Turn the World Around

When Harry Belafonte was the guest star on a season 3 episode of The Muppet Show in 1979, he explained the inspiration for this song before he performed it with various Muppets in African garb. When Fozzie Bear asked him about writing, Belafonte said: "I discovered that song in Africa. I was in a country called Guinea. I went deep into the interior of the country, and in a little village, I met with a storyteller. That storyteller went way back in African tradition and African mythology and began to tell this story about the fire, the sun, the water, the Earth [at this point a crowd of Muppets gathers around]. He pointed out the whole of these things put together turns the world around. That all of us are here for a very very short time. In that time that we're here, there really isn't any difference in any of us, if we take time out to understand each other. The question is: Do I know who you are, or who I am? Do we care about each other? Because if we do, together we can turn the world around."