Don't Worry, Be Happy Don't Worry, Be Happy "Don't Worry, Be Happy" is a popular worldwide hit song by musician Bobby McFerrin. Released in September 1988, it became the first "a cappella" song to reach number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, a position it held for two weeks. The Indian mystic and sage Meher Baba (1894–1969) often used the expression "Don't worry, be happy" when cabling his followers in the West. In the 1960s, the expression was printed up on inspirational cards and posters of the era. In 1988, McFerrin noticed a similar poster in the apartment of the jazz duo Tuck
Bobby McFerrin served as co-hosts of "The Music Instinct", a two-hour award-winning documentary produced by PBS and based on Levitin's best-selling book "This Is Your Brain on Music". Later that year, the two appeared together on a panel at the World Science Festival, where McFerrin demonstrated audience participation with the ubiquitous nature of human understanding of the pentatonic scale by singing and dancing, and having the audience sing while following his movements. As a vocalist, McFerrin often switches rapidly between modal and falsetto registers to create polyphonic effects, performing both the main melody and the accompanying parts of songs. He makes use