and welcome to the show welcome to the show my name is niamh sharif they we have a special guest today gary hammond gary good to see you again sir always a pleasure we've we've done a couple shows  done some shows with george griffin and some shows with vague airy they have men s fault quartet and we've talked about music and today we want to get into some of the music we want to get into some of the history we want to just kind of see your journey here in seattle so let's just start off with what got you start so he knew quite a bit about it so actually we were supposed to be sleep at that hour but i couldn't help and i think what really caught he was the fact that he ars two gentlemen totally different in the way they feel the art form but they both appreciated music that's why  music is in the eyes of the beholder too because i mean different strokes for different folks or different styles for different folks you know archer and what would happen is just kind of funny  i enjoyed the camaraderie that they had which was great and i actually not knowing i learned a lot from both of them but what really came out of that was presence of a saxophone i heard john coltrane from that stage i didn't realize it was john coltrane because i did not like and i did not like know what they're doing but john happened to play a tune that was written by billy eckstein who was a fabulous trombone player and of course he exercise then you were born and raised in seattle correct yes ok so what made you i guess what made you decide to leave seattle what well i want to scholarship and i always vision myself you know growing up name i'll have to tell you we were very unique you know we we never ever respectful in israel so i always vision myself being out of seattle once i got old enough to leave i was going to leave because i realized that there's one thing that was very true i could have been even if i wanted to be mayor of the city i could probably been mayor you know that's the kind of impact the have and during that time but i find myself also and asking myself the question what could i do away from home i know i could do something be during that time i knew that i had to leave and i knew that if i wanted to to prove myself and to find out if i really had what it took i  had the call came i won the one scholarship and i'm glad i got out of here and i didn't i wasn't fearful i really had no relatives i found out later on i had cousins in some areas but i never failing and that always felt like a that was the right thing to do and it never hit me i never struck me in any kind of way that oh what's going to happen if this fails so that they'll never look back and trying to work so what made you come back to see  well what made me come back was i've been gone quite some time and my parents who i didn't spend a lot of time with  i felt that me coming back to connect to my roots was very important now on the ways the way it happened and the way i came back of course you know it's not as pleasant but i mean there's always a happy ending to everything but i came back because i felt the need that i needed to make my presen like and i still feel the same way like we've allowed too much to be taken away and not a history lesson for young people young people that are of african african american open you know in a lot of ways as being close it was also very open for a lot of avenues i saw in our community a lot of great people doing a lot of great things but i think what happened somewhere things changed i was not here they changed you know how they change and now we're still divided and separated you know somebody has to yours now so i have to be here for a while to see if i can bring some of what we have back and not from a political perspective not  from any of those jobs require people to make a move and i'm not saying this facetious way i'm saying in a good way and i want those off there that comes to me because that's what my hardest thing so i did basically by my heart and what i feel no other way and i call that  so that saying the same there how do the playing field is a playing field level and if it's not level how do we make it level well the playing field is not level there's this idea that it is and it's presented to us that it is but i don't fa those that have been able to navigate the playing field what i see as i see people that were here that were born and raised here they need to get together and my point is strictly that when you and i grew up here you had jackson street you had madison and you had you know you had you know matters very vibrant you had very strong you had african american jewish you had japanese chinese we all work together in a community that was very vibrant very cases they can't be the way it's going to be but for the most part it should be because it's not about us is about it's about our future so what i hear you saying and what i've noticed also it's a sense the opportunity to have wonderful leadership growing up wonderful role models from john little to two to  models that we had and i'm just calling a few because i'm going to speak further on others that that that within our community helped young people they kept their eyes on on on the vision for them now that's where i'm coming from you know and some people may argue and beg to differ on some of those folks but those are the people that i remember that when i needed a job crawling up i could get what i could get while i was not going to be a knucklehead in the street that's for sure they always had something for me to out there now and then along with that question also how are are you know the artist needs to make a living how is the artist going to make a living here well what have to happen to this city council has to has to somehow recognize that let's take for instance when you have city council city council put things and put a person in a place that handles the arts the only the only downfall i see to that or it would handle any of that is that it's never an artist and when it is an artiste the artist is either someone that is not grounded enough to be able to stand or what is really actually needed for the arts so my example is simply is this been outside agency and i'm just using him as an example you know i saw that saying that they've done anything right because they're going to they've got some issues now and they're going to have some issues coming up in the front but i know it's the news outside is yeah go ahead but my point is this simply if you put artists in place with people that you feel that they manage well you're going to get the answers that need now but you also need to work hand in hand and find out not only who manages well but who would be a good candidate for the ar s so you have to do like you do with everything else you have to really sit down do your homework and you know it used to be when you went for any kind even in any kind of go back to where it's really studied and it's really about community not about not about who you think works well because of their content troll because they manage one part that's a good that's good in itself but when you're when you're talking about our artists and eyes of the beholder so there may be things that people don't like and there may be artistic people don't like but there's something for everyone so you have to think like that and you can and when you when you find somebody that's got more of a status to be it ministry that you're history you know you i think you know you get on jackson street they have some little plaque somewhere it talks about some of the musicians a little bit and that's about the extent of that that that's you know and what i have noticed is that  number of our younger generation don't even know about these people you know you know they they know more about these people in europe than they do about these people in seattle and stuff so you want even from a political perspective have groups they would hire us we really got we really started a movement which brought us to the forefront pleasure to have your group on and just kind of talk about the history and hope folks fully people will go back and look at this history and take another look and incorporated and you know make it more known so it just won't be forgotten you know and that people really had a talent to play these which you know they had a soul in the desire it just not something you know that they had a whole lot of technique the technology to bring in the stuff you know they had it in their