At Pop!Tech 2007, five-time Grammy award-winner John Legend moved and motivated Pop!Tech participants, weaving stories from his Show Me Campaign—a movement he launched to help eradicate extreme global poverty—in between each soulful song.

Now in a February 2 release, John joins ranks with Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas and director Jesse Dylan (son of Bob) in their new celeb-studded music video in support of Barack Obama. The video is a musical performance of Senator Obama’s Yes We Can speech, his “concession” speech following Senator Clinton’s win in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary.

In spite of the fact that we live in controversial times, today’s North American music scene increasingly emphasizes music that’s materialistic, sexually charged or violent, over and above music that’s politically controversial. This moving example of musicians coming together and speaking directly to their audience in order to have a positive influence, is a reversal of that trend, and regardless of one’s politics, this reversal is important.

Check out the video, and read about the backstory here.

John also recently shot and released a music video in Tanzania for the Show Me Campaign to introduce his fans to critical global issues. Watch this story of a young boy overwhelmed by the weight of the world who is asking questions and searching for answers.

The character in the video is inspired by the real life story of two young boys, Yaguine Koita (aged 14) and Fodé Tounkara (aged 15), stowaways who froze to death flying from Guinea to Belgium, on 28 July 1999. The boys were carrying plastic bags with birth certificates, school report cards, photographs and a letter to the world asking for solidarity and kindness in providing relief to Africa. Check out their letter on John’s site under the “music video & explanation” tab here.

While talk of AIDS has become nothing but white noise for many, Zinhle Thabethe, a counselor working on the frontlines of the South African HIV epidemic, is taking action. Through home visits, working with AIDS orphans, educating nurses and doctors, and singing in the internationally acclaimed HIV-positive Sinikithemba Choir, Zinny’s goal is to fight stigma by raising awareness, and to ensure that people with HIV get plugged into treatment and stay on treatment – all in one of the most resource-constrained environments in the world.

Now, National Geographic is recognizing Zinny’s extraordinary contributions by naming her one of the 2008 class of Emerging Explorers – individuals who represent the next generation of world-changing talent from many different fields.

We continue to work with Zinny and her colleague, Dr. Krista Dong of iTeach, on Project Masiluleke, a Pop!Tech Accelerator project focused on using mobile devices to improve HIV care in South Africa and beyond. And we join in congratulating Zinny on her National Geographic nomination.

24 Hours, 7 Continents, 9 Cities, 2 Billion People: the Live Earth Concerts for a Climate in Crisis are coming your way this July 7, 2007.

Part of a global campaign to promote awareness of the current state of climate change, the concerts feature more than 100 music artists from The Police to Snoop Dogg to Metallica to Smashing Pumpkins (for the full and quite impressive list click here). Watch with the world at www.LiveEarth.MSN.com.

And be sure to check out Live Earth’s official guidebook: The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change, written by long-time Pop!Tech participant David de Rothschild, founder of Adventure Ecology.

The entire book, from conceptions took 7 months, with the project finding its legs at Pop!Tech 2006. David met publisher Charlie Melcher in the “dungeon” of the Camden Opera House (aka Pop!Tech’s Screening Room). He had just been commissioned to do this book, turn-around time was super short, and Charlie offered to help. They went straight at it in February and were finished by April.

Which tip in the survival guide does David take most to heart? “Number 32: Get lost in nature. .when was the last time you took your shoes off and walked about in nature? It’s important to get yourself outside and re-engaged. In the epic scale of Live Earth, it’s worthwhile to ‘get lost in nature’ in order to remember why we need some new guidelines for living in a changing world.”

For a peek at some of survival tips from the book and a look at the great illustrations, you can visit the Live Earth site at http://www.liveearth.org/crisis_solutions.php.

Pop!Tech performers have been a prolific bunch in the first half of 2007. Several artists have new releases (Ethan Lipton, Zivani Masango) and Rodrigo y Gabriela will be headlining at Central Park’s Summer Stage this year.

Renee Stahl (who brought her “melancholy pop” to our stage in 2005) is no exception - besides giving birth this year, she has recently released two new albums. The first album, hopeful.romantic, described by Renee as “on the electronic side or, as some call it, folktronica” is available exclusively at Barnes and Noble stores and at bn.com

The second is an album of lullabies called It’s a Big World! and is available at CDBaby.com.

Both albums feature Renee’s soft, moving voice and contemporary lyricism. More about Renee at her website Reneestahl.com and at ReneeandJeremymusic.com

Zivanai Masango, who shared his unique sound at the conference back in 2005, has just released a new album titled DUTU-STORM. Zivanai is a guitarist, performer, and teacher of Zimbabwean music and culture. His style is a lively mix of traditional South African sounds with Funk, Rock to R & B, Reggae, Soul and Jazz. Of the album, Zivanai writes, “DUTU-STORM is a result of my being a ‘world-citizen’, and not forgetting that I am Zimbabwean at my very core!”

The album is currently available for purchased as a hard copy or as downloads from his website www.zivimusic.com.

Preview tracks at Zivanai’s myspace page www.myspace.com/zivanai.

This weekend, Pop!Tech Balladeer Jonathan Coulton was featured in the New York Times Magazine article “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” . The article describes how the internet and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster) have changed the relationship between musician and fan. Rock stars need MySpace pages, blog entries, and they need to respond to fan-emails because–they need the fans. Today fans are expecting all these things. No wonder Jonathan has become a poster-boy for this New Music Paradigm. Besides being an extremely approachable human being, he is also a decidedly accessible rock star as well. In fact, his accessibility has become something of a vocation for him.

He says: “People always think that when you’re a musician you’re sitting around strumming your guitar, and that’s your job,” he said. “But this” - he clicked his keyboard theatrically - “this is my job.”

Jonathan’s a kind of Internet Superstar. While standard means of sales and distribution such as retail CD sales, top 20 radio play or MTV appearances still prevail, the Internet has spurned a whole new channel for reaching audiences and has also created a new metric for determining popularity. Jonathan currently has 5,359 MySpace Friends alone - writing notes to him, emailing with him and, more often than not, getting a response back from him. Not too shabby!

Right now, “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” is the #2 most-emailed article on the newspaper’s site, which translates to a spike in traffic to
Coulton’s blog at www.jonathancoulton.com

The article is also chock full o’ links to videos of Coulton’s songs and a great NY Times exclusive “Decoding Code Monkey“.

Check out Jonathan’s Pop!Tech Pop!Cast of his perfomance at the conference last year.

It’s been about over a week since we have made our very first batch of Pop!Tech Pop!Casts available online and we’ve had some great movement since then.

We are featured on the homepage of iTunes, we’ve been linked around the web (Thanks to everyone who have been moved to write about the release of the Pop!Casts). All in all - not a bad start. And that was only with our first 22 podcasts.

We have two more to share with you today:

Brian Eno - Musician, producer and artist Brian Eno shows how simple things can give rise to complex things—in art and life. See how he uses Darwin’s ecological model of the world as a roadmap for human culture now and in the future.

(I still admire him for his lovely purple velvet jacket)

Rodrigo y Gabriela - The Mexican acoustic guitar duo sensation Rodrigo y Gabriela put fast fingers to strings for a performance that will put you on your feet and keep you moving. There’s no better way to say it: they rock!

(They inspired me to pick up my guitar again, but I quickly realized that my playing compared to theirs is like those of a monkey with socks on its hands)

There are also some new features on the Pop!Casts page to make it easier to share these amazing talks and performances with your friends. Now you can send an email, share a permalink or embed the Yahoo! Video player on your website or blog.

Enjoy! And there is PLENTY more to come.

Jason Moran is keeping himself busy.

A live performance by Jason is featured in a video installation called The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things by seminal video and performance artist Joan Jonas. This piece is based on Joan Jonas’ recent site specific work, presented as a performance at Dia:Beacon (New York) in October 2005, and repeated in October 2006. Also included in the exhibition is a new My New Theater project, part of an ongoing series of video objects. The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things is a response to German art historian Aby Warburg’s essay about his visit to the American Southwest at the end of the nineteenth century. This five channel video installation continues the artist’s investigation of the performing body and its interaction with media and space, transformed through drawings, photography, video projections, sound, music, movement and found objects. For the pieces, Moran composed new music for this collaborative work. The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things is presented at the Yvon-Lambert Gallery from April 26-March 29.

Jason also lent his skills to the short film STUTTER. He scored, along with The Bandwagon, Janice Ahn’s short film, which will screen at NYU’s First Run Film Festival April 13 - 3:30 April 14 - 9:30 The Cantor Film Center 36 E. 8th Street NY and also being screened on April 20th at SAY SO.

Motion graphics studio and beloved motion designer for Pop!Tech (and our forthcoming podcast) Trollback + Company has recently created a stunning video called Moonlight in Glory. It’s a really cool treatment using light and typography.Moonlight in Glory comes off the 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno (Pop!Tech 2006 Speaker) and David Byrne.The albums was one of the first non-rap albums to heavily feature sampling techniques.

Pop!Tech 2006 favorites, Rodrigo y Gabriela have been playing the late night circuit recently with performances on Leno and Letterman.

The Dublin-based Mexican duo combine lightening fast finger picking and string thrashing strumming to create a mix of Rock, World and Hispano musical genres.

You can watch the Leno clip here and the Letterman clip here.

But when are Rodrigo Y Gabriela coming to MY town, you ask…

Well, your prayers are answered as they have announced 2007 tour dates.

They will be playing in the US until May. Here are some dates:

MARCH
11 Mar - Sunrise, Florida, Langerado Music Festival
13 Mar - Boston, MA, US Paradise Rock Club
15 Mar - Austin, Texas, SXSW Stubbs
20 Mar - Washington, D.C. Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Headquarters
21 Mar - New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
22 Mar - Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory

APRIL
14 Apr - Los Angeles, CA - KCRW Charity Drive Gibson Amph
23 Apr - Portland, OR Aladdin Theatre
24 Apr - Seattle, WA Showbox Theatre
26 Apr - San Francisco, CA Grand Ballroom at Regency Center
29 Apr - Indio, CA Coachella Festival, (Stage to be confirmed)

MAY
01 May - Denver, CO - The Ogden Theatre

and you can see more European dates on their website at www.rodgab.com