational conflict that crops up in several Peace Child stories;
  • I want to Live in a Wigwam – a great song for young people to sing and adapt as they consider the components of the kind of world they would like to be inhabit in the future.
     
Other productions have used songs written by others. There are a ton of great songs promoting peace.    Several have used We are the World and Bobby Darin’s Simple Song of Freedom. John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, Imagine and All you need is Love! turn up frequently and any of Pete Seeger’s songs are great.  Pete told us that the Civil Rights movement was a success because it was driven by great songs: from Woody Guthrie’s This Land is my Land to John Denver’s Country Roads – the movement was infused with music. Other movements have been less successful because they lacked songs. The Peace Child suite of songs are a little unique in that they cover almost all the issues related to war and peace. David Gordon’s empathy with the subject powerfully embeds in people’s hearts and minds the story of how the young people of today will deliver the safe, sustainable world that future generations require this generation of youth to construct by the end of their working lives.
 
Many people say that producing a musical is too much like hard work. They’re right: it is! The rehearsals, learning the lines, making the band-charts, doing the harmonies over and over, the perspiration it takes to get the dance moves just right... it’s all very hard, time-consuming work.  But then so is making peace!  Most generations have failed at it, especially ours!  As I write now in the mid-2020s, Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen and Central Africa – all are suffering the shattering misery of war because our generation has proved to be such utterly useless failures as peace-makers. Rogue nations and dictators merrily make war and mayhem all over the world – and hanging over all of us is the ever-present shadow of nuclear war – which would wipe out civilisation in a few hours.  And yet every Superpower Government – run by supposedly intelligent people and obeyed by the best educated generation the earth has ever seen – spend billions of dollars every year managing their nuclear, so-called “Deterrent.” The recent best-seller, Nuclear War – a Scenario, outlines exactly how a nuclear war could happen and with it, the end of all life on Earth! And yet it offers no solutions.  Peace Child does.   It allows you to figure out how to make Peace and solve other related global crises in the safe environment of a musical stage where everything is possible!!  What’s more, it demonstrates that peace-making can be FUN as well as immensely satisfying.
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