Thank you very much. And it’s true I was born into a band.

And… very literally, I mean that

literally. When I was born, my four older brothers who were already playing music, they knew
that they needed a bass player to round out the family band. And so I was born into that role.
And as I’m older I’m looking back right now I’m kinda like called a „teacher”. When I look
back on that, and how I was tought, I realised that I wasn’t really tought. Which is why I say
that music is a language, because if you think about your first language – for me and probably
most of us here is English, so I’m just gonna go with English. If you think about how you
learned it, you realize you weren’t tought it. People just spoke to you. But the coolest thing is
where it gets interesting is you were allowed to speak bad. Now if I take the music example in
most cases, our beginners are not allowed to play with the better people. You stuck in the
beginning class, you have to remain there a few years until you elevated to… you know the
intermediate then advance and after you graduate the advance class you still have to go out
and pay a lot of dues. But with language, to use a musical term, even as a baby you’re
„jamming” with professionals. All the time. To the point you don’t even know you’re a
beginner. No one says, „I can’t talk to you until – you gotta go over there. When you’re older,
then I can speak to you.” That doesn’t happen. No one tells you what you have to say. You’re
not made to sit in a corner and practice. You’re never even corrected when you’re wrong.
Think about it: when you’re 2-3 years old, and you say a word wrong over and over, no one
corrects you. If you say it wrong enough times, instead of correcting you, your parents learn
you way. And they start saying it wrong too! The coolest part of that is that you remain free,
with how you talk. And so you never have to follow the musical role of learning all these
years and then, going and finding your voice. With your speaking voice, you’ve never lost it.
No one ever robbed you of that. And so, because, when I was young that’s how I was
learning; I was learning English and music at the same time and in the same way. So I tell this
to people; I usually say, „Yeah, I started when I was two or three.” And I say that just because
that’s more believable. But when did you start speaking English? Did you wait until you were
two or three? No. You were speaking, I’d probably say, before birth. Whenever you could hear
is when you probably started learning it. To me, that’s very very cool, and very very clever of
my brothers – my oldest brother, out of the five… I’m the youngest, Reggie’s the oldest –
He’s only eight years older than me. So how he was this smart, I don’t know. That’s the real
question. That sould be the real TED talk. How he figured out the ingenious way of not
teaching us, younger brothers, how to play! He didn’t start me by putting a bass in my hands.
No. The first thing they did was to play music around me from my earliest age that is I can
remember. I can remember living in Hawaii, and my brothers yould set up and I can
remember seeing a plastic stool. A lot of times we’d set up in the front yard where I can see a
plastic stool with a little plastic toy, Mickey Mouse wind-up-guitar, laying on top of that stool.
No one had to tell me that that was for me. The same way no one has to tell you when it’s
your turn to talk. You know how to do it and so I knew that stool was for me. I knew that
instrument was for me. It had plastic strings on it, you would wind it up and it would play a
song. But you couldn’t really play it from the strings and it wasn’t about that. By the time I
was old enough to hold an instrument, they gave me something to hold. Just for the sake of
holding something; prepairing me for the later years. It wasn’t about playing that instrument.
That’s the mistake a lot of us, music teachers make: we teach kids how to play the instrument
first, before they understand music. You don’t teach a kid how to spell. Teaching a kid to spell
„milk” before they’ve been drinking a lot of it for a few years doesn’t make sense, does it?
But some reason, we still think it does in music. We want to teach them the rules and the
instruments first. But by the time I was about two, and they put that toy in my hands, I was
already very musical because I believe you’re born musical. Just listen to anybody’s voice.
Listen to any child’s voice. There’s no purer music than that. So my brothers somehow knew I
was born musical, but the wanted me to be a bass player so when I was old enough, they put a
toy in my hands, and they would play. So I would just bounce up and down and strum along
too. But the coolest thing about it again, is it wasn’t about the instrument. I was learning to
play music not an instrument. And I continue that hopefully today. Again, what I did know
was I knew what it meant when my brother opened up his high hat at the end of a four-bar
phrase. Or I learned these phrases versus that phrase. The same way a baby knows what it
means when the mother raises the pitch of her voice versus the father lowering the pitch of
his. You know these things, and even though you may not even understand what the word
means. And so you’re learning all these things. By the time a baby can speak a real word, they
know already a lot about the language. So I was learning music the same way. By the time I
had the instrument in my hands, I was already very musical. When I would turn about three
years old, Reggie took two strings off of one of his six-string guitars. He took the two high
strings off and that became my first reak instrument. So Reggie actually started teaching me
to put my finger in certain places to produce notes to song I already knew. So I wasn’t starting
from the beginning. I was musical first. Now, I just had to put that music through an
instrument. And looking back on it now, I realize that’s how I learned to talk. It wasn’t about
learning the instrument first. Who cares about the instrument you talk with? It’s about what
you have to say. So I’ve always musically maintained my own voice. I’ve always had
something to say and I’ve learned how to speak through my instrument. So if we think about a
couple of things: not being forced to practice, not being told waht you have to say – I’m
speaking English again – not being told what you have to say. When the teacher teaches you a
new word in English, she has you put it into a sentence; in the context, right away. A music
teacher will tell you to go practice it. Practicing works but it’s a slower process than putting it
into a context. We know that with English. And so this was the way I learned. And as I grew
older, about five years old, we were actually on tour, the five of us. We were fortunate enough
to be able to tour opening for a great soul singer, named Curtis Mayfield. So I was five years
old, my oldest brother was only 13. But when I think about it, we could speak good English at
that age. Why not music? So I’ve always, since then, approached music just like a language,
because I learned it at the same time and in the same way. The best part of it all is I’ve
maintained something that little children are born with – and that’s freedom. A lot of us are
taught out of our musical freedom, when we are first given a lesson. Because we go to a
teacher and the teacher rarely ever finds out why we came in the first place. A lot of times,
that kid playing that air guitar where there’s no right or wrong. It’s not about the right or
wrong notes, it’s not about the instrument. They’re playing because it feels right. It’s the same
way and reason that you sing in the shower. Or when you’re driving to work; you’re singing.
You’re not singing because it’s the right notes or you know the right scales. You’re singing
because it feels good. I spoke to a lady at breakfast who said, „ I’m Ella Fitzgerald when I’m
in the shower!” And of course she’s right! So why does that change when someone outside
starts to listen? That freedom becomes lost as we grow and as we learn, and we need to find a
way to keep that freedom. And it can be done! It’s not gone forever. A kid playing air guitar
will play with a smile on their face. Give them the first lesson, the smile goes away. A lot of
the times you have to work your whole musical life to get that smile back. As teachers, we can
keep that smile, if we approach it the right way. And I say approach it like a language – allow
the student to keep the freedom. As I got older, a little bit older, and my brothers and I started
to tour and play a lot, my Mom would ask a question that I never understood really until I got
much older and had kids of my own. My Mom would ask us boys, and she was saying, „What
does the world need with another good musican?” Think about that. And I’m saying music,
but insert your own career. What does the world need with you? It really made me realize that
now, as I’ve got older, music is more than just a language, music is a lifestyle. It’s my
lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not talking about the lifestyle a lot of musicans lead.
Because we can look back at aour musical heroes of the past and realize that they were huge
successes in music, but just as huge failures in life. I could name a few of them but I don’t
want to upset anybody; buti f we think about our heroes, a lot of them were like that. And I
think our parents were preparing us for something that we didn’t know at the time, but I think
she could see ahead. „What does the word need with another good musician?” So we’re
practicing all these hours. We turned our whole house into a music room where all the
neighborhood, all the state-wide musicians would show up. We would practice, my parents
would spend mones they didn’t have to make sure we had the next newest instrument. Every
Christmas, Santa would bring the newest thing. What was that about? Was it just so that we
could make money? So that we could stand on stage and bask in the glory? I realize now, that
it is much more than that. Music is my lifestyle. And now as I’m going into really studying
music, so that I could share it with other people in a teacher’s role, I realize that there’s a lot
that we can learn from music and apply to our lives. To be a good musician, you have to be a
good listener. Doesn’t matter how great I am as a bassist or any instrument. Doesn’t matter
how great I am. We can put five of the world’s best musicians on this stage. Buti f we great
separate from each other, it’s going to sound horrible. Buti f we listen to each other and play
together, individually, we don’t have to be as great, and it’ll sound much better. I was invited a
couple years in a row to go Stanford, in California, and put together a musical team to address
the incoming freshman class. We were able to use music to give than an idea what the next
four years of their life might be like. It was fun using music to do it because music is a way
that I can talk about anything that could be kind of touchy: politics, racism, equality,
inequality, religion. I can do it through music and I’m still safe. But we were able to pick
someone out of the audience who’d never played an instrument before. Usually, it was a
female, have her come up, we’d strap a bass around her neck and then I would get the band
playing. As soon as the band stars playing, that person starts doing this (waving his head,
moving his body, kinda dancing). And I say, „That’s music!”. If you listen to that bass, like
any instrument in a music store, when it’s sitting there, it doesn’t make a sound. So if you
want music to come out of that, you have to put it there. And that groove that’s in your neck,
you just have to put it in the instrument. So I just had her with left hand squeeze the neck –
because everybody knows how to hold an instrument, that’s not new – squeeze it and then, let
your right hand dance on the string. She starts bouncing on that note, and the band kicks up
around her. All of a sudden, she’s a bassist. More so, she’s a musician. A dancer never has to
ask questions before they dance. A singer doesn’t usually have to ask what key are we in.
Musicians have to ask too many questions. So what that taught me is that, „Wow! Because
we’re great, she doesn’t have to know anything.” And all of a sudden, anyone who were to
walk into the room and see this band with this newcomer on stage, no one would know who
was the newcomer. So that let me know, „Wow! If I use my greatness in the right way, it can
help others rise up quickly.”And the coolest thing about that whole thing in Stanford is she got
to take tha bass home! I saw her recently, she is still a bassist so that’s great. Listening is a
great musical key hat we can use for life, working together of course being great to help other
people become great. When people put you up on a pedestal, don’t come off the pedestal
acting like you’re humble. Stay up on that pedestal, because if they put you there that’s
showing you how high they can see. Stay there and pull them up. And they’ll grow faster than
if you come down. So we’re going to help these people because we’re great. In music,
usually, I’m not great until you say I am, anyway. They say, „He’s won all these Grammy’s.” I
can’t win anything without you all. Another thing my Mom always taught us is, „You, boys
are already successful.The rest of the world just doesn’t know it yet!” I didn’t understand that
then, but I really, really do now.
Really quickly, before I get out of here I just want you to think about this: If I were to play
two notes, let’s say I play a C – just want you to use your imagination – if I play a C and a C
sharp right next to each other,it’ll probably sound like those notes clash: „Wrong!”, „Bad!”.
But if I take tha C up an octave, play the C sharp and tha C again. All of a sudden, it sound
beautiful. Same two notes. That C becomes a major seventh to the C sharp, which is a key
element that makes a chord almost too beautiful, too nice sounding. So how can the same two
notes sound bad and clash in one instance and beautiful in another? Just take that to life.
When we see something bad or awful or horrible in life, maybe we’re just reviewing it in the
wrong octave. Maybe we could change our perspective. Actually, if you see something that’s
wrong, you should know that you’re seeing it in the wrong octave and fin a way to change
your viewpoint. Or to use a musical term – change your octave.
Countries make bombs with the goal of hurting people, instilling fear, killing people, proving
a point. Countries, governments bless the bombs before they’re sent. This happnes from the
top-down, the government down. This is our answer. Makes me realize that the solution may
have to come from the bottom-up. Is anyone working on a bomb that makes people love you?
Maybe a cupid bomb? I believe we already have it. It’s called Music and every country has
their own version of it. I works. It brings people together. You don’t have to know a thing
about it to get it. It’s a language, it’s a lifestyle and it can save the world.