Using Music and Nature to Create Understanding with Joseph Wooten Part 1 (of 2)
“The reason we instinctively love music is because music is life as it’s supposed to be. It’s diversity, working together. ”
YOUR KEY INSIGHTS FROM joseph wooten
Three-time Grammy nominated artist, Joseph Wooten, has been the keyboardist for The Steve Miller Band since 1993, fronts his own band The Hands of Soul, and is part of the multi-talented family known as The Wooten Brothers – Victor Wooten, Roy Wooten (Futureman), Regi Wooten, and the late Rudy Wooten. Joseph is also a songwriter, composer, singer, studio musician, author, motivational speaker, and philanthropist. He is the founder of a non-profit organization called "I Matter! You Matter!" Their mission is to heal division, honor diversity, and promote the importance of ALL people...with the power of music and dialogue. Speaking to and working with young people of all ages, giving scholarships to deserving young people, providing aid to the homeless, especially Vets.
a vehicle to make the world better
“Like the rest of the brothers, the music is just a vehicle to make the world better, right? When we were growing up and practicing, my mom would say, “what does the world need with another good musician? We need more good people.”
So my music and trying to make the world better are connected. Making the world better, nature, music.. all of that is improved by the same thing. It's all improved by wanting to do what's right. Intelligence is what gives things purpose. So I've been doing a good deal of reading about history because the country needs some social justice, and we need some ways to make things better. But in terms of who am I? I'm a musician. I'm the second to the youngest of the five Wooten brothers who now live in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m a keyboard player for the Steve Miller band, a keyboard player and vocalist for the Wooten brothers. I'm a songwriter. I'm recently an author, I've done a TED talk. I'm a self taught nutritionist. I'm a husband, I'm a father. And I'm generally a person who wants to leave the world better than when I got here.”
i matter you matter
“It started about 2009. I wrote a song called, I Matter. And at the time, I was motivational speaking at a lot of high schools and middle schools. That was sort of my way of reaching the students. This inspiring song talks about how we all matter.
This song is for the one that's not the champion, the one that has been trampled on, maybe you don't have a home or your name is unknown. You don't get enough publicity or you're not the right ethnicity. This song is for the struggling single mother and the chemically addicted to physically constricted, the wrongfully convicted…
It was a song that I wrote to try to connect with the people who fall through the cracks that we don't normally try to reach. And I saw that there was some power there so I did a video for I Matter. That seemed to gain some traction so we created the charity. The purpose is to embrace diversity, offer scholarships for young people and to give aid to veterans, especially homeless vets. Again, it's just a vehicle for trying to make the world better. It started with the song and wound up being the foundation, and we're still going and trying to figure out ways to make the world better. And that was what my mom instilled in us young. And that's if you see all my brothers, that's what they're doing. Reggie's teaching young students, they come there to learn music, but they're learning life. Roy will take you down the rabbit hole of any thought there is but he's doing it always with the bigger picture. And we all know about Victor.
music is life as it’s supposed to be
“There is a great analogy of music. The reason we instinctively love music is because music is life as it's supposed to be. It's diversity, working together. Not so this person wins over that person. That's competition. And there's value in competition, too, right? Say the Titans are seven and three, we had a comeback win yesterday. That's exciting. But it's not exciting to the team we beat, right? That's the thing music has. It's diversity used in a way that's better for all of us. So that's why we like it. Music is life as it's supposed to be. But the components of music are a mess. That's what we make music from. It’s not music until we apply intelligence.
Once I apply intelligence to act from the mess, I can turn it into something that's beneficial for all of us. And the more intelligent I am, and when intelligence meets ability, then we have a better chance of making things better for other people. Because I know some things about music, I have a better chance of taking from this mess. And creating something for the benefit of both of us.
The analogy is, in music, we're dealing with notes. Once we leave the instrument, then the mess is different political backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, too much religion, no religion, education, no education, age difference, culture, it's all of that. And that's the mess once we step out of here. With cultural clash, we start making music with respect. If I drop a chair and I cough, those are two things that, at first glance, have nothing to do with each other. But if I put them on the beat, now they have a relationship. Now they have a relationship that could go forward and do some good. There's no guarantee that the song we build on top of that is going to be a good one. But we can't make music until we apply rhythm to things that don't relate. It's the same thing in life.
Somebody voted for Trump, you didn't hypothetically, or somebody believed in abortion and you don't, right? The only way you can make that conversation work is to let the person who thinks differently than you establish the respect first, right? To many of us, we have an opportunity to make music, aka, put things in order. And we approach it like competition, like I'm going to try to make you think like me, you're going to try to make me think like you and one of us is gonna win this conversation. That doesn't always work out well. But what if that other person knows that I respect them? Respect, like rhythm, is the thing that can make things that are unalike have a relationship. It's the relationship that's more important than making that person think like me.”
from mess to music
“Take rhythm, like a good drumbeat. If you're a musician, you've played with a good drummer, and you’ve played with the bad drummer. Bad drummers have the same sounds as good drummers, right? But what makes the mess music? I call it the intelligent use of space. What makes music is the intelligent use of space. When you hear music, what you're hearing are the static things that have encountered intelligence.
Mess is turned into music, by the application of intelligence. Well, so is this mess that we have out here in the world. People think differently, there's Democrats and Republicans and people who don't believe in politics at all, but some kind of way we need to figure out how to be here together. And we need to do it with intelligence. But to use intelligence requires you to know some things. Freedom is dangerous. Unless there's some intelligence that goes with that freedom, right?
If you look at John Coltrane playing a saxophone, he blows with all that freedom. Because he has all that knowledge and ability, right? But you put somebody in those chord changes and moving around, if you don't have, you can have freedom in that song. But you're gonna miss that song up without ability and intelligence. And it's the same thing in life.”
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