Matt Harding - Where The Hell Is Matt?

Where The Hell Is Matt?

Harding was known by his friends for a particular dance, and while video recording each other in Vietnam in May 2003, his travel companion suggested he add the dance. The videos were uploaded to his website for friends and family to enjoy. After completing a second journey to Africa in 2004, Harding edited together 15 dance scenes, all with him center frame, with the background music "Sweet Lullaby" by "Deep Forest". The original Song uses samples from a dying Solomon Islands language which was recorded in 1971 by a French ethnomusicologist at the Solomon Islands near Papua New Guinea. The song, "Rorogwela" was sung by a young woman named Afunakwa. According to the video "Where the Hell is Afunakwa" by Matt Harding, Afunakwa died in 1998.

The video was passed around by e-mail and eventually became viral, with his server getting 20,000 or more hits a day as it was discovered, generally country by country due to language barriers, before the launch of major video upload sites.

Harding created a second version of the video in 2006, with additional dancing scenes from subsequent travels, called "Dancing 2006". At the request of Stride, a gum brand, he accepted sponsorship of this video, since he usually travels on a limited budget.

Harding released his third dancing video on June 20, 2008. The video is the product of 14 months of traveling in 42 countries. The background music/song of this video is known as "Praan" composed by Garry Schyman and sung by Palbasha Siddique, with lyrics adapted from the poem "Stream of Life," a part of the Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore.

As of August 2008, Harding is represented by Creative Artists Agency. His videos are viewable on YouTube, Google Video, Vimeo and his own site wherethehellismatt.com. His "Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)" video has been watched over 43,700,000 times on YouTube since 2011 and Harding's YouTube channel is ranked "#83 - Most Subscribed (All Time) - Directors" as of December 22, 2010.

On June 20, 2012, 4 years after his third video, Harding released "Where the Hell is Matt? 2012". The video features Matt and many others dancing in 71 locations, comprising 55 countries and 11 US states. The video uses the song "Trip the Light", composed by Garry Schyman and sung by Alicia Lemke. The song was made available on iTunes, along with "Praan" and the song titled "Dance Outtakes Song" used in a video released on July 11, 2012, that features outtakes as well as locations which did not make the final video.

He is a Humanist.