"Jazzforpeace.org is the website; there is a lot of stuff on YouTube and Vimeo but there is a recent livestream that took place at a club in Upstate New York and you can Google Jazz For Peace, Rick DellaRatta or Caffe Lena which was the name of the place and you can see a very recent performance."
Rick DellaRatta; philanthropist, musician, organizer, poet and a man on a mission; he is also the founder of the multifaceted Jazz For Peace; a unique model of philanthropy and one which has set a standard others only hope to follow.
To understand a bit more about this organization and its work, one must delve into the humble beginnings from whence it came.
"It really started as a poem and I wrote it on the rooftop of my Lower East Side apartment where I was living on the morning of 9/11," said a reflective DellaRatta, "Then I thought; maybe I should try to live up to these words that I wrote. So, it kind of led to a situation where I felt like, maybe we as individuals should stop depending on our government and our state and our country to fix everything and maybe see what we can do ourselves; you know? I realized with the art form of jazz and music in general that you can do a lot being that it crosses so many barriers; cultural, religious and all of that stuff. I've traveled all over the world already so, it was just a matter of taking my talent and just putting it with the words of the poem and using the art form of jazz to help outstanding causes; assuming that if we can help outstanding causes, not only can we make things better today that but we can also avoid problems in the future. Then it kind of took a life of its own, I would've been very happy just to do a handful of events in New York which I did do and at one of those events I was with the band over on the side and I heard these people reading a letter all about me and Jazz for Peace and I was like; what is that letter? I went and asked them and they said that they had received it from the mayor of New York City who at the time was Michael Bloomberg and I asked them for a copy of it. I was reading the letter and I was seeing how not only leaders here in New York; then I realized that the mission is global and I should at least take it around the country and then I started taking it around the world. It is kind of common sense; a lot of people have come on board and said that this is a really good thing to help outstanding causes and I didn't realize how many of them there were; I don't know if anybody does. I mean there are so many outstanding causes for every single problem and it is just a matter of finding the ones that are the most dedicated and if they are doing better, they will be further along with addressing their mission statement."
Jazz For Peace is interesting on so many fronts; why jazz? Why not rock, hip-hop or classical music for peace? Jazz as an art form doesn't always get the publicity or radio play of those other mentioned forms, so again; why jazz?
"I grew up like everybody else; with pop music, rock 'n' roll and probably a lot of the blues and jazz music that you've featured on your radio programs; that's where I come from. Those were my roots; I was just an American kid loving the music of the day but I came across jazz in a library and it just kind of pulled me towards it. So, I decided to explore; I also played classical music and really played all forms of music. I figured if I could play anything then I had a good shot at making music my profession. So, I've played every kind of music in every kind of band; I've been a piano bar entertainer all over the world and all kinds of stuff but when my own CDs started coming out in the jazz idiom then I started to get a lot of things as a leader. I was doing a lot of stuff when 9/11 hit; it was a good opportunity because I had some notoriety as a band leader at that time and it was kind of an opportunity to take it in kind of an amazing direction for me in terms of just being able to put my philanthropic goals with my musical goals. A lot of musicians have philanthropic dreams or goals, it kind of comes with being a musician, I think. That's one thing that I want to get across, I really want to show people how we have created a dignified opportunity for musicians. I'll be honest with you, not one single event has a musician ever not gotten paid. So, in other words, it's a dignified professional performance opportunity for the musicians but what I want to get across is that we help the organizations raise the funds to confirm their event with money already in their account and that way they are able to send our foundation a percentage of our expenses. This gives us the autonomy to be able to choose any outstanding cause rather than who our donors tell us to choose and at the same time it allows us to pay all of the musicians for their services because we don't hire off-duty police officers; we hire some of the greatest musicians in the world. We've done this for so long and I bet a lot of people don't know our model and I'd like them to see how we are doing what we do because maybe they'd like to help an outstanding cause and get paid for it at the same time as they deserve to be."
DellaRatta has traveled the world before and after the formation of Jazz For Peace and has brought musicians from all walks of life, countries and religious backgrounds together. Shows and events at The United Nations with Israeli and Palestinian performers sharing the stage as a unit as well as nine different trips to Africa and he's even brought a taste of Latin American rythms close to home. "We've done Latin Jazz For Peace in The Bronx with Dave Valentin, we featured Ray Mantilla the great Latin percussionist as well in the early days and a bunch of stuff with Latin and Cuban musicians'."
Oh and that U.N. gig? Seems like one of the Jazz For Peace family received some long overdue recognition and it is things such as that which has given DellaRatta the ability to develop new and different ways to further his efforts.
"We just found out recently that for the first time ever an award was given to a sponsor of Jazz For Peace just because they had played such an instrumental role in an event that we did at The United Nations which was 20 years ago. We are always trying to roll out new opportunities to help outstanding causes with everything that we offer. One of the very new things that we have is a cryptocurrency and people think that stuff is crazy and all that except for the problem that Bitcoin is now over 30,000 dollars. I think it was only about six or seven years ago when a guy named Max Kaiser tried to pay the Baldwin brothers for doing an independent film. He told them he didn't have a budget but he offered to pay them 10,000 Bitcoins and they turned him down and now that would be worth over 380,000,000 dollars for two days of shooting and two of those brothers could've really used the money. So, we are ushering out the very first philanthropic cryptocurrency to give to outstanding causes as part of our award because Jazz For Peace is a grant. We put on a world-class cultural event at no cost to the organization and we provide the staffing, expertise and guidance to make the event a success so that we can help them get sponsors, new and prestigious supporters, publicity and awareness; it's all part of something called an Empowerment TREE. We are offering this cryptocurrency for free and they are going to get it for free and what we like about this; have you ever heard of something called, The Fourth Turning? It is like a 90-year cycle and at the end of that cycle there is a time of crisis and as you and I can probably agree, we are in a time of crisis now and that's kind of the end of the cycle. Things reveal themselves by being literally backward and as everybody knows, we have a trickle-down economy that results in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and what we want to usher in is a philanthropic cryptocurrency and it's a trickle-up economy for outstanding causes. So, in other words, when we give the currency to an outstanding cause; when they use that currency whether it be for an incoming donation or to get volunteers to do things for them or however they use it, it trickles up from them instead of things trickling down and outstanding causes getting the funds last. Now the outstanding cause is getting something first and it's trickling up instead of down and we've had outstanding causes already tell us from the past that if they have the cryptocurrency, they can advance themselves with it. There are people who will do things for them and help them in return for the currency and volunteer work which could be worth something down the road but is already good for in-kind services and donations already. So, "Trickle-up" is the word; they are my two favorite words right now (laughs)."
To discover more about Rick DellaRatta and Jazz For Peace; please visit www.jazzforpeace.org.
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
