Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

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About the Host

Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more than 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.

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Show Notes

Rick DeallRatta's Website: 
https://rickdellaratta.com

Rick DellaRatta's Author page
https://enterprisezone.cc/author/rick-dellaratta/

Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-dellaratta-08199818

Jazz for Peace: 
https://jazzforpeace.org

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Transcript

 

My guest today is Rick DellaRatta. Rick is a jazz pianist, vocalist and composer.

He's considered by many to be one of the finest singer pianists performing today, and one of a handful of jazz artists who makes a successful musical presentation to larger audiences without having to abandon the true art form of jazz.

His Jazz for Peace concert at the United Nations in New York in 2002, United Israel, Palestinian and American musicians in concert, raised funds and public awareness and garnished support and praise from then President Barack Obama and Secretary of

State Hillary Clinton. His Jazz for Peace World Tour has included historic performances in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Brazil.

He's included in the Foundation Center's list of the top musician philanthropists along with Bono, Elton John and Sting.

He works to advance people to their highest potential through the understanding of jazz as well as spreading peace worldwide through his Jazz for Peace World Tour. Welcome to my show, Rick.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you. And you're in Salt Lake City, right?

Technically, I'm in Zion National Park.

Zion, fantastic.

I've been there. It's absolutely gorgeous. Actually, on this wall is a picture of Angel's Landing.

Yeah, I've climbed.

I'm actually a mountain climber, rock climber. So I've climbed the face of Angel's Landing several times, including solo, and come down the way you hike to the top. That's my walk down off the mountain.

That's insane.

I'm so glad I brought this up because I only know from going to... I'm a skier, so I go up there. I'll be going there in a couple of days.

So I'll have to share this with all my...

Oh, I've always wanted to have a live show at my place here. Certainly look me up. Let me know when you're coming.

Stop by. Say hello.

Let's do that. Well, I'll be there for a couple of months because I'm a ski blogger.

I have a full keyboard, a full performance Roland, the stage piano. It's so heavy. It's a back breaker to move, the real thing.

I have a friend of mine who's taking me on a road trip because he just wants to do that.

And I could talk to him and say, hey, would you at any chance you want to stop by Zion? I have a friend who wants to do a live show. I could run it by him, run it up the flagpole, you know?

It's a beautiful place and the view out my window where we could set the keyboard up and stuff is, it's wonderful.

So let me ask you, Rick, at first, you know, a couple of months ago, I ran across you and you pitched me or the service you used suggested you.

And I'm kind of like, I don't know how Jazz for Peace fits in with my mindset, mountain climber, do the thing you want to do.

But what caught my attention on your recent post was you have a quote, your quote is, when we fill our souls up with creativity, artistry and intelligence, we have a better chance at avoiding the behavior that leads to destruction.

So tell me about what you mean, how this works theoretically and what the destruction is, the bad behaviors are and how being creative and being an artist and intelligent solves the world's problems in a way it sounds like.

Well, you know, we have volunteers here at Jazz for Peace, and I once received a letter from a neighboring state of yours.

The guy was a senator, John McCain in Arizona, and he wrote me a letter, and in the letter he said, he mentioned the volunteers and staff and what a great job they do, and it's mostly volunteer people doing it from their heart.

And someone must have come across, and I know what the synergy was. It could have been the Salt Lake City thing because they know it would go to Utah, or it could have been, you know, your theme.

But I have been on wild different themes that you would never think would fit. And just like you, they would say, wow, I didn't think of it. And then I saw this, or then I saw that.

What you just brought up there is called a famous quote. And to be honest with you, all it is is something I said off the top of my head in an interview shortly after 9-11. What happened is on 9-11, I wrote a poem.

I called the poem Jazz for Peace, and I wrote it because I was watching the events of 9-11 from a rooftop down in the Lower East Side, less than a quarter of a mile away from the World Trade Center. So I'm watching these powerful events.

I had been tipped off by a photographer on Wall Street. I'm up there in the morning, and I see what had the first, you know, there's already a disaster on one of the buildings.

And then I saw, I watched the disaster happen to the other building, and I watched everything unfold.

So in an interview after I wrote the poem and recited it, back when we reopened the country at the Savannah Jazz Festival for 8,500 people, and people knew about this poem, I was just talking to a guy and I said, listen, because we were talking

about, you know, why does this, why do we have to do, you know, why does our species have to be so destructive? And I just simply said, listen, if we took our greatest qualities, humanity, artistry, creativity, intellectuality, we have them, we know

about them. All of us know that these are our greatest qualities as a species, and we embraced them. We would have collectively, we would have a better chance at avoiding the behavior that leads to destruction.

And see, that's the quote that crosses every single theme of every single-

Well, I get to what you, a theme of my podcast is to, the reason I got into doing this is I'm trying to inspire people to do the thing they're called to do, what's in their heart. You know, the cliché thing, follow your dream.

Because I think if everybody were, then they would be being creative, like you're speaking of. And I think that would solve all the world problems, to which let me ask you, what drew you to Jazz, your thing?

How did you know that's what you wanted to do?

Well, I wasn't so much Jazz at the beginning, it was probably music. Because what happened was a piano had come into the living room of my house where I grew up on Christmas Eve. And I was trying to catch Santa Claus, I was like about six years old.

And I was up the stairs and I was doing what I've been told, please don't do this, because I've been trying to do it every year and falling asleep and missing me. I'm going to catch him next year.

And I saw that it was a big fat guy on the back of the moving something giant into the house. And I figured, okay, I'm going to cut my losses here, because my parents will kill me if they catch me and I'm just going to go to sleep. I did see him.

He's real and he brought something into the house and we'll figure it out tomorrow morning. So now I'm trying to learn this thing on my own, figuring all the trouble he went through.

I mean, he couldn't fit it through the chimney and the reindeer, who the heck knows. So now I'm trying to figure it out. And that ended me up getting caught and starting piano lesson.

So you mean you didn't wait till the morning time, as soon as it was wheeled, as soon as Santa left it, you got...

I would like to say that, no, no, this was basically over the next couple of weeks.

So maybe that, in other words, I was playing the piano when I thought nobody would catch me, because I wanted to learn it all by myself. I didn't want anyone to catch me.

I didn't want anyone to hear what I was playing because I really didn't know what I was doing. So I didn't want any audience there.

Oh, like you were shy.

I was shy and also I was a bit secretive, because like I said, I wanted to learn it on my own. Well, I was probably shy, I mean, that's for sure. But I also really just didn't, I wanted to figure this out all by myself.

That was my thinking. So I was already improvising. So just doing that is the whole essence of improvisation.

I was playing and listening and making my own notes.

And that's what I put myself in the picture. I think what stops a lot of people from following their dream is, someone here, let's say, you were not to have been so secretive and you didn't practice before someone heard you.

And they said, oh, that doesn't sound very good, Rick. Then you're shattered, right? You're just like, okay, I shouldn't do that.

I'm sure, I'm sure all of these things play into it.

I'm sure there's a literally a litany of things that play into people being pushed off of their dreams. And of course, you know, that's a great point. What you made.

Another great point is people wanting to put, to make you into utility. You know what I mean? Okay, this person, he doesn't exist for him or for a greater good or for mankind or for God or whatever.

He exists to benefit us, you know? So no, don't go do that. We're going to, we want you doing this.

You know, we want you moving this rock or something. If you're in Egypt, you know, I don't know.

Did you find you had a natural talent then for the piano teaching yourself?

What I found one was that there was something magical to the playing your own notes and listening. So I found a little magic there by myself. I'm like, this is kind of mad.

I don't know what the heck Santa brought in here, but it's kind of magical. And then I knew that my mother would play it while my father played the French horn, Mozart horn concerto.

So I knew that it was something that could be learned and that that was quite amazing what people could come up with when they, what had been done on the piano. But then on top of that, I also saw the joy that music would bring to people.

If let's say I was with my grandmother and my aunt, we're dancing around in a circle and maybe it's the Beatles, I want to hold your hand or something, or it's just some kind of music. And I was like, darn, who's giving us all this joy?

Who are those guys? And I could see being one of them. I mean, I wouldn't mind being the guy that's making all these people joyful.

So I was getting messages like, you know, I never, to be honest with you, I never really got a message like that you shouldn't do this. I was like, hmm, this looks like something you might want to do.

Not that I don't love sports, as we talked off camera, and of course, you're passionate for it. And other things, but you know.

But you were fooling around on your own before you had any lessons.

Absolutely. And then I think someone, either my mother heard me or someone told my mother, hey, you know, every time there's nobody around, your son goes over there and plays a, you know, we don't know.

But at one point, she did ask me if I would like to take piano lessons. And I said, nah.

Don't ruin you. Don't ruin me.

I just just said no. I said, where are you getting that idea?

You know, it reminds me of John Mayer. And he said when he first got his guitar, his first guitar, and he would spend it, you know, he was just in his bedroom fooling around. What he learned on his own before he actually took any lessons.

He swears that to this day, that's some of the stuff he still uses, the most important things he learned on his own.

I would not, that does not surprise me because that quality of just like a clean slate and just you and your instrument. And you know, it's really a spiritual connection that you make with an instrument. And I would advise it to anybody.

It's literally a path, an instant path to peace, a person and his instrument. In fact, this book called Paving the Path for Peace Through Music, a book that I was asked to write the, it's a book about me, but I was asked to write the forward.

And I happened to write the forward about two musicians in the 1700s. And what I did was I had a, one musician was a father in the middle of somewhere, could have been anywhere, who gives an instrument to his son or child, okay?

So the parent gives the instrument to the child, anonymous child. The other one was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father, who gave him an instrument.

And I talk about the differences between that and what happened, and the tragedy of Mozart, and the wonderful things that might happen to the person who didn't have the pressure of all of that stuff, and didn't advance to a point where he intimidated

archbishops, rather than look like a trained monkey, and things like that. But I said they were both noble, and they were both, I mean, you have to read the foreword, which you can read for free, I would advise anyone to.

What's inspirational about you learning your craft on your own before lessons, and John Mayer too, is there's a lot of people who think, oh, I'm not talented enough, or I need lessons first.

I'm like, no, just go, just go try something with the guitar too. You don't need a guitar lesson, just learn a song, play a song. So it gets people, people are stuck because they feel either have to sit down and be Mozart right away.

I'm sure Rick, were you Mozart right away, the first moment when you're a kid, you got this new piano sitting down, what was it like your first song, first thing you?

When I first made up something, I don't know what it was, but I mean, I do it to this day. So when I recite the Jazz for Peace poem, a lot of people say, what is that poem? Can you say the words of the poem on our show?

I will make up something completely, I might even do it for your show. I will do what I was doing as a six-year-old child underneath reciting the jazz for peace poem. So that's what I was doing as a six-year-old.

So you would improvise?

Improvise.

I would just make up, make it up, whatever it was. I don't know if it was good or not because I never heard it. But whatever it was, I would make it up.

It's really for somebody. I did notice that sometimes a cat would jump on a piano, I don't know what sound good, a cat, you know what I mean?

He wanted to get, or she wanted to get closer to the vibrations, the music, whatever it is.

It's possible because actually sometimes a cat will be walking on the piano keys. And like if it's listening, actually I make an interesting sounding notes, you know what I mean?

It's basically you're listening and you're playing and you're in the moment, and you're trying to make a connection with the universe per se. This moment in time, whatever it is that can never be done again. You know, this, this...

I was going to ask you about your process.

So are you inspired by poems then? Is that where you get your inspiration or reading something?

Well, to be honest with you, with poems, I am basically a one hit wonder. I mean, I'm a lyricist because I wrote lyrics to songs. But when I was up on that roof watching 9-11, what was happening to me is words were come swirling around inside me.

And I realized I've got five words that are swirling around. If I don't write them on a piece of paper, they're not going to be purged out of me, and I'm not going to be able to think other thoughts.

So I would just write down, get rid of those words. And now I could look at what's going on and other thoughts would come into my head. And at the end of the day, all I had was a bunch of words from a poem.

And what I was trying to say that's actually in this forward is, both of these existences are honorable. Both made great contributions to others, as well as their communities, society, and are great examples for the world at large.

Both of their lives and efforts are a much greater alternative choice than the path of war, discrimination, hatred and annihilation.

The fact of the matter is, when we fill up our souls with creativity, artistry, and intelligence and numerous other things of that nature, we have a better chance at avoiding the behavior that leads to destruction.

And this is the story of My Life Through Music, which eventually became the story of Jazz for Peace.

And that started with the five words that you wrote down.

Well, that's part of the forward to this book. So that's a part of the forward to this book. But those words, well, when we fill our souls with that, that is not part of the poem.

That's something I said when I was interviewed about the poem. So what happened was I had gone to Savannah, Georgia, where I was headlining the Jazz Festival.

And because I was the headliner, there were 8,500 people that were gonna hear me recite this poem. Nobody knew I had a poem, even my band members. Nobody knew but me.

But in the middle of the set, I just told the people, listen, I know we've all been through this. I happen to have a poem and I hope you don't mind me selling it and I recited the poem. And it was very powerful because the events were so recent.

And that poem resonated north.

Well, write in the five words down to get them out of your head. That's a little tip I like to tell people who they think they're not creative, but they are.

Like you have to, when you get something, an idea, if you don't write it down, it's gonna be gone. Grab a napkin. I know something to write it down with immediately, right, Rick?

You're 100 percent right.

And not only that, but what I ended up doing that, what you just said is the poem Jazz for Peace, of which I try to live up to the words every day, which led us to this moment.

Because if I wasn't trying to live up to those words, none of the things that you spoke about would have ever happened in your introduction.

What was it that inspired the Jazz for World Peace Tour? The music, that was 9-11?

I'll tell you, anybody can go on a world tour if they can swing it, they can pull it off.

It's hard enough to go on an American tour, it's hard enough to go to the London World.

But like I said, you don't need a tragedy to do it. The tour itself might be a tragedy if you're like, what's that movie, Spinal Tap? Did you ever see that movie?

Yeah, you know what, I was really, I'd never heard of Anvil.

Have you heard of the band Anvil?

I've heard of that name. I'm not extremely familiar with their music.

Anvil is the real Spinal Tap.

Wow.

Apparently, Spinal Tap, the musicians in that movie, they're not real musicians like Anvil. I guess they can't stand that Anvil is a true story. Anvil's story is amazing.

Anvil, A-N-V-I-L, the hard mother brand.

I have to tell you, any band that you ever come across, something happened to them. I mean, every band has gone through hilarious stuff like Spinal Tap. It might not have been a whole movie full of it, but listen.

I mean, my very first band, I remember we were trying to breathe fire like Kiss, and one of the guys jumped in the audience, not even knowing that the audience they had for us was a bunch of like paraplegic old people and they were scared to death,

The main thing about the Andal stories, they were doing their thing.

They were being truly authentic, which to some people means crazy fire breathing. And then they kept doing it. Like years and years and years later, the producer, director, just like, I wonder if Anvil is around anymore.

And he calls and ask, he calls and finds them, he's like, you guys got a rinky dink website. I wasn't sure if you're still sure, if you're on tour still like, yeah, we never gave up. And then they hit it big or they did kept going.

They did their thing. So they were.

That's fascinating. Yeah. So basically, I was, I had already toured a lot around the world with all kinds of different bands and even had my own records out.

And I had toured under my own name with my own records. And actually I was kind of doing some interesting stuff.

Like I told you, even, I mean, I had this thing headlining at a jazz festival that was about to be canceled because the whole country was closed and all of a sudden they opened it.

And there I was, I was playing with some really great musicians in the world of jazz. Like anybody in jazz would know who the musicians in my band were because they were more famous than me a lot of the times, the bands I was bringing.

But I mean, I remember one time in London, I got off a plane to play at this club and the people just rushed my band members because they had all played in London before.

I'd never been in London and I'm sitting there laughing because nobody came to talk to me. Everyone's there talking to my band members. But anyway.

What brought you to jazz?

What locked you in on jazz?

So yeah, so let me tell you. Well, first of all, what brought me to jazz is just two points I want to get. One is how the tour started, you know, the Jazz for Peace thing.

But the jazz in general, because basically what happened was I had that improvisation thing that I could relate to when I found out about.

Number two, I had studied classical music because of the lessons, but then I also played in the rock band with the kids at school. And I was even a church organist, taking over from my mother.

And I was playing in a grown up band that played little parties, and bar mitzvah, not a bar mitzvah, well bar mitzvah or a wedding or any kind of grown up private party.

They sneak me in and sneak me out and bring me home to my mother because they promise they get me home safe and all that. And I had to quit my paper route. So I was already a professional musician at age 13.

Yeah. And now basically, I run into jazz in a library. I like pull up, open a drawer.

Like, what is this? And I see these records. And now I start taking the records out because I'm like, I can't, I don't know what this is, but I can't turn my back on it.

I mean, it's like it's something extraordinary. So now I'm listening to the records. And I noticed that the jazz thing really plays into why I was even messing around at the piano in the first place, that spiritual connection of improvisation.

And I would notice that jazz was a great avenue for that.

You want to play something? Can you show us your process of improvising? I don't know if you need a poem to read or if you just want to make something up on the fly here.

Well, I could do a combination of two things if you want.

I have the Jazz for Peace poem that I could recite, and then I would improvise, make up something completely like I've never played before.

Sounds great.

All right. I also could do it over a regular song, like My Funny Valentine or some song.

I'm curious to process, especially since we're filming it as well. Because as an engineer and also as someone who certainly can't play jazz as good as you, I'm kind of fascinated by how does he do it.

So it'd be kind of cool just to hear and watch you do it, improvising something you haven't done before. And if you want to use the poem, because you do have the words.

I do. So you'll get to hear the words of the poem. But like I said, every note I play will have never been played before or ever again, because I can't reenact it either.

I don't know what I did. What I'm basically doing is, I'm opening up some kind of a channel, and I'm allowing whatever comes to come through. So in other words, I have all kinds of studies.

I mean, I can play Dixieland songs, I can play this.

But I'm not judging it. You're not judging it. You're just going with the flow.

Because if you were to judge it, you would hesitate, you would lose the beat, lose the flow.

Any thought blocks the, you know what I mean? So in other words, yeah, what you're saying is what I can't do because it would block that flow. So I need the channel to be open.

I'm basically just trying to keep a channel open.

So that reminds me of when I do play the piano or the guitar and people who can tell there. Actually, they can't really tell, but they ask her there. Maybe they noticed one out of 10 mistakes.

The other nine times I've done, what is it called? The ghost note where I hit the note and I know it's not perfect. So I just keep moving, keep moving, keep moving the finger.

Well, that is a good point because the mistake I make on here might be actually the launching pad to something that I could have never done without the mistake.

So I would have needed the mistake. The mistake could be very important. It could be the best note I play for all I know.

So let's see what happens.

Okay. Can we speak it?

People are inspired by the creativity. is our greatest privilege. I hear jazz for peace.

So, was that a, I have a friend who plays piano, who's a music major.

So, he was trying to teach me this. I still can't grab my head around it. Was that a minor key?

Or was there a certain mode?

Like he mentioned, Yeah, so sometimes I was in a minor key. Sometimes I was in a major key. Sometimes I was in an atonal key.

So no key at all. Sometimes I was in a 12 tone type of a format.

Is there like a mode like?

Your friend could probably describe it. Like if you played a form, he might be able to say that's Lydian or whatever.

Probably. Yeah. Oh, I see.

So you remember changing keys minor, major, tonal, but.

Well, here's what happens. I know all that stuff. So all that stuff you're mentioning, I know all of it, but I don't know, like I'm letting just my hands osmosis dictate where I go in and out of.

You know what I mean? But like if I'm listening back to it, I could say, oh, well, that was a major. I went into a major there, just in a minor key here.

And then, oh, well, that's no key at all. That's this or that or that's a tone row or a whole tone scale. So in other words, I can describe it.

I can describe those things.

Did you study music in college as well or just some piano lessons or not after Santa Claus brought you the piano?

Well, like I said, I was taking lessons and then that teacher was a very good classical piano teacher.

When it came time to go to college, I really didn't know what I was doing, but I was like, this college in Boston called the New England Conservatory, I noticed that they had a jazz program and a classical program.

And they had a third stream program, which was a whole world music. So I was like, this place, I could go and study a lot of different types of music, I think.

Of course, when I got there, it's they really want people, they want to matriculate you through their program. So they don't want everybody just gather, gathering.

They want to make you, mold you.

There you go.

They want to make you just play it how it's written.

Well, not only that, but they want to, because I asked them, I said, listen, I came here just because what happened is I showed up, I checked piano performance and I showed up and I said, okay, this is piano performance, I'm going to play some Duke

Ellington for you. I'm going to play some Bach. I'm going to play. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

This is only classical. So I only played classical pieces for them and I did get accepted into the classical department, which was very difficult to do, but they did accept me in there.

And basically, once I was in there, the higher ups knew that I was trying to grab all the information. I was trying to grab the jazz and the blah, blah, blah. And then they said, well, you know, you're supposed to just do one thing.

And then when I asked them why, I found out it's not for me that I'm supposed to do it. It's for them. It's for their, you know, so they can matriculate you through their program.

And this sounds like a problem with society in general.

You can't be, it's like people on LinkedIn will say, if DaVinci was alive today, how impressive his resume would be. I'm like, no, it wouldn't. They're like, are you an engineer or a painter?

You paint the Mona Lisa. Are you a painter? He paints the Mona Lisa, right?

Are you an engineer, a painter or a pianist? You can't be all three.

Absolutely.

And actually all three are what make him who he is, make him be able to paint the Mona Lisa.

100 percent. But when he was alive, a lot of his discoveries, he wasn't able to tell anybody about because he knew that they were going to crush him. They're going to just crush him like a bug.

And that's where we're at now. So in other words, a lot of things are fractals. There's a human nature fractal that you see.

You see, you take the same person, it's like whack-a-mole. You know what I mean? We think, oh, we'll just eliminate, well, we'll get rid of him and the whole problem will go away.

No, no, somebody else will jump in. It's like what they do with drugs, right? They arrest a drug dealer.

There's another drug dealer shows up. You know what I mean?

So I think that I think the logic is back to your school. They will be a better classical pianist if they only do that, and not this and that other genre. And that's what I think they're missing is back to Da Vinci.

He couldn't have been as good as an engineer and a painter and a designer if he was only to study one genre.

Well, he proves them all wrong because Da Vinci absolutely excelled. Even in music, the man was a musician.

So and what he was doing, he was drawing from, you're right, his incredible abilities as a painter carried over when he studied something else. He was able to put those qualities in. So he was, he's the argument that, you know.

I mean, it could be that when he was painting, it was intuition and creativity that he brought into the engineering.

And that when he was painting, he was bringing the engineering into the painting in terms of the meticulousness of how his paintbrush moved or whatnot.

The cross boundaries, you know, crossing between using the different ways of how your brain works and...

Well, you know what it's like? It's like a salmon, right? So you can be a jack of all trades, master of none, but you could also be a person who masters a trade and carries that mastery into another thing.

And now you're doing both of them better because you're cross pollinating your knowledge. If you take something as amazing as a salmon, right?

But then if you look at, if you take that same thing and you bring it down to Vietnam and put it in a polluted pond, that's you can't even swim and it's in a farm, and then you feed it pellets from the Baltic Sea, you're going to have the opposite of

We're talking about genetically engineered foods.

Then they actually slice a strawberry gene into it. So, oh, wait, no, that's the strawberries. They slice the salmon gene into it, keep the strawberries from freezing.

Really? Yeah.

Well, people, when they think genetically engineered food, they think it's just accelerating mother nature's own, you know, the way mother nature would on its own, advance the species, when in fact, like for the strawberries, they're cutting a cold

water fish gene out of the fish, putting it into the strawberry to make the strawberry frost tolerant. Not quite the same thing, but back to your World Peace Tour. How did this come about? And how does it work really?

Because to me, on one hand, it sounds great, like it's fun. I get to tour the world, make people happy. But does it really make a difference with peace in the end?

Right.

So let me explain that to you. I mean, it's a fantastic question. And I do want to explain to you.

So here's what really happened. I'm stuck with this poem, and I don't know what to do with it. So eventually I figure out, eventually it reveals itself to you.

Okay, I'll recite it, you know? So now I'm stuck with a poem that I recited. Well, then they were like, well, why don't you, a promoter said, why don't you, are you going to maybe put that to music for our concert?

You know, they just asked it. So I'm like, hmm, that's kind of interesting. So then I put it to music.

So then the press comes out, DellaRatta starts out concert with Jazz for Peace. And now it's launched that way. What am I going to do?

What are we going to do? So I'm doing a few concerts around New York and calling them Jazz for Peace concerts because I don't know what to do again. And that seems like a reasonable thing.

And then I came to me, there's gotta be about 20 or 30 or 11 outstanding causes here in this 18 million populous New York City. It's gotta be a handful of outstanding causes.

I'll do a few concerts for them and maybe that'll enable me to wrap up this whole crazy thing that started out with a poem. Maybe this journey will come full cycle. If I just play a couple of concerts for outstanding causes.

Well, I start for a couple of outstanding causes, not realizing that there's over 80,000 registered nonprofits just in New York City, and millions around the world.

So now that opens up this crazy Pandora's box, where I now realize that actually every single problem known to mankind has dozens, if not hundreds of outstanding causes that claim they want to solve that problem.

But how do I find the ones that really want to solve it and support them? Because that would be the key to redefine peace and solve, actually solve our world's problems.

Because there are people that are passionate about what they do, and that's what makes them wealthy on the inside.

And usually they're tied to some kind of a cause that they believe in, that's going to make our society better, if we could only make them get them to achieve their goal.

And those are the people I realize if I support them, I'm doing something called I'm helping those who are helping others. And that can unlock who the hell knows. In fact, we haven't even tested the potential for that.

So by helping them though, how do you help them besides put on a concert?

Well, here's what the concert does.

And this is another thing that people don't realize. And I'm so glad that your listeners are going to hear this. Jazz for Peace does two things.

One, we give you a world class cultural event at no cost to you. So it's not just a you know, an off duty police officer who wants to sing Danny Boy, you know, to get your listeners.

So there's no cost to, you don't charge the organization.

Right if they follow our guidelines. So we in other words, we have, here's what, but that's only half of it. Because even if you got a world class cultural event, you were an outstanding cause, what would you do with it?

You've never put on an event before, you don't have any event experience.

So one, we offer you a world class cultural event at no cost to you, along with the other part, and that is because I've been my whole life in events and music, the guidance, the expertise, the advocacy to make that event a success.

So that's the combination.

And that's fundraising, I take it, because you're not charging the organization, but I assume you're charging the people that go there, or they donate or something like that.

Well, there's all kinds of ways that funds are raised. But yes, it is a fundraiser, but it's raising sustainable funds as well.

Because, for example, if you have a world-class cultural event, you know, the one thing you can do is bring your organization together.

So you can make your core supporters, strengthen them by what we do is we make them VIP guest of honor at the event.

And that enables them to expand their donor base by inviting their friends and their outreach, people that they play bridge with or go bowling with or whatever, or go biking with out on Zion and mountain biking.

Bring them to the event that they've never been able to. Now, they're bringing them to something to hopefully broaden their donor base and strengthen and get more supporters. So that's at the ground level.

We call that the roots of the empowerment tree because it's all based on the model of a tree. So now we've got the roots, which is our motto again, another motto we have, help us plant the roots so we can grow your empowerment tree.

So with the organization, we will work with them to plant the roots and that's basically creating what's needed for them to communicate this event to their core people and then get some of those core people to also, it's like a VIP list to then they

So now we keep it sustainable for you and your band.

Do you take some of the money that's donated just to pay yourself to?

Well, what we do is we offer value to donors and that gives us the most important word in philanthropy, and maybe in the entire world, probably the most important word is autonomy.

Because what you look out when you look out your, maybe not in Zion, but if I look out here, I see a captured civilization where everything is regulatory captured. Everything's captured by this, captured by that.

What you find in philanthropy is the guy trying to clean the air, let's say Clean Air Utah, okay? Then you look at their donors and you see their biggest donor is a smelting plant that they're supposed to...

I know, yeah, yeah. With breast cancer, it's the pesticide companies that are making the pesticides, chemical companies.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, okay? So you've got, this is ridiculous, this is absurd, right? So, but that's because they don't have autonomy and they're dependent now to please that which they're supposed to be addressing.

You gave me started down a bad rabbit hole in terms of green or global warming.

There's all these certifications like, you know, I am renewable, like 100% of my companies run on zero CO2 emissions. Like, no, it's not.

Absolutely no way. But see, here's the thing, we have solved that problem, but who wants to listen to it? Nobody wants you to hear my solutions.

You are surrounded by subliminal messages paid for by multi-billion dollar companies that don't want you to hear a word that I have to say, because you have to realize something, not only did I open up a Pandora's box when I started the Benefit

Give me an example of what you're speaking of.

Well, companies, organizations that we helped, we have a page where you can see them all.

This is the thing, we started to be called too good to be true because people would look at what we're doing and they're like, but this is not the world, this is not our world, we live in an evil world, it's evil, it's a horrible, this is too good to

be true, it's bad because it's too good to be true, it can't be true, it can't be true. We have a page called Jazz for Peace, you can even type it into your, I don't know if you can buy a computer, jazzforpeace.wordpress.com, our website is.org, but

this is another page, jazzforpeace.wordpress.com/about. And if you go to that page, there's no words from me, they're just words from all of the people who've been involved in our events and hundreds and hundreds of organizations, probably way more

Well, back to autonomy, we were speaking of how we have this conflict of interest, the sponsors to solve the problem are actually the ones.

Correct.

Femme responsibles are causing it.

How is what you're doing different? You mentioned the word autonomy.

Autonomy, let me tell you, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I want you to hear this.

So basically, here's what we do. We, you can't, everyone wants to be Jazz for Peace and everyone tries and fails, because they don't do what we do. They don't listen to us.

They try to do what we're doing. They try to steal our name. I'm going to have to put, so many people try to call themselves Jazz for Peace and desist, but they can't survive anyway, because here's the problem.

As soon as you get a donor, they're going to take your autonomy away and say, what would you do with that? You gave that money to some, you gave my money to some guy down in Zion who's trying to straighten out the air over there or whatever.

Well, who's that guy? I don't know who he is. No, no, no.

I'm giving you money. You need my cousin here. She has a breast cancer.

You're going to help them with my money, so you lose your autonomy. But what we do is we offer them value. So basically, let's say I'm doing something in Zion and we get these VIPs together.

So what we do is at no cost to you is when the VIPs pre-purchase their tickets, okay?

So we get the VIPs because they look at our track record and they're like, wow, I've been wanting to see this organization advance for ages and they can't get off the ground, but Jazz for Peace has a track record of getting people off the ground.

I'm going to support this event. So they pre-pay a VIP ticket and usually a pair of tickets because they're going to bring their significant other or whatever. And let's say you've got 100 people doing that because you might have 100 VIPs.

When I talk about these VIP lists, if you have, let's say, four VIP lists of 25 people each, you've got 100 people, right? Four VIP lists with 25 people on them. So that's 100 and if they're bringing a significant other, that's 200.

And now they're prepaying for their tickets, that's X amount of dollars depending on how much the tickets cost. So now we've raised for them thousands of dollars.

A portion of that will go to us so that we can ward off our supporters and instead of making them mad at us, educate them. No, no, no, you help this organization, you help that you're don't. We help.

See that organization, you've heard of them, you like them. But now look at who else you also help, this guy in Zion and check him out. And now they're like, oh, wow, instead of getting mad at us.

You follow me? So that they give a portion of that to us, which helps us keep our donors at bay and keep our autonomy.

The rest of it, they put in their account as funds already raised for them with a free event, and we haven't even started the fundraising.

So that's what you have a jazz, do you have a client or a booking coming up? Do you want to mention someplace?

Let me tell you what's basically happened. We've already proven this point. So we've done over 850 of these around the world.

We still have it, but we're not trying to prove our point anymore, okay? We've got the world saved. It's a done deal, okay?

And getting people like you, like your audience, to wake up is what we have to do now. We need to get people of your audience say, hey, wait a minute, this works. And maybe I want to do it in my community or whatever.

But also, I want to get people on board with all of the solutions that we've uncovered while we've been doing this all over the world. Now, I have just to work on.

What's like one or two of the solutions?

Lots of them. So here's one, okay? Let's take, well, there's just two or three.

If I could give you three, just three.

Three is good.

Three is good. Let's do three solutions for the world. Okay.

So here's one. You know we have a trickle. You hear that word trickle down?

You ever hear that word trickle down economy? Everyone's heard it, right? Does anything trickle down to you?

Yeah, there is I think Ronald Reagan years invented or Bush years.

And they still say it, right?

And when it comes out something like that, you're always like, am I not smart enough to understand this?

Because it doesn't quite make sense, which means it's not really authentic. It's not what it seems to be, the trickle down theory. The idea would be, oh, you'll get yours at the bottom.

As soon as we start at the top, you know, yeah, it'll get down to you. Sure will. And anywho, even if it does, why am I waiting?

Why should I wait for it to trickle? I must not be smart enough to figure it out. You're being hoodwinked into waiting your turn, which may never happen, so somebody else can follow their agenda.

Bingo.

So guess what? Guess who really gets it last? Philanthropy.

Because those people, most of these outstanding causes, especially if they're legitimate, they spend most of their time, which is why they partner with the enemy. Because the enemy will give them money right away to do their bidding.

You see what I mean? Now, they're completely captured, like you said. But the legitimate ones, they spend 364 days, how many days in a year?

365? 364 days trying to get the funds, and one day trying to save the world, practically. So my point is, you can have a trickle-up economy, trickle-up economy for philanthropy, just for philanthropy.

And you don't even have to destroy what we have. You can keep it in place, because those rich guys, they like it, and I don't want them destroying me because they think I'm destroying them. Keep it, keep it.

This is going to run concurrently, and it's going to balance it out. So all of the disasters that that's creating, this is going to heal.

It's a trickle-up. Solution one is to get rid of the trickle-down. An alternative to the trickle-down.

Start a trickle-up economy, or it's added, it's added for philanthropy.

And for example, Jazz for Peace has a cryptocurrency called trickle. And it's on the blockchain, and you can have rules so that you can't, you have to follow certain rules to get it.

And then once you get those funds, as you use those funds to get your mission to, you know, to do the great thing you say you're going to do, as you do that, the funds trickle up from you into the economy, rather than from, you know.

When you say trickle up, I'm trying to remember one of the big trickle-down ideas. Would it be, I'm trying to remember, would one of them be war?

Like, we've got to build new fighter planes or a new atomic bomb, and the money we put into research and development on that's going to trickle down into your local economy. Is that an example of a trickle-down?

Fabulous. Not only that, but it brings us to our next solution. I want to go from zero to one, zero to one.

We look at a world. I mean, this is how absurdly gaslighted every single one of us are. Okay, we are gaslighted.

We look at a world. I look out my window, and I look at a world that is funding war, as you just said, at 100 percent. And no one even argues the point.

No, it's only 98. No, no, no, they listen to me. I've said this a thousand times.

They don't argue. Imagine how absurd it is to fund war at 100 percent. To do that, you're funding peace at zero, which is why I would like people to look at the page I gave you, jazzforpeace.wordpress.com/about, to see what we've done at zero.

I'm saying we can probably eliminate all of this nonsense by funding peace at one percent.

So when you say fund peace, when you say fund war, I can picture a picture of a bomb being dropped or blown up. When you say fund peace, what's the product? What's peace look like?

Because to me, if we have peace, we really don't need to do anything except have love, have respect for each other. What does it look like that you need money for peace?

Well, here's Jazz for Peace. Our model is funding, creates funding for peace. When we help an outstanding cause, right?

That outstanding cause has a mission statement, which is why they get a tax donation in the first place. They're supposed to put their mission first. You know what it is?

It's achievement before profit. That's what makes you a philanthropic organization, supposedly, in the first place.

So their role, their goal, their passion, is to achieve a goal that makes somebody better off, whether it's our community, our society, our world, in a real way, makes humanity, makes life, makes things better off.

There's a million of these outstanding causes.

This would be like homeless shelter or a mental health institution or something to help people.

All of them we've helped. The Domestic Violence Unit, and over 850 causes we've already helped around the world.

In Utah, we've helped, we've done, actually, the founder of Snowbird found out I was skiing there, and she went 20 years down to Africa to help this tribe called the Samburu. And I did two concerts to help her and help the Samburu.

And she builds these water tanks so that they, you know, so these people don't die in the massive droughts out there and stuff like. So in other words, so many people, everyone has an innate passion within us.

Jazz for Peace is helping your passion, helping her build those water tanks.

It's almost like not a trickle up or trickle down. It's just what do we want to spend our time and our money on?

That is, that's not trickle up. But like I said, the philanthropic cryptocurrency is for trickle ups only. And that would run concurrently with the...

Well, I see, because then let's say, let's pick one.

You mentioned a few, building the water tanks. Okay. The trickle up is now I'm creating, the trickle down idea was I'm creating jobs.

The trickle up is I'm also creating jobs. Just for things that are helpful instead of blowing people up and making bombs and wars. I get it.

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. The other one's creating these engineer jobs, and then you find out what the engineer does, and he's in there making a bomb, you know?

Yeah. So what's the third one? Did we mention number three?

Well, okay.

So there's a few different ones of, well, there is another one. Okay. How about AI?

Let me tell you the solution for that.

Well, what's the problem?

Well, the problem is, the problem is about 500 yards from here. Where I'm standing right now, a CEO of a health care company was gunned down. Did you hear about that?

I did.

And I actually, I'm doing a solo episode on free health care. A guest on my show said, Dan, you should do this because we're chatting about it. Because I remember when the Affordable Health Care Act was passed instead of free health care.

And it was Hillary Clinton working on it for years. I was like, how can it take years to work on something free? And then immediately as soon as we pass this law, people are going to make all this money, be billionaires.

I'm like, how is that possible? How can people be making, not the government, but independent people be making money?

And of course, it's so convoluted with the insurance industry still being involved in people falling in the holes, not having health care or expensive health care.

So I am really, oh, to which I was, I don't have a TV over the holidays watching TV at families. I'm like, how is that on television? They were talking about health care and being denied coverage.

And because that's the story with the CEO being killed, right? Right.

But do you know what he was doing when they killed him?

No.

He was using AI to get to a hitherto rarefied air level of claim denial. He was using them.

Oh, well, okay. Before we get to attack AI too much, I had a guest on my show about who's a doctor in the hospital using AI. And people think AI is intelligent.

It's not. It's just an algorithm, right? It just does what you tell it, is if you were doing it on paper.

Right.

During the pandemic, when there were only so many ventilators and only so many respirators and stuff to treat people, they were starting to do AI, then like how can we do what we would do on paper?

Meaning this person's old anyhow, they're going to die anyhow. Maybe we should give the ventilator to the young person.

AI now can do the same thing, faster, simpler, easier to a million people in the database or 10 million people in America on the database if there's a pandemic. So there's a misunderstanding about AI as of some evil.

It's just doing what you would do on paper anyhow.

But I'm making it to a really good thing. My solution is very good for AI. Okay, very good.

So I wasn't even trying to tell you AI was bad when I started out. I was telling you what's the solution to it, because you can't use it for bad things like that guy was doing. He was using it for claim denial.

And then they were, he was about to...

But Rick, they were already doing claim denial on paper is what I'm saying. They were already doing this already is what I'm saying. The AI didn't introduce something new, just did it faster.

It wasn't new.

They were just doing it even, they were just make it going from there. Instead of making only 10 billion that quarter, they were going to make 41 billion that quarter. I think it was instead of 210, 241.

AI is just a supercomputer, a faster way of doing what you would do by hand or do on your computer using a less efficient program.

That's all AI is. It's not artificially intelligence, it's not intelligence, it's just faster.

Right. But here's the thing, okay?

What my idea or our idea is for AI is go ahead and do jobs that people are going eight hours a day to go do, and then they come home and they try their passion about something, they want to do something else, but they're so tired and the kids are

crying and they got to go to bed and they can't get anything done and their life just goes by. Instead of that, that money is being generated by the AI and technology.

When I say AI, I mean AI forward slash technology, being able to do things that we normally had people, how the human do.

So great, let's take that money that's being earned anyway, and instead of giving it all to one person, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg.

What all money is being generated? I lost just in a step there.

Listen, if you take a job away, let's say it's flipping hamburgers, and a machine flips those burgers, and you don't have to pay those wages to those people. Where's that money?

Well, that would be a robot, not AI.

That's why I'm saying AI technology. I'm not saying only AI. AI might assist with what robots are already doing, and that is taking jobs away so they can be done, you know, by other, by not, you know.

I don't think AI is going to take jobs away.

This is another myth. For example, an example is astronomy with the planets and stuff and using AI to search for new planets. So the astronomers would think, well, now my job's been taken away.

It's not because they need the astronomer with the experience to teach AI what to look for. And when they see something, they need the old school human astrologer, astronomist to go, that's a planet and that's a comet.

Because I know and I will teach AI the difference. And someday then, no, you won't need me to do that. But I'll be doing, I'll be teaching AI something else.

So my job is never eliminated. It's only I'm using AI as the same guy, but just to do my job better.

Well, that plays into my solution. That's part of my solution.

So my solution is, as this job goes away, but is still the funds, in other words, if you don't need a human, if a robot's flipping a burger, okay, then money is still being made, is my point.

The money, someone's buying that hamburger and paying, and you don't have to pay that worker because you've got a robot doing it.

Well, nobody wants to flip hamburgers anyhow, so.

Exactly. So why not take that money and give it to people who want to do something to solve one of our problems?

Well, then I lost you because I'm still paying the same amount on the hamburger or less, maybe less because now they don't need to pay a human to flip it. So theoretically, the burger-

Look at the prices of McDonald's and all these people. Nobody's lowering their-

When you say you're going to take the money and apply it to something else, how? That's the part I'm missing.

Yes. So we help people all the time. For example, we brought Israeli, Palestinian and American jazz musicians into the United Nations, and we solved that conflict.

A vote was-

Oh, you know what? Well, it's tangent because I did see that on your page someplace.

Another solution to a problem.

Well, I remember 20 years ago, there was a reporter on NPR.

She was fired, not because on the air she said this, but she said it in private, in a private conversation to an incoming reporter who asked her, what should I know about the Palestinian and Israel conflict?

And she said, they should get out of Palestine. She said, it's that simple. That's the solution.

She got fired for that. You couldn't talk about that. So how is it possible you got these groups together in the same place, and they could actually admit?

Because again, this is such a sensitive topic until last year, of course, the year before when it's amazing how things change all of a sudden. You're allowed to talk about it. How are you allowed to talk about it then?

Well, again, I back everything.

Like I said, you heard me back up what I say with music. You could dislike the music, but this is music that I'm making.

I back up that one about, you can hear our people call our, you know, our grant recipients talk about how they benefited from working with Jazz for Peace, not us, but them. And that's why I do it, because they tell me they advance.

Now, for this, it's jazzforpeace.org/un. And if you go to that page, you will hear Palestinian and Israeli musicians talking about how I united them at the United Nations. And you'll hear world leaders who weighed in on it.

And you'll have all kinds of information to see exactly what we're talking about. I did that, and here's the problem. Nobody listens.

So I had the solution in place right there. And nobody wanted to.

What was the solution?

The solution is, you've got, what I did was just recently, I did a vote. So here's what happened. This book was tied up.

Now we're talking about the solution to the conflict, right?

So this is the conflict.

Let me tell it to you. So I had this book coming out at Amazon. And in the book, I was talking about how AI, by the way, censors people on these social media things.

You can use AI good and you can use AI bad. I have a solution for it.

Again, where AI is part of technology that generates income, that instead of all going to Jeff Bezos, can go to people who don't have to do that job and have want to solve one of these zillions of problems in the world.

And Jazz for Peace can work with them so that we can help them with sponsors and publicity and awareness of the empowerment tree branches. But this book was held up over there at Amazon. I don't know why.

It was blocked.

Are we speaking still about the solution to the palace?

Solution to the palace city. So now, while we're doing that, okay, all of a sudden, I was being in the book, I was documented how we're shadow banned. Peace is being shadow banned.

Peace is being censored. That's what I was saying in this book, which if you get the book, you'll see it. Peace was being censored and I was documented proof.

So it was locked up in there. And guess what happened? It stopped being censored.

And I knew people would look at what I had to say if it wasn't being censored. And guess what? Hundreds of thousands of people on LinkedIn were looking at my posts and the posts of Jazz for Peace.

And I said, this is crazy. If it gets up to a million in one week, a million impressions on Jazz for Peace posts for the week, I'm going to document it.

So sure enough, I get something from LinkedIn that says, your impressions this week went up 850,000 billion percent. And here is the total for the week, one million, one blah, blah, blah. So I documented that.

And then they have a vote on LinkedIn. Because a lot of our stuff was related to the Middle East. We have a vote on LinkedIn.

I said, how long can you do a vote? You can have a vote for two weeks. Wow.

There's a million people looking at Jazz for Peace. And I can put up a vote for two weeks.

And what are they voting for?

They voted for the Palestinian resolution. And see, here's another link I'm going to give you.

What was the resolution?

The resolution was you can take the funds, jazzforpeace.org, by the way, forward slash conflict resolution Q&A, with an, not an A and D, but an and symbol Q and symbol A dot.

They're voting for the resolution. And what does the resolution say?

Three choices. One is escalate, which is what they did. Okay.

From I'm already sorry, Rick.

I thought is this, it's the wording, the nomenclature. To me, a resolution, I thought that was going to be the solution. Instead, it's options.

Jazz for Peace is the solution.

So that's one of the choices. Jazz for Peace was one. And to vote for Jazz for Peace, you've got to go to that link and look at what our solution is.

By the way, it takes money that's all-

To the conflict. The solution to the conflict.

Solution to the conflict is to take money that's already allotted for war. They've already plotted it. You hear them on the news, I'm giving X amount of billion.

Well, you just allotted 10-

Well, the United States historically has given Israel, I don't know, you tell me how many billions of dollars? Correct. Given Israel, the United States gave Israel, probably still gives Israel money to fight the Palestinians.

You are correct.

Now, what I did was I asked for the Palestinians and the Israelis to vote together. Because they're supposed to be Israel against Palestine, is it not? You said it's Israel against-

Well, my understanding of it is the Israel, basically, if you're in Palestine, you come home and Israel has bulldozed your house because they want you out.

Right. So imagine you come home, imagine wherever you are in America listening to this, no matter how nice your neighborhood, how nice a home you have, you come home and it has been bulldozed.

Right.

I would be a little upset and like, you know what? Yeah, what else have I got to do? No, I can't go to school.

I'm a young kid. Give me a gun. I'll go fight.

To me, that was part of the whole problem to begin with. It was never a straight story explained that way. It makes it sound like it's some religious conflict.

But here's the problem.

Israel and Palestine voted for our solution.

Which is what?

They're on the same team.

Okay. What is the solution?

Our solution is to take the funds already allotted for war, and those funds are get doled out to outstanding causes.

Because as I told you earlier in this podcast, I have come to the conclusion that the outstanding causes are the people who need to be funded. Because they're passionate.

They're more passionate about- How does that prevent the bulldozer from bulldozing the house? Because that's not-

There's no money to pay the bulldozer.

That's one reason. There's no money to pay the bulldozer. You just took all the money and we're redirecting it.

We're redirecting the funds.

Well, not technically, because that wasn't the Palestinian army that did that. I'm sorry. That wasn't Israeli fighting.

That was a bulldozer. So I don't see how it's still going to prevent people from doing bad things that are not within the boundaries of the military.

The military doesn't have any money if you redirect their funds.

Oh, sorry, saying don't have any military budget.

Not for that.

Then how do you protect yourself for legitimate, when you legitimately need to defend yourself if you don't fund the military?

They're already funded. These are extra funds. These are added funds.

They're already funded to protect themselves. They're protecting themselves just fine.

Okay.

So now these are the added funds that are added to their budget to go and do these things. These are additional funds that are lacking. We're going to redirect them to outstanding causes.

Here's the bottom line. Even if I thought it was crazy and you thought it was crazy, the Israeli people looked at our proposal and the Palestinians looked at our proposal.

23 pages of frequently asked questions asked by Israelis and asked by Palestinians. And if you go to that link and look at it yourself and you come up with a question, you can ask me. But here's the problem.

So they passed a resolution, but of course, the government didn't.

96% voted in favor of Jazz for Peace.

4% voted to continue as is. Zero voted to escalate the violence. So now those are the three choices.

And guess what happened since that vote has taken place? The 0% is what happened.

Well, actually, technically, your three choices weren't apples to apples, because to continue the violence is like, it's not like your first choice wasn't to stop the violence. It was to fund Jazz for Peace. It's not apples to apples.

The first choice was to redirect the funding, so that there would...

The first choice was to cease fire. It was a cease fire with funds to be redirected to address all of the problems that you already caused with all of this violence. So that was the first choice.

Well, then it's a double, then it's a double, it's a double whatever you would call it.

What I mean is, the three choices weren't do nothing, fight more or quit fighting. It wasn't that simple.

No, nothing is that simple.

You're compounding what you're voting on, making it more complex on what you're voting on. You're voting on two things at the same time, not one.

Well, two things are pretty simple. Escalate, which there, you know, you've heard Israel say we need to do more, we need to bomb more, we need to bomb more. Not net-to-ne-anto, you hear them saying escalate.

That's one choice. That's pretty simple. Escalate.

You could have voted for escalate if you wanted. You could have voted escalate the war. You could have voted it.

Second, the other choice was continue just the way things are. The way it's going is just fine. Let's just keep going and everything will be fine.

Chosen that. So those are two easy choices. The third choice, you had to click on a link and read our proposal and read the answers to 23 pages of frequently asked questions to make sure your question was answered on there.

And then if you felt that your question was answered and that this is the best option, you could vote for that.

And which one was that?

That was Jazz for Peace.

Well, that's what I mean. The three choices were apples to apples. The first one was ceasefire.

But the first one was escalate. Correct. And the third one is vote Jazz for Peace.

It's not apples to apples.

We're offering a ceasefire. What we are proposing is a ceasefire.

Oh, OK. Yeah, I like that one.

Well, that's why I'm giving you that link, because I want you to go for it.

I mean, you put the ceasefire in the same sentence as donate money to other causes is what I'm saying.

No, no, no, we don't have to donate. No, there's no donating. The money's already there.

It's already been allotted.

But you don't need any money to ceasefire.

No, and now you have a whole bunch of money that you're going to be using on bombs.

What I'm saying, Rick, is money doesn't need to be in the equation at all. You simply ceasefire.

Well, not true. And I'll tell you why. You've got people that are traumatized.

Do you know how much PTSD is going on over there? Do you know that the mental...

Let's break it down step by step, though. To end the conflict, it's a simply ceasefire. It's that simple.

That's for sure.

You got to do that right away on our proposal. But I also... I also want to offer treatment.

Yes, that can...

But you don't have to have treatment in the same proposal as a ceasefire.

You don't have to. But ours was a ceasefire. So that's a given.

You're going to ceasefire. And then we had... Because a lot of people said, so you're going to ceasefire.

What's going to happen to all these people that are mentally ill because of this?

Well, I'll tell you one thing. They'll be better off than if you don't ceasefire. That's a given.

They will.

But how about if we not only ceasefire, but we also offer treatment for them? How about that? How about we...

I agree.

That's a great idea. What I mean is often when people are negotiating, the reason they get stuck is then when you say ceasefire was simple. But now, because you know, Rick, you're trying to avoid conflicts of interest.

What if the people, when you say in the same vote, we're going to put, we have to have mental health care. Then they get stuck on debating who's going to...

True. But not here. No one got stuck.

Nobody got stuck. People said, great. In other words, they voted even higher percentage.

The vote was 96 percent. It's the highest. There's never been a war where 96 percent of the people didn't want a war.

It's unheard of. It's absurd. You know what it is?

It is an oxymoron without any oxy.

Like I say, to me, for years, 10, 15 years, I was like, I would read the newspaper because this is in the 90s. I'm growing up a kid in college. I can't understand this conflict.

They make it sound like it's this big religious war. They can't be settled. Until I heard the story of that reporter, NPR, that got fired just for in the back office, talking to someone off camera.

It's as simple as get, tell Israel to get out of Palestine. I'm like, oh, it's that simple. And there's nothing else to it.

So let me ask you, Rick, because I don't watch the news, where are we at in this conflict? Is it over with?

Not even it's, you know, it's not, it's not going to be over until my next possible famous quote. We know I have a famous quote, the one you mentioned, right?

Well, I like this other one on love is the final solution. The final solution is love.

The final solution is love is the name of our podcast. And that's a great, I don't want to call it a quote, but the final solution is love.

That is why we have our podcasts, because ultimately the final solution, because there is this, well, there's a final solution. You know, the Nazis had a final solution. Sorry, buddy.

The final solution is love. So that's our name for our podcast. But I don't have my quote memorized.

I'm going to try to say to you, basically, this is what this is the quote of the day for me. I don't know if anyone will agree with me. But this is.

There are times when the will of the people, 96% now, the time when the will of the people should be considered for two reasons. One, governments are not always right. And the will of the people is not always wrong.

So to not consider the will of the people on this vote is like saying, well, we can't consider it because you're always wrong. Well, that's bullshit. You know what I mean?

The will of the people is not always wrong. And you guys are not always right.

Well, let's I agree with you. I have that quote on my screen. I was going to ask you about it.

Oh, but but what comes to mind, Rick, is why are we even talking about this? Because the will of the people is the will of the people. What do we mean by wrong or right?

Is what I'm asking you, Rick.

The will of the people is right in this case because what they want is it would resolve this issue. What the will of the people voted for 96% on our vote would resolve this issue satisfactorily to 96% of everybody in the world.

What I mean is this, I'm trying to think of a way to express this. When is, or let me ask you, Rick. When is a government wrong?

And more importantly, why would the government do something wrong?

Well, if I was going to give you one word, it would be oligarchy. Because, see, we claim to be in a society and a government and a system and a Declaration of Independence.

Have you ever read that?

It's supposed to be, we're supposed to be public servants. These politicians are supposed to be public servants, and we're supposed to be doing things for the greater good. Okay?

But that's been hijacked, as we talked about, as you talked about with the nonprofits, you know. Once they found out that they can just go up to the people that they're against.

Thank you for explaining it, because when it says simply right or wrong, it almost makes it sound like I got the math test wrong. I made a multiplication error. It's not that kind of right or wrong.

Correct.

It's say, it's an infestation of these conflicts interest, as you're expressing.

Thank you.

Well, and it's oligarchy. It's a bunch of people taking over us and saying, we don't care what your Constitution says. This is what we're in now.

We're in an oligarchy. We're in something that benefits us at your expense. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But so your full quote is, the will of the people should sometimes be considered.

Yes.

I think the will of the people should always be considered.

I agree with you. But my point is, what I'm trying to do is get them to say, in this instance, let's look at the will of the people. I'm just trying to get this one time.

But you're right. Ultimately, I'm not trying to, how can I say? This is a means to an end.

I understand your intention.

I understand the intention.

Of course, always. But see, you have to realize, the will of the people is not always right either. I mean, what was it in the Bible, right?

That guy's Julius Caesar. He asked, who should we crucify? Barabbas or Jesus?

And those crazy idiots scream this Barabbas guy who had a freaking, he had a-

Well, yeah, except-

Three miles long.

Except that you take it out of context a little bit, just like everything.

Because I'm sure there's more to the story, meaning that these people had already been influenced by the old Glearics or whoever it be, as in Jesus is a bad guy and this guy's your hero. It wasn't as if this is the problem with most of it.

People believe what they read and see, and the people putting what they read and see on paper in the news are influencing them from this conflict interest to begin with. You're being played. You're right.

Let me just say, looking at the deeper, going deeper into it as you're doing is the same result.

They still made the wrong choice.

And the choice was?

Save Barabbas, crucify Jesus.

Why crucify anybody?

Absolutely. It was a wrong choice.

Why save anybody? Why is this a question?

Well, the right, because it's only a question because Julius Caesar asked them. Now, you're right. Ultimately, they should say, crucify nobody.

Well, yeah, backing up a step, this presupposes we need a leader to tell us to choose.

Why do we have a leader telling us to choose, kill one person or the other? Why are we having to make this choice?

In a monarchy, we do have a leader, but the leader is, all he's doing is trying to facilitate the common good. In other words, a conduit. He's supposed to be a conduit.

Tell me the rest of the story, Rick.

I am a Christian. I've read the Bible, but because I'm trying to understand, why do we even have to make a choice here between kill one person or the other in this story?

Well, you shouldn't have to make a choice at all. But to make my point to you, the public is not always right.

Oh, right. OK, this is a situation where the public should have said, why should that they should have asked, why do we have to choose? And you are, you're God Julius Caesar.

Why are you making us choose?

Absolutely. But they didn't, did they?

No, they didn't. So it's more than the right or wrong. It's they're not thinking outside the box.

They're not asking themselves why.

Hence my, hence my quote. My quote is, sometimes they're right, so we shouldn't be not listening to them at all. See, for this...

See, what I'm getting at, Rick, is I don't think it would have been the right thing to do to kill the other guy instead of Jesus either, is my point.

You're 100% right.

There's no right answer.

There's no right answer to this or wrong. There's no right or wrong answer to this.

There's no right or wrong answer, but he asked them for a choice, and they chose the any either any choice they made would have been wrong, is what you're saying.

Yes. And I'm sure Jesus would have agreed. I heard Jesus would have agreed.

Right.

I agree with you on that. I agree with you 100%. But nevertheless, my quote is what my my quote is basically for the purpose of getting whoever is escalating this war and wanting this war.

See, there's two sides of people. I've dealt with Palestine.

I understand what you mean. Now, it's like if everyone's saying, let's go to war then, and it's not good to go to war. The people are wrong.

It's not the right.

The people are not always right. So my point is governments are not always right. The people are not always right.

And that's why we should consider both. And that's why we should consider the possibility.

Except that the people have already been influenced by whoever. So it's like the people don't really have a choice. They're being mind, they're being hypnotized.

They're being mind controlled.

Well, we brought that up. I've been brought, we're all gaslighted. Yeah.

So it's not even fair.

It's not even a fair.

It's really crazy. But the vote was taken. 96% was for this.

So you've got a situation right now where you've got a few people wanting to do something that is against the will of 96% of the people. And if 96% of the people were considered, give them the consideration. You know what?

They darn well deserve consideration. I don't care how you slice it. The people deserve to be considered here.

And what they've chosen deserves consideration, especially since it's so over.

Sounds like the Vietnam War.

Fighting.

Where all the people in America wanted to stop and the president was, nope, not going to.

How about Julian Assange?

Yeah.

I did over 200 performances for Julian Assange, by the way.

Who is that?

Who's Julian Assange?

Yeah.

Julian Assange is why we're having this problem. Because in 2022, I was in Nigeria and I was at a concert. And I spoke before I played and I told the people at this concert, I said, right now you've got a journalist being held.

He was the founder of WikiLeaks, by the way.

So he is a journalist? This is who you're speaking of? He's a journalist?

Julian Assange, actually, the reason he was indicted was because people would send him information.

And if he did his fact checking and found it to be credible, he would publish it on a site called WikiLeaks, which was not under the control of the government and the, you know what I mean?

So in other words, he could publish things that CNN could not, you follow me, or ABC or CNBC. So he's putting these things out.

One of the things he put out was a filming of American pilots bombing the daylights out of Iraqi civilians, unarmed Iraqi civilians, a family, they got their little kids, boom, blown up, and it embarrassed the hell out of, you know, they wanted him

That reminds me of when I was young, that's when I was in college, first direct war.

And it was the first time on television, you could actually see, it was like they were showing you live videos of these smart rockets. What do they call them? The smart bombs, smart bombs?

Guided missiles. And they're showing you the video of it being guided right on target. And you're like, wow, this is really cool.

And yet, in reality, what was going on is what you're speaking of, Rick. They were bombing civilians and they had no idea who they were bombing.

Right. So this is what, here's the thing. They arrest this guy, Julian Assange, for basically doing what is supposed to be protected, and that is journalism.

Journalism is supposed to be protected. They didn't have him on like, you doctored the footage, you made it. No, they weren't saying that.

They weren't saying that. They had nothing on him except that he committed. He committed journalism is what he committed.

Journalism. So I got up and there's a film of me doing this. If you type Jazz for Peace Nigeria in YouTube, you should get to this.

And I basically say, I'm doing all of these concerts, I'm doing all of these pieces called Free JA. Again, another free improvisation doing my six-year-old imitation, free improvisation, and I would call it Free JA for Free Julian Assange.

Oh, cool. Nice.

I took the Zs off of Jazz because Jazz is a misspelled word. We think it's J-A-Z-Z. It's a Haitian word, J-A-S-S.

Comes from Haiti. And I found that out when I went to Haiti to play for a Haiti scholarship fund to help those kids with scholarships. And a big sign said, Welcome Jazz for Peace, J-A-S-S.

Is it because Americans couldn't pronounce it properly the way it was spelled?

It's because when I got to Haiti, I noticed one thing that no one's ever noticed before, and that is Haiti looks like Ghana.

Looks exactly like, I mean, I thought it was having a flashback of a LSD trip or something. I'm like, this place looks like Ghana. Do you guys know that?

We didn't know that. What are you talking about? And then the whole time I was there, I was on the news telling, you know your country, I hate to tell you that, because I was just in Ghana.

I had done a concert in Ghana and I went over to Haiti and it looks exactly the same way. Finally, someone said, Rick, we found out why nobody knows that our country looks like Ghana. I said, what is it?

He said, because nobody's ever been to both Haiti and Ghana. No one's ever been. Most people never even been to Haiti or Ghana, but both forget it.

You know, they're not tourist destinations. You know what I mean? You go to the Dominican Republic if you want to go to that region for a vacation.

You don't go to Haiti. So the point is, it's their word. It's a creole word.

So they would come from the slave boats on Ghana to Haiti.

Back to your journalist. What happened?

Well, here's what happened. So I started playing these pieces to Free Julian Assange called Free JA. And I was telling people when I did have a live concert, listen, this is going to cause a suppression of journalism.

They're going to arrest journalists. They're going to kill journalists. We have to put a stop right here and get Julian Assange out.

And eventually they did release Julian Assange.

Where was he being held? Which government?

Well, he was first in an embassy, the Ecuadorian embassy, because they were trying to extradite him. And Ecuador was protecting him.

But then somebody gave again some $10 billion donation or $10 million donation to the Ecuadorian embassy so that they would not. And then he ended up in the UK or something in London.

And then the United States was trying to extradite him to put him on trial.

It was the United States that wanted him to be on trial.

But guess what? To your point, who in the United States wanted him? Nobody.

Like you said with the Vietnam War. There's nobody I could. I kept reading in articles, the United States is demanding extradition.

I'm in the United States. And it's a country for the people, by the people of-

So more or less, somebody in the United States who didn't like the fact that this was painting the war in a bad light for America. Somebody in the government wanted him out.

But we can't, we don't know who exactly because the president's not going to take responsibility. But somebody in that office somewhere in that command chain.

But don't say United States because there's nobody here that wants him out. In other words, what United States are you talking about? And this is the problem with Israel and Palestine.

The people don't want this, according to our vote.

So it's always ironic. You know, we have this patriotism on one hand, you know, wave the flag.

And yet, who's the government, our government, somebody, a general, a president, does something that I go, you know what, that's not, that's in conflict of my beliefs as a citizen of this country.

And speaks for the whole country, though, and says all of us.

Yeah, and yet, they're speaking for the whole country, yeah.

The whole country, all the time. But see, I've got that solved. And one percent, one percent funding for a little bit.

Now listen, everyone always thinks I'm crazy. They thought I was crazy when I brought Palestinian Israelis into United Nations. And then 20 years after I failed at getting them to listen to me then, now they think I was, you know what I mean?

So, you know, unfortunately, there's gonna be this delay and that's the way it goes. But if you give me, if you look at that page at what we've done at zero, and you give our world 1% funding for world peace, take funding for war down from 100 to 99.

Well, the trouble though, the 99%. The thing, I've mentioned this already, it's easy to paint the picture of supporting war. We're gonna make bombs or drones that draw bombs.

How do you do the same for peace?

How do you make the case to support it?

Well, you can make war, you can make guns. How do you make peace?

We're redefining peace. So under your definition of peace, I understand what you're saying.

But see, when you help an outstanding cause that is benefiting society, you are actually making peace because you're solving a problem today and you are slowing down a problem of tomorrow that's going to be here if you don't solve this problem.

So you are...

I think I can answer my own question if you help me out. Give me an example of why we would be going to war. Will we use the Iraq War?

Can you give me an example of... Give me an example, you've been around the block on this. These conflicts or war, why we were at war?

Well, first of all, the Iraqi thing, they gave you an excuse, right?

Remember they said weapons of mass destruction?

Yeah.

Okay.

I know that was a lie.

Of course.

Yeah. Of course.

But that's what they said. They give you a reason. But see, when you dig deeper into it, then you realize it's not a reason.

It's just something to, it's just what we're shoveling at you so we can...

What was the real reason? What was the real reason?

The real reason? I mean, I, you know, I can't, I'm not, you know, I can't go into all. I mean, I don't know all the reasons.

You know, I don't know all the reasons.

I'm going to make one up, even though...

But I mean, there are some people who say oil, right? There are some...

That's why I was going with this. But for the next moment or two, what I say is not absolute. I'm making this up just to use an example to go with your idea of how do we pay for peace.

Let's say it was oil. And we need to go for war, war hypothetically. We're going to blame it on mass destruction because I can't, as the president, be honest with you people and tell you, we're going to be out of oil in America in a week.

You would panic. So I've got to make up weapons for mass destruction to get us over there, to get the oil, because if we don't, we're screwed. And I can't tell you the real reason because you'll panic.

So by paying for peace, paying for peace would be, I'm going to create some other source of energy in America. I don't want to open the Antarctic up for drilling.

I don't know where to go with this, but I'm going to pay to develop some alternative energy source. That would be paying for peace, right?

Well, I don't know. I mean, look, like I said, there's a good salmon and a bad salmon, okay? So the good salmon and the bad, there's a farm-raised salmon.

That's not great. You know what I mean? There's the natural salmon.

That's an incredible source. So there's a way you can spin anything.

I mean, with green energy, as you brought up earlier, you can make something up and try to get a whole bunch of funding, and then it's a big dog and pony show, but you got a hundred million dollar contract to do something.

I mean, if I don't want to go to war, I need to solve the problem. What I'm getting at, Rick, is what is the real problem we're trying to solve, and then let's put our money towards solving it, not an alternative solution.

That's a great premise, but you have to look at colonialism. We're coming out of a colonialist mentality, okay? And what was the problem with colonialism?

There wasn't really a problem.

What's colonialism?

Colonialism is Christopher Columbus. They send those, the Vikings, these ships go out and they show up on these shores and they just annihilate everybody. They kill the indigenous people, they rape and they pillage all of the natural resources.

Haiti is an example of colonialism. They pillage it. That country is loaded with natural resources.

They should be one of the richest places in the world. So, what was the reason? Actually, there's no reason.

And see, what they do is they'll create a reason. They'll bomb themselves if you don't play along. If you're too peaceful and you just don't play along, they try to get their people to hate you, by the way, so they can attack you.

Which people?

Well, let's take the Mongolian Empire.

Have you ever heard of that guy? What's that guy that's... Genghis Khan.

You know what I'm talking about? All right, Genghis Khan. He...

I mean, they've done... You know, they've looked into this. And basically, he used to get the people to hate those other people before he attacked them.

They weren't doing anything, but he... Listen, you could be doing something wrong.

He wanted their resources. He wanted more land or more power.

Out in the Midwest, they were... You know, they moved them to... I've done stuff for Indian reservations, by the way.

I've done numerous concerts for them. They moved them to a reservation, and then they find out there's oil on the reservation.

Oh, yeah, they did it with the coal and Flagstaff in Northern Arizona for years and years and years, forever, until recently.

Yeah, so there doesn't have to be a reason. It's just stealing. Stealing, they want to steal your...

Yeah, they put the Hopis in the Navajos.

There were two tribes, and then they discovered... And Rick, I think they knew this when they put them there. I think they had this story made up long before it happened.

Like, someday we're going to actually want to get the coal here. And when that happens, we're going to tell them that, oh, you know what, actually, that tribe, you don't belong here, you belong there, and that tribe belongs here.

So they put the tribes at war so that they can go, hey, we'll support you in the war if you let us take the coal. And they did that up until a couple of years ago.

Even all this time when the Indians are supposed to be protected and we feel bad for them, it was similar to the Palestinian-Israeli thing.

The government would show up and bulldoze the, I think it was the Hopis, they were trying to get off the Navajo land or vice versa.

Whichever tribe it was, they would bulldoze their houses, get them off the land like you don't belong here because they want the coal. It still happened in America.

You don't belong to the coal there and we want to steal it. So that's why you don't belong.

Still going on in America.

Yeah. So in other words, again, it's a fractal. You know what?

It's the injustice fractal. It's injustice. What we need to promote is we need to come together as a species and put our innate values that we're born with and give them credence and give them quack.

Because what happens is these people that commit all these injustices, how happy are they? They're depraved.

Speaking of this problem in particular, this travesty, because I picked up a Navajo hitchhiker one time. He was quite angry at me because I'm a white guy.

So it was the Navajos come to think of it that we're getting their houses bulldozed in there and told to leave.

The trickle down problem with this, Rick, is we have this city called Phoenix, Arizona and Tucson, Arizona, that's getting water and power from this coal. We can't cut off developing Phoenix and Tucson, cut their water and power.

How are we going to sustain them? It's a moral dilemma because you don't want to.

You're addicted to your immorality.

Well, you got, I mean, who wants to tell Phoenix and Tucson, sorry, we got to cut back our water, our power, our development, when it's only a few Indians that nobody can see unless they drive 100 miles onto the reservation, what's happening and

you're not allowed to. And there's no cameras out there. And who would believe you if we told you this was got me started out of my path because I was speaking to some Indians one time, you know, come to think of it too, was in music.

It was in it was a Navajo concert at the college. And they had their flyer on there about this situation. And I looked at it and I go, how about that Barry Goldwater?

Didn't he help you guys out back with that? They turned their backs on me quite literally. They turned their toes around.

They weren't even going to speak to me. I'm like, whoa, something's happening here. That's how I'm like, Daniel, you have to find out the truth.

Because who would believe? Nobody would think that something of this magnitude of a travesty could be happening to the Indians. And if they did, the moral compass would go, well, what's the solution?

Because we can't slow down Phoenix and Tucson. So let's just not deal with that moral issue, and let's just out of sight, out of mind, yeah.

By the way, I played a concert once in Page, Arizona, and it was on a natural rock formation stage. Phenomenal place, lifts all around, and I had Navajo Indian opening acts. And it was an amazing thing if you ever get out to Page, Arizona.

Yeah, I actually went for a hike there by the dam the other day.

It's, yeah, it's if you just.

It's amazing.

People drive through the whole time of traffic, and all you got to do is get off a dirt road someplace, and it's a beautiful place.

Yeah. But see, now here's just one. So what happens is, see, one step this way leads to another, another leads to another, but one step in the right direction actually leads to another step in the right direction.

So that's what I'm saying. A lot of times we can't see the solution to our problems because they're four steps away in the right direction. But if we make those two steps or those three steps, all of a sudden that becomes visible.

So one of my point is Jazz for Peace has created situations where you can take a step in the right direction and trusting the process, you'd be surprised at what it leads to.

As I'm saying, I'm telling you outrageous solutions to problems that were leaded by these right steps, you know?

Now, what you brought up though, there's a situation called global dimming where we put so much pollution into the sky that it's actually dimming the sun from reaching us and therefore we don't know the extent of what the sun, you know, would do in

terms of warming unless we allowed, we stopped that and the pollutants fell out of the sky. So we're in, again, it's similar to Tucson. We are addicted to our own pollution, but we won't tell anybody.

Well, the ironic thing about what is a green, the whole green renewable energy, with people's computers and cell phones and technology and blah, blah, blah, we are all using more, not less power these days.

Way more power.

More.

It's like, not only are we not reducing the power and the pollution, we are accelerating and we have no way to slow it down because every moment you're sending a text or a phone call or an email, they're collecting the data some places, the data

warehouse storing it, using more power. It's a conundrum.

It's a conundrum and we do not have solutions to it.

But you know, Rick, one thing, when you mentioned Page and I can picture you performing there and as I was reminded of during our conversation how for me, it started this whole idea of question everything with the Indians at their concert.

It's wonderful. This thing that you do with the music because, you know, if nothing else, for me anyhow, it changed my life.

Being at a concert where I picked up a brochure, a piece of paper, not go to this website, just, you know, 11 inch by whatever it is, a normal sheet of paper with the facts on it and like, hmm, made me think.

And it was all because of music, a concert.

There is historical precedent that the music and the arts and the arts and culture and the art form of jazz in particular, the ability to affect people in profoundly positive ways.

And this is an example where you were there and maybe the music itself didn't affect you, but something just because of that step in the right direction, that pamphlet fell into your hands.

It brought people out, I think, you know, it was something to do. It brought me out. And they didn't force it down my throat too, which was something.

No one got up with the megaphone and reached at me and told me, you know, this is how it is. They offered the information and because they weren't pushy, I considered it.

And then instead of them getting in an argument with me and trying to convince me when I was like, you know, I'm not so sure about that. They're like, well, we're not gonna, you know, you go figure it out on your own.

It encouraged me to actually go consider it and led me down the path to ask more questions about it. And wow, who would have known? So is there anything else you wanna talk about that we haven't?

Well, the other thing I wanna say is that we also have, you know, with all these solutions, just because you have a solution doesn't mean anyone's gonna ever enact it.

But we also have a educational series and you can go to a video and see us in a school where they bust a thousand kids in and the kids go crazy over it. And it obviously was a wonderful thing that day. But, you know, it should be done all the time.

Kids should be exposed to, you know, I would go into schools, every school, if they would do it. But, you know, it just it happens. It was an amazing thing.

You can look at it and see for your own eyes. But again, actually doing it just because you have the answer doesn't mean it ever gets enacted. And that's a great thing for kids.

We also have an instrument donation program that enables, you know, underprivileged youth or adults to really have a weapon that's going to do some good.

And that is a musical instrument that you can connect with, find something for your own mental health, and then possibly even benefit.

Like guitars, not guns, pianos, not guns.

We did, there was an organization in Chicago, I'm looking at the posters all over here, and it was Up With Instruments, Down With Guns, was their, you know, that was the name of their organization.

But yeah, I mean, a musical instrument is no one, you know, music has never let anybody down, has it?

What do you, let anybody down? Well, you know, actually, what comes to mind, there's some dark music, you know, Marilyn Manson, you know, I like rap, but there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of dark music.

Yeah, but nobody's forcing you to listen to it. When you listen to the music that you are inspired to, does it ever let you down? When you sit down at a musical instrument, does the guitar let you down?

I mean, I've never been letting down by, I've never been let down by this piano. It's never let me down. Now, I can't say that for almost everything else.

I mean, there's very few things you can say that about.

Well, you know, I can say that I have been let down by the piano. I was actually, I played piano in church. Okay.

And I was let down by this idea that John Lennon and Paul McCartney and the greats, Mozart, whoever, just sit down and start playing a song. An original song.

Okay.

And for, I was quite frustrated, I'd sit down at the piano and not be able to have a song come out. So to answer your question, frustrating moment, it was years before I realized that there's a process, and somebody taught it to me.

Thank God, finally, I found the right person. Like, Dan, I'll teach you how to write a song. I'm like, how?

And they broke it down. It's just like a story they told me. And you wrote a first verse, where are you?

What are you thinking?

And you write a second verse, what are you going to do next to solve your problem or talk to your girlfriend, call your wife, tell her you love you, whatever, to try to solve this problem that we opened with in the beginning, which was you broke up.

And oh, that's how you write the first verse, second verse. Yeah. Well, what do I do for the music?

Like, pick two chords. I'm like, which ones? Any ones are like you did, what you did, Rick, earlier with your song.

You improvised, like just start playing, see what's on. No one taught that to me. So I did have a moment where I would sit down and frustrated until my advice to anybody I tell, I talk to now who's like, I'm going to learn the guitar.

I'm like, oh, great. Where are you at? Well, I'm going to take a lesson.

I'm like, why wait? Right, Rick, back to your piano. They think it's got to be so technical and just like you're gifted or something to do it.

I'm like, no. So actually, I think there's probably others like myself who had frustrated.

That's being let down and all of us have had it happen. I mean, if you put a Mozart Sonata or Beethoven Sonata in front of me, I could be easily let down if I just simply looked at the whole thing and said, this is overwhelming.

How am I going to play this? But if I just looked at the first measure and I said, you know what, I could play the first four beats of this, and I did it that way, but that's not the piano letting you down.

That's not your instrument letting you down. That's your thought. That's your own thought process.

Your preconceived notion of how you think things should be.

So that's you letting yourself, that's on you really.

I mean, that's your own.

And another thing that comes to mind with that, and this is what I tell people now. I only play when I play the guitar mostly now, and I almost only play originals. And I go, you know why?

No one can tell me it's right or wrong. Like with your Mozart, it was Mozart who wrote that. And whether he did it fast or slow, he worked on it for a while and it's his.

So of course it's in his brain. And now you're trying to play it like him. I tell people, write your own song.

Then you know just, yeah. Because it's not Apple Stapples. You're thinking I can't play Mozart perfectly.

Well, only Mozart can play Mozart perfectly because he wrote it.

And not only that, but those guys didn't, also didn't play exactly what was on the page. They were jazz musicians. So they would look at that melody and improvise.

All those pieces are, is something for you, if you want to, to play note to note and hear how they sounded, sound good. But, you know, that's not, those aren't, you're not making it.

I mean, for me, another thing about jazz, I wanted to make my own notes.

And it's the best way to write an original song, right? Because trying to play Mozart will give you a starting point. And when you make happy accidents, you'll be like, wait a minute, let me record that.

What did I do? I like that. Now I just wrote my own song.

And to get started, my starting method, my trick was, I'm going to try to play the most complicated Mozart piece possible. And as I make all these mistakes, I'm going to make my own thing. A starting point to making my own song.

Yeah.

I mean, listen, everything has its place. There's an old saying, a place for everything and everything in its place. I mean, there's a place for written music, but you can't take that and put it here and expect it to work.

I mean, you can't take it into the world of improvisation and expect it to work unless you change those notes and add to those notes. So again, it boils down to finding a positive way to utilize that. To utilize that.

I mean, for me, the positive way was I could channel into another century by playing. By playing a prelude by Chopin, I could actually find myself in the 18th century and feeling him. I could feel his empathy.

So with Jazz in particular, for anybody listening who is young and wanting to get into Jazz, any advice he would give to any young aspiring Jazz musicians?

Because it's a pretty technical genre, right?

Yes. I would say, you know, the first word I learned when I first went to Africa, I went to Rwanda and the very first Swahili word I learned was called Oomfa. And Oomfa means listen.

So in Jazz, A, you have to listen to other great musicians who played that music, you know? But the other thing you really have to do when you play, especially with other instruments, is listen.

So you're listening to what they do and playing off of what they do. And when you listen and you play and you have that interplay, that's what gives it the magic.

Like that call and response kind of thing?

Well, call and response is part of it. Call and response goes all the way back through time. You know, the Gregorian chant or whatever, you could probably find call and response.

But basically, listening is when you hear a note, this person plays a note, it's almost like when I was improvising and I played a wrong note and I made it a right note. I listened to that note and allowed that to create the next note.

When you're playing jazz, you're going to hopefully, to get that magic, you're going to play off of what the drummer played, to play off of what the bass player played, play off of what the... You're going to react to the other musicians.

What's the biggest misconception about jazz?

I think the misconception is about music and jazz especially, but also about music in general. A lot of people think, gee, I'll play this song by Louis Armstrong and maybe I'll somehow be a jazz great. Well, Louis Armstrong didn't place...

In other words, Louis Armstrong didn't sound like somebody who lived 75 years earlier. So if you play the trumpet and sound like Louis Armstrong, you're not doing anything even remotely close to Louis Armstrong because he sounded like himself.

So in other words, the misconception in music is, I'll be like that guy by sounding like him. That person didn't sound like somebody else. To do that, you're sounding like somebody else, which is the complete opposite of what that hero was like.

Because the music... Do they all sounded like them?

That was going to be another one of my questions was, Jazz has evolved. So how do you honor its roots while bringing something fresh to the table and modern?

I'll do that for you right now to go out of the show. Does that sound okay?

Sounds great.

Well, this is a song by John Coltrane, but I wrote the words. So John Coltrane was one of the great saxophone players of all time. I wrote the lyrics to his melody.

And the song is called Lazy Bird. And I wrote the lyrics about a bird, who everyone thinks is lazy, but he's not lazy. He only flies when he's inspired.

So every all the other birds are flying all around, you know, bullshit, really just flying, you're flying there. This one is like, no, no, I'm not going anywhere until my heart tells me to fly. I'm going to soar.

So that's what this is. But hopefully, I'm not going to sound like John Coltrane. Let's hope.

Because if I do that, I'm not being, that's not the essence of John Coltrane. John Coltrane had his own sound. You see what I'm saying?

So what I wanted to communicate to other musicians that you want to study them. But if you go and sound like them, you're not like them. Because they didn't sound like somebody else, you know, at them, you know, once they evolved.

They sounded like themselves. So we'll see if I pull it off or not. We'll soon find out.

Nice, I'd like to add in the vocals a little bit.

Thanks. I've been speaking with Rick DellaRatta. His website is rickdellaratta.com, D-E-L-L-A-R-A-T-T-A, it'll be in the show notes, along with the website for his jazzforpeace.org.

Rick, thanks so much for being on my show.

Pleasure, great pleasure. Hopefully, I'll see you down there on the coming months.

Oh, definitely let me know when you come in. I look forward to it.

Okay.

Have a great day.

Yes, you too.