“I understand that I only have one life. I can’t go about it twice. That’s kind of what brought me to this point. I don’t want to be at 60 and regret having spent my whole life doing something that wasn’t really who I am.”

And that’s how the first episode of Heartbeats of Fiji begins. This five-part video series follows a dozen young men who converged for a two-and-a-half week electronic music production workshop called The Fiji Beat Making Lab at the University of the South Pacific (USP). The twelve participants all traveled there for different reasons – searching for purpose, following a dream – and found themselves having much more in common than they originally thought.



Since June 2012 Beat Making Lab has conducted five workshops in locations from Goma, DR Congo to Chapel Hill, USA. On their website they say, “Imagine a world where people in opposite corners of the globe exchange beats, lyrics and ideas with one another. Our dream is to design an open source beat making software and curriculum, to foster music creation internationally.” Yes please.

New episodes air each Wednesday on PBS Digital Studios’ Beat Making Lab channel.