By now you may have heard the remarkable tale of Grammy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson's Playing For Change Band, set to hit Olympia and the Washington Center for the Performing Arts this Friday. Originally birthed as part of a PBS documentary Playing For Change: Peace Through Music, according to hype "Johnson traveled the world recording street performers of different faiths, backgrounds, and ethnicities and blended their contributions into a single unified, moving performance."

In 2009 at SXSW a group of musicians from the film came together for a live performance as the Playing For Change Band, offering an "exhilarating mix of blues, gospel, reggae and Afropop," in addition to the straight-up neatness factor of seeing such a collection of varied street musicians jell.

All of this will be on display Friday in Olympia.

[Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 7:30 p.m., $11-$42, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia, 360.753.8585]