October 30, 2025 • 47 mins
This episode, my guest is Shaka Mitchell on to discuss Shaka's recent congressional appearance and his work with the Come Together Music Project, which focuses on music education and community building. They explored how music can transcend political and cultural divides, sharing personal anecdotes and examples of how music brings people together despite their differences. The conversation concluded with a discussion about the importance of engaging in open dialogue across diverse perspectives to foster understanding and unity in addressing societal issues.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cometogethermusicproject/?hl=en
SubStack: https://shakamitchell.substack.com/
Link to Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/13xN302EaRVizFTrsDZVRq?si=05a0577cc7744ce0
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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(00:20):
Thank you. Music.
(01:16):
Welcome to the Delvin Cox Experience, the podcast which
each week I'm on a one man mission to United Coast to
diversity. I'm your host, Delvin Cox, and
with me on this podcast as a special guest, a brother who's
done and doing because he's not done yet, a lot of things,
including talk in front of Congress.
(01:36):
You may be the first person I'veever had on this podcast to talk
in front of Congress. My boy Shaka Mitch, how you
doing, brother? Hey, I'm doing all right,
Delvin. Yeah, I I was in front of
Congress and I made it out. That's the key.
I made it out. That's the more important one.
You talked in front of Congress and you survived it.
I survived. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. They should give you a T-shirt
on the way out. I survived Congress.
(01:58):
Yeah, I survived this Congress. It was good, though.
It was good. You know, I mean, it was, it's
wild. It's crazy to be up there, but
it was really an honor. And, you know, I mean, I was, I
was actually talking to my parents about it.
And, you know, if you would havetold them like 45 years ago,
(02:20):
hey, this little guy is going tobe, you know, have the
opportunity to go and share someof his expertise in front of the
US Congress. I mean, it's a, it's a pretty
special thing. Still, that's a huge deal no
matter what Congress is in frontof.
The idea that a black man is going in front of Congress and
sharing thing that's important to our society, Yeah, is there
(02:41):
was a time where that wouldn't happen, you know?
So the fact that isn't even happening is a big deal to me,
and I salute you for that. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Yeah, of course, of course.
As always, let's start the podcast off with the five for
five, five questions, 5 minutes to get the ball rolling.
Shaka, you ready? Let's do it.
OK question #1 as a kid, get up in the morning, get breakfast,
(03:07):
what type of cereal are you reaching for?
You know, as a kid, I really didlike Raisin Bran.
Oh, you like the old man cereal?I did.
In part because my parents neverbought us the good stuff.
Oh yeah, You know, like the realsugar.
So Raisin Bran was kind of like as close as we could get, you
(03:28):
know, to Lucky Charms. I get it.
I had, it's funny you mentioned that because I had that
conversation. My mom was in town this weekend.
I had that conversation with herabout like, why don't you just
buying us this crappy cereal? You're just going to like spent
the extra $0.30 and got us actual cereal that you.
Like, yeah, we there was always one box of Frosted Flakes, but
(03:49):
that was my dad's. And you knew like, don't mess
around with that box. Yeah, that's like my box of
Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But even then, my kids eat it.
They don't care. Like, whatever we just said.
The results crunch. All right.
Question #2 And this is an important question, but it's
also a question that kind of pertains to some of the things
(04:11):
you do. What are some of the songs in
your life that you think define who you are?
Man, that is a super challengingquestion.
Songs that define who I am. You know, I think a lot about
(04:33):
the songs that we kind of grew up with.
I mean, I'll tell you what, you know what?
Honestly, one of the first songsthat came to mind, it's because
my initials Shotgun Lawrence Mitchell.
It's like slam. You remember the song Slam by
Onyx? Of course, that's fantastic
(04:54):
song. Yeah, and I remember, but you
know, even more than the song, right, 'cause it's, I mean,
whatever. I was a kid.
I was in middle school, but I was in middle school.
Those are some formative years. I lived in New York on Long
Island. That song was huge.
We would listen to it a lot. So it just kind of takes me back
to growing up on Long Island with such a a mix of kids, such
(05:16):
a diverse, you know, school and student population.
So that would be one of them. You know, then we moved.
I I went to high school in in Marietta, GA, outside Atlanta.
So their songs like AT Aliens was big when I was in high
school. That's another one that's just
like a Seminole kind of song. So yeah, that that's, that's 2.
(05:37):
Those are two great ones, honestly, just that 2 great ones
from two different coasts. That kind of just define culture
like outcast and Onyx, you know they.
They really did like you. I mean, you really couldn't
touch either one of those groupsat the time.
Yes. You know, when they were, when
they were, like, in their prime,like, yeah.
I agree. Question #3 this is a This is a
(06:01):
fun question. The easy question.
All right, let's do it. When you're in the streets, you
walk around, who'd they say you look like, 'cause everybody had
that one guy was like, hey, you know, you like that guy.
You're like, I don't look nothing like.
That guy. Thank you.
Who do they say I look like? Man, you know, this is really,
(06:21):
it's kind of top of mind becausewe've been moving my grandmother
into like nursing care, nursing.Yeah.
And, and I really do favor my grandmother.
So every time I walk into the senior living place, old people
(06:42):
are like, you must be Emma's son, you must be Emma's
grandson. I'm like, I know, I know, I
know, I know, I know. So honestly that you know.
People, that's cool. That's a funny thing, but yeah,
who do people say I look like? They say I look like my
grandmother, which, you know, they're not.
Wrong. Yeah, that's really cool.
Yeah. Who do people say you look like?
Oh, I can't say I'll just podcast anymore.
(07:04):
That guy got cancelled. I can't.
Well, I can say it. When I was in high school, they
used to sell like Puff Daddy. I like, I don't like Puff Daddy.
I had like, that's back when I had more hair like, and now I'm
like, don't say I was like that guy now.
Yeah, yeah. No more.
You can't. Do that.
Now pick somebody else. But yeah, when I was when I was
in high school, I wore, I had like the shades and stuff like
(07:26):
that. And even these are transitional
glasses. I've always had like
transitional glasses. So when I was at school, I had
to like the dark shades because I was in the sunlight and stuff
like that. And they're like, oh, you like
Puff Daddy? Like, no, I don't like.
That's funny. You know who I was going to say?
I was going to say, I think you kind of look a little similar to
Eric's sermon. I'll.
I'll take that, I'll take that. I'm a puff, Danny.
(07:48):
Yeah, no, Diddy. Yeah.
No, Dan, Definitely no Diddy. Literally can't be saying that
now. Nope.
Nope. Question number.
What are we on #4 Number four question #4 Since we're I think
we have the same generation, I'mgoing to ask you a simple
(08:09):
question, Super Nintendo or SegaGenesis?
How was the Super Nintendo? What?
Was your favorite game on Super Nintendo?
I was the Super Nintendo. Oh man, on Super Nintendo, you
know? I was heavy in the Street
Fighter. Yeah, Street Fighter.
(08:30):
That's that's true. Street Fighter was.
That was probably the best game on Super Nintendo honestly.
I was amazed how close it lookedto the arcade version and I was
like this is this is incredible.Like even Mortal Kombat, I was
amazed how close it looked to the arcade version but the Super
Nintendo version didn't have thefatalities on.
(08:50):
Right, Yeah. I mean, Street Fighter, you
know, Ninja Turtles was a Super Nintendo game that, you know, I
remember playing a lot even though I didn't really, I wasn't
into Ninja Turtles. I remember playing that game a
lot because it was super popular.
I mean, Sega Genesis, not going to sleep on that though.
(09:11):
Oh, you know what it was though.I know what my favorite Super
Nintendo game was. It was Madden.
I mean. That's what Madden.
Was really coming up and I mean like Madden 95.
That's the one, yeah, Madden 5 was so.
Good Madden 95 you could not touch the Cowboys.
I mean, that's just how it was just.
(09:32):
Get Emma smipped the ball and run.
Done. It's a wrap.
It's a great game. Yep, I I missed when they made
games like that. I think that was one of the
Maddens that came out. I want to say a few years ago
that if you bought like the collector's edition it I think
it came with Madden 95 in it. Oh wow, yeah, I know.
I guess I got to play. I'm not going to be playing the
(09:52):
regular mad. I'm just gonna be playing Madden
95 again. Yeah, basically, you know, they
the the games, the sports games in particular, like Madden
started getting so intense. It was like this hybrid of
playing the game but also doing like a almost like an owner's
experience. And I was like, I just want to
play the game. I'm not trying to spent an
(10:13):
entire season. I mean, you just spent half your
life like making all these trades and whatnot.
And that was for me, that was just too much.
Yes, I don't do that for Madden.I do that.
I I do that for NBA 2K though. OK, NBA 2K, I'm all in.
I'm like making the trades. Like, you know, we're getting
LeBron back on the Heat. We're going to fix this roster
(10:34):
right back up. Question #5 shocking zombie
apocalypse happens Walking Dead style.
You got to take 5 things to go out in the world to survive.
What are the five things you're going to take out in the world
to survive? Your your family automatically
go over you so you don't have topick like which which is your
favorite kid? Nothing like that.
(10:55):
Only one of them gets to come Zombie.
OK, five things. What am I taking with me?
I am taking I, you know, I like to think that I'm pretty
resourceful so that there's a lot of things out there that I
can just like that I can work with like.
MacGyver, you like you like I'm.I'm going to take this rock and
(11:18):
make it to a sword. Yeah, I don't know about all
that. I don't know about all that.
But I have, you know, I've just read a lot of books about people
who have been in these just wildsituations.
So like, I know that one of the first things, you know, one of
the things that people forget about is water, right?
So many people when they're justout there in the woods by
themselves or whatever diet, dehydration because they don't
(11:39):
know 'cause they can't purify their water and they can't drink
it. So out the stream.
So, you know, I think I, I'd be pretty resourceful that way.
So, but you can't take enough water to last the zombie
apocalypse. So what am I taking with me?
And I, I think I would take honestly, I think I would take a
(12:02):
he maybe gasoline and a generator.
OK, that's good. Two good things.
'Cause I feel like that could, you know, spawn some of the next
things that you're gonna end up needing.
You know, I'm not really like a firearms guy, but I feel like.
You may need one. You know, be helpful, you know,
(12:24):
have a have some kind of weapon with you.
It did at distance 'cause I'm also not trying to get up close
and personal with, you know, zombies the the horde.
Yeah. I mean, I think you just have to
have like some kind of very goodmulti tool with you.
(12:45):
Yeah, kind of. That's a good idea.
Do that thing and then last thing, last thing, you know,
man, I feel I want to say you got to have something that's
gonna, you know, bring a little bit of joy.
Hard to know what that is hard, hard to hard to I think you'd
(13:09):
want to pack light. But, you know, I did read a book
and there was a similar thing. There was like a virus that
wiped out society. And one of the things that made
it through is all the people whowere musicians got together and
formed an orchestra. And I thought that was a pretty
beautiful thing, so. That's really cool.
So maybe I'll take some kind of instrument.
(13:29):
That's cool. I like that a lot.
You know when the pandemic happened in 20, that was
2019-2020. What happened?
20, Yeah, yeah. I got like really into like just
keeping stuff in my house just in case there was a power surge.
So like I like even now around my house.
I have you ever seen those giantbattery packs they sell now that
(13:53):
you can like you can change up. Camping and whatnot and
whatever. Yes I have like four of those.
I just can like just cuz I have a power surge in my house which
came in handy a few months ago, but I had like four of those.
I had like a generator and I almost bought.
I don't know if you've ever seenthis before.
The straws that they have that you can take to a stream and
(14:17):
drink from the stream and put the purify the water from the
stream. Filters it.
Yes. Oh, that's cool.
I was almost like, maybe I should buy this just in case
something happens. Yeah, like I don't want to drink
from the stream. Sound like a bad idea.
Don't. Do it.
I don't know if this straw worksAmazon.
Yeah, that's the truth. All the instructions are in, you
(14:38):
know, Chinese or Korean or something.
And you're like, well, we'll see.
We'll see. Definitely won't work for me
then. I have malaria, that's right.
That's good. So, so Shaka, let all these
people know some of the things you do because you do a lot,
especially when it comes to music and stuff.
Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for, you know,
(14:59):
again for having me on. It's good to just kind of chop
it up a little bit with you. And yeah, you know, so most of
my professional career has been in education and education
policy, advocacy, whatever. I'm a lawyer by training.
And so I spent a lot of time working on laws and legislation,
(15:21):
you know, in various states, mostly having to do with
education. I was a school administrator for
a little while and spent some time helping to start schools in
Nashville here where I live. But most recently I have turned
to this music project. I call it the Come Together
Music Project. It's a, it's a nonprofit.
(15:41):
And the way I would describe kind of that shift, somebody
asked me to say, why did you do?Why are you doing this?
Because you, you know, I'm not getting paid for it.
It's just kind of a passion project.
I still do my, you know, my day job is working in education.
I still care very much about that.
What I would say is like, you know, I spent 2025 years
(16:02):
preparing or trying to make surethat children are better
prepared to enter, you know, thethe constructive to, to be
productive and to enter the, theworld in a constructive way,
right? What I would say now is that I
think things have shifted and I am more concerned with making
(16:25):
sure that the country is ready for our children.
So rather than preparing them, Ithink we actually need to do a
whole lot to prepare our country, get it back to a place
where we can speak with one another, talk to one another, be
in relationship and community with one another.
Because that's something, you know, you were talking about
(16:47):
COVID. That's something that just
really deteriorated. We lost so much community and
everything got so polarized, so political.
You know, you can hardly have any opinion.
I'm, I'm sure probably somebody's going to leave you
comments about Sega Genesis and Super, you know, SNES and
talking about how terrible we are because we preferred one
(17:08):
over the other. And it's like we need to get
back to a place where we can have a conversation.
I think that music is a way to help people do that.
And so we started this project basically to show how music can
deepen existing relationships, create new ones and build
bridges. And so, yeah, happy to talk more
about that, but that's I've beenspending a lot more time on that
(17:29):
kind of in my in my spare time growing that organization.
I thought it fascinating that you are in these three worlds,
these three similar but different worlds.
One side is your lawyer and everything that comes with that,
(17:50):
and especially considering what's been going on with the
law these past few years. We've been busy.
Yes. Then on the other side, you, you
deal with education and then going back to everything that's
going on with the educational system these past few years in
general. And then I think it's the one,
(18:11):
Then it's the third side, the one thing that connects everyone
together. Whether you love it or hate it,
it's music. And I've always had the thing.
My thought process was that music is a universal language A.
100% agree. And it's the one genre that can
(18:31):
pretty much bring everyone together, no matter who you are.
A good song is a good song, people, no matter whether you're
racist, whether you're gay, trans, no matter what background
you come from. You know, a Michael Jackson song
when you hear it, you know, a Prince song when you hear it,
you know, a Boy George, Cyndi Lauper.
There are certain artists that transcends everything.
(18:55):
And music plays a huge part of that.
And I think it's it's one of thefew things that can even
transcend politics. And I know there are people
like, oh, how so? Because people that sit there
and say certain things about like the artists themselves, but
when that Beyoncé song comes on the radio, it hits.
(19:15):
They they listen to that Beyoncésong.
Man, I'm, I'm so glad that you mentioned that.
I mean, I'm plus one, all of that.
So let me say a funny story. So one of the first times that I
realized that this idea that there might be something to this
idea that I was having, OK, I was for work.
(19:35):
I was at this conference out in Colorado and it was a meeting of
Republican speakers of the House, OK?
So like, you know, every state has a legislature and whatever
it's got a House, got a Senate. And so they have a speaker in
the House. And and so this was one where a
(19:58):
lot of the Republican speakers of the House we're getting
together and it's just this like, you know, we were there to
to make a presentation about education, whatever.
OK. I'm at breakfast.
And so as you might imagine, this is a pretty conservative
group, right? It's a it's a conservative
group. It's a group that skews a little
bit older also, right? I mean, because these are people
(20:20):
who are in leadership position. So it's not, you're not talking
about like your 26 year old, these people who've been around
for a minute. OK, so I'm at breakfast.
I get up at breakfast and you know, the conference people
picked the, the breakfast. They, they coordinate
everything. They pick the playlist.
You know what's playing over theloudspeaker or over the speakers
(20:42):
as we're eating and stuff. And we're coming through the
line for breakfast. I'm coming through the buffet
line. And what do I hear?
Michael Jackson, PYT. And everybody is like coming
through the line, getting their eggs, whatever, getting their
little sausage, whatever. And just like feeling it.
(21:03):
And, and I looked around and I was like, I cannot believe I am
at this meeting. And the thing that everybody
right now is waking up to and feeling pretty good about is
PYT. And it's because to your point,
music is so universal. Music has been a part of every
known civilization. Music is a part of every, you
(21:28):
know, faith tradition, right? We did, we have it in worship
ceremonies of all kinds. It doesn't matter if you're, you
know, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, whatever.
Music is a part of this. There's this quote that I love
that says that every memory has a soundtrack all its own.
Music just takes you back. It helps you remember things.
So it is, it is kind of a universal language.
(21:49):
And so we're we're trying to useit in some really interesting
ways, I think, to bring people together.
You, you reminded me of something that happened earlier
this year where when the person,person who's in office now got
elected, they had like these inaugurational concerts and
stuff like that. And it became a big deal because
(22:11):
two artists that black culture love, Nelly and Snoop Dogg
performed at them. I remember being a good a big
deal. People were very mad at Nelly,
and Nelly put out a statement, and Snoop Dogg had to put out a
statement about it and everything like that.
And after, you know, after the, you know, the anger and stuff,
Todd calmed down from certain people.
One of the things that came to my mind was that Republicans
(22:34):
listen to Snoop Dogg. You know, they would, you know,
you know, I remember growing up that was like, you know, gin and
juice and all those songs. Yeah.
That that those songs were taboo, but now they're out here
like cheering Snoop on like it'sSnoop Dogg, he transcends that
it's Nelly we don't care about like have y'all heard of Snoop
(22:55):
Dogg's? And it's just so it just shows
you how good music really transcends everything.
Like, you know, even if you knowthere are people who like we
don't understand it, then futuregenerations understand it and
they're like, you know what, we don't care that's Snoop Dogg.
We want Snoop Dogg here. You know, it's crazy to think
that even people who don't see the same views that are group
(23:17):
the same thing the Snoop Dogg agrees with.
Still can't deny that Snoop Dogg's an amazing artist.
That's right, that's right. Yeah.
And and you know, so one of the one of the things that we do
when we have a session and you know, maybe you can come on on
the Come Together music podcast at some point.
Love to have you on and. Of course.
Because that would be a lot of fun.
(23:38):
So one of the the way that it works is I have two guests and
we do this virtually like on thepodcast, and we also do it in
person. So recently I was out in Arizona
kind of putting my worlds together.
I was out at the Arizona State University College of Law and my
guests were an Arizona Supreme Court Justice and a judge who's
(24:02):
on the Arizona Court of Appeals.One of them was more like
conservative libertarian. The other one was more
progressive, you know, kind of left-leaning.
They had never met before, all right, because one had just been
appointed. He's the newest judge on the
court. So we go out there and we're in
a room full of people. You know, there's students,
(24:22):
there's actually the the Chief Justice came out and she's
watching, which is a little bit intimidating because she's just,
you know, sitting there. So there's lawyers as students
is just people from the community came out.
And what I do is that I ask thema series of questions, kind of
like you have your, your five. I ask my guests a series of
(24:44):
questions and they change dependent upon the guests and
the guests have to respond to each question with a song.
So they have questions ahead of time and, and then what we do is
we listen to like 45 seconds of it and then they explain why.
And what I find is that that process for a, for a number of
(25:06):
different reasons, but the process of just sitting down
together, listening to music together, just being silent
still and, and hearing the musicright, all in a room together.
I, I actually think it, it's really helpful to just kind of
slow down because we're in this giant go go go culture.
(25:26):
And so you, you stop for a moment, you listen to it, then
you hear the story about why. So I'll give you an example.
The actually, I mean, there wereso many good ones from that
College of law one, but right out the gate, the question was,
what's the song that reminds youof your hometown?
OK, so the Supreme Court Justicepicks this song.
(25:46):
It's, it's a Billy Joel song called Allentown.
I'd never heard. Heard the song before.
Yeah. So you know Allentown, it's
about Allentown, PA and he's notfrom Allentown, but he's from a
a small city in New Jersey that's pretty close to
Allentown. And he said, you know, this just
I hit heard that song and alwaysreminded me of where I grew up.
So here's a guy, he's on the Arizona Supreme Court.
(26:10):
He started a firm, a law firm back in the day.
He's just like very accomplishedlawyer.
He said that when he grew up, hewould sit in the window.
I asked him, did you always wantto be a lawyer?
And he kind of got emotional. He said, no.
He said, you know, I could. I never imagined being a lawyer.
We lived in a town that was all working class.
(26:31):
Dad's a welder. He said, I remember sitting in
the front window and I would watch the sanitation truck drive
by and I thought, oh, man, it would be great to be a
sanitation truck driver because that's a that's a job that has
benefits and it's a steady job. He said, So that's what that's
what I aspired to. Never could have imagined being
(26:52):
on the Supreme Court. You never would have guessed
that about this man. You know, and that's part of
what I think music does is it forces us to kind of put our
assumptions aside, right. So like, it's easy to just
typecast. Oh, I know what a Republican
speaker of the House is going tobe like.
No, you don't. No, you don't.
You don't know that when that Republican speaker of the House
(27:13):
gets in his car, he puts on gin and juice.
Yes. You didn't know that you were
not anticipating that you don't know that he knows every word.
The thriller or whatever it is, you know, pick your pick your
song and music allows us to tellthose stories and I think kind
of recapture, reclaim some of our humanity.
(27:37):
I. Love that.
Let let me ask you a question. I think this is an important
question based off the word we're talking about.
Who introduced you to music? Oh, that's a great question.
That is a great question. You know, I probably have to say
I just remember there always kind of being music around, you
(27:58):
know, my, my, my mother. I mean, when I was a kid, my
parents divorced when I was young.
So for a while it's just me and my mom, me and my mom and and my
grandmother, my abuela that's out of the family's Puerto
Rican. And I remember my abuela would,
we would listen to a lot of music together.
And I remember I can picture even the house that we lived in.
(28:25):
I can picture my abuela playing DeBarge.
One of my favorite artists. She was super into DeBarge and
so I can picture it so I. Think it's probably.
Yeah, yeah, she really did. She really did.
So yeah, I think it kind of started internally, like family
and yeah. And I'm, you know, and I, I'm
(28:48):
not really a musician. I play a little bit, but like,
not great. It's, you know, I stick with
law, not music, but I just love it.
I just love it. And that's one of the one of the
other beautiful things about music.
It's not like you don't have to be a musician to go to a concert
and enjoy it every bit as much as somebody who's trained, you
(29:09):
know? I agree.
What was the last concert you think you went to?
Last concert I went to was Leon Bridges.
OK. Yeah.
Look up who Leon Bridges is. What kind of artist is Leon
Bridges? Leon Bridges is Leon.
(29:30):
He's he's a little bit younger than us.
He's probably that brothers. Probably, I don't know, 30.
I would. Say.
From Texas. And so he so he's kind of got an
interesting thing going on the alittle bit like obviously you
know, you mentioned Beyoncé earlier.
Obviously, Beyoncé is R&B pop. Yes.
(29:54):
But you know, she's from Houstonand she is.
And she's not faking. She is really from Houston like.
Houston girl, she's. A Houston girl, she can do
country. She knows that genre, you know.
And I think Leon Bridges really similar, like he came out, he's
playing guitar some, but some ofhis, he's got a full band with
(30:14):
him and some of his songs feel much more like a like a like neo
soul with a full band. So yeah.
I I asked that because the last concert I went to was with my
son for his birthday. He wanted to go see the weekend.
OK. And I've heard a weekend song
(30:35):
for, you know, I wouldn't like aa die hard weekend fan, but
what? So we went to the concert.
What amazed me was how multicultural the crowd was.
And like, I mean, like, it was acornucopia of races, blacks,
whites, Asians, all united singing these weekend songs,
(30:59):
like word for word, lyric for lyric.
And it was just an amazing sightto see that it was like, like,
truly people unified. Yeah.
And just just their mind is off of the the horrors of the world.
And just listening to weekend songs, loving life.
It's amazing. That's it.
This is this is music, right? I mean it.
(31:20):
And, and probably I don't want to, I don't want to overstate
it. It's your experience.
But when I went to this Leon Bridges concert, so it was here
in Nashville, is that this kind of historic theater is called
the Ryman Auditorium. And the Ryman, they call it the
Mother church because it was, itwas actually built, you know,
(31:41):
like a church. It's sort of taken over that
way. And it's got pews.
It's actually very uncomfortableseating because it's these old
wooden pews. But it's a mother church.
And when everybody's in there singing along, kind of like you
said, that's what it feels like.It feels like you're in a
worship service, right? And so again, I just think music
is such a, it can be such a unifier.
(32:03):
And so, you know, my thought is like, I don't think anybody's
going to leave our come togethermusic session and is necessarily
going to have changed their politics.
I'm not expecting that. What I what I do hope, though,
is that when they leave, they are much more willing to now
actually engage in conversation with this person, with somebody
(32:24):
who's different from them, because I say, you know what?
I didn't know Delvin, but we just found out that we really
had this in common. I heard a little bit of his
story. He's, he is a person.
He's got ideas, he's got things he cares about, just like me.
Now we can actually talk about, you know, the next things.
(32:47):
What I love about that is that what you're doing is kind of
like what I've been doing with this podcast for quite some time
now. You know, the tagline and
uniting the coastal diversity isa true statement.
You know, I've always reached out to people from different
cultures and different backgrounds, not because I knew
(33:08):
that background, their culture, because I want to learn.
I wanted other people to learn and open up the, the, the window
of conversation. So we may not get it, but we can
understand aspects of it. Like, OK, this guy, he may be
right leaning, but this is this is, This is why he's right
leaning on this guy. He may be super left, but This
(33:29):
is why he's super left and This is why he has these views.
But at the same time, we have a common ground with certain
things like, hey, our favorite show growing up was good times.
Or, you know, our favorite serial was Sentiment Toast
Crunch. And the, the, our core values
are still there. There's certain things that make
(33:50):
us human beings. Right.
But we have to get back to appreciating those things as
opposed to the things that don'tmake us human beings in terms.
Of man, I, I love that because Ithink, I think there's just so,
so much of that what you're talking about is lacking, right?
Not enough people are willing toeven engage.
You know, there's there's a statthat something like close to 51%
(34:12):
this maybe 2 years old now, but close to 51% of Gen.
Z avoided going home for Thanksgiving because they didn't
want to engage in conversations about politics and whatnot.
So Can you imagine? Right?
Like things got so bad that we don't even want to talk to
people around the dinner table, our family around the dinner
(34:33):
table because we kind of forgot to have those how to have the
conversations. So, yeah, what you're doing, the
willingness to be inquisitive about what other people believe,
why they believe that. And, and I think you're
absolutely right. Like if, if one of the things I
(34:53):
think that we risk when we get so frustrated and angry and
hostile and live and whatever, however you want to say it over
little kind of issues is that you end up breaking a
relationship over something thata year or two from now you go,
(35:16):
man, I can't believe we I lost afriend because we disagreed
about whether or not to take a certain type of medicine.
Yeah. That's crazy, right?
You really, you really stopped talking to your sister because
you guys had a different difference of opinion about
(35:37):
whether or not your children should have cell phones like
this stuff is. It's important, but it's not
that important. Yeah, I think people need to
realize as bad as things are right now, and I think they
probably will get worse before they get better, eventually
(35:58):
we're going to have to come together.
Yeah. We're going to have to have,
we're going to have a conversation about what
happened, how we got there and how we fix it.
That conversation is going to have to happen.
Yeah, whether whether we like itor not, it's going to have to
happen. It can't go on like this
forever. And we need to start opening
those doors now. We need to start opening those
(36:19):
doors now. Reconciliation, right?
Yes, opening those doors now andbeing united in terms of what we
can fix, because if we keep allowing these things to happen,
it's going to get worse. And it, and what I think the
thing that alarms about everything the most is the fact
that instead of trying to fix the problem and admitting like
(36:43):
we're wrong, or maybe we, we, weoverreacted on a certain things,
we just ignore it or we just like make excuses for it and it
causes the problem to get worse.And that's what I think we're
seeing right now as we watch oureconomy decline and things get
worse and worse, Instead of saying, Hey, we need to do
something about this to protect everybody, we're sitting here
(37:05):
trying to blame sides. We're trying to sit here and do
this. Well, they wouldn't do this, and
that's not solving the problem. Yeah.
Yeah, let us solve the problem. It's.
Constructive. Yeah, Yeah, for sure it's not
constructive. And you know, a couple years ago
I got to be a part of this, thisgroup called the Civil Society
Fellowship out of the Aspen Institute and really just
(37:29):
honored to be a part of that. It's like 15 of us from around
the country got to be, you know,part of this thing.
And it you talk about a diverse group.
I'm in this thing. There's one of my one of my
classmates is what or was, I should say, the secretary of
health for North Carolina. Another one is, you know, I've
(37:54):
got a a friend who's working on hunger and homelessness issues
in Texas. I've got a friend who's working
on water issues in, you know, California and, you know, on, on
Native American reservations. I mean, just people all over the
place, a police chief from Baltimore County, just very
different. And one of the things that we
(38:15):
found is that now these are someof my best friends, right?
Because why we stuck it out. And we said, you know what, we
are going to just like life on life, we're going to press
against each other and we're going to and that takes time.
It takes patience and we're going to get to know one another
and we're not going to agree about everything.
(38:37):
And that's fine. We might not even agree about a
majority of things, but we're going wait.
We know that we can still have the conversation.
We know that we can agree disagree.
We can disagree strongly even and still after the fact come
back together and be in relationship.
There was one I remember one of my one of my classmates, the
(39:02):
first session I had said something in a group and he got
it. It just did not hit him right.
It did not land on him. Well, I was not trying.
I promise. I wasn't trying to offend him or
anything. You know what I said something
and he just kind of like came back at me hard.
He was just like, you know, F that.
That's I don't I totally disagree.
(39:23):
And I mean he was it was coming in hot.
You Fast forward, the first person I got a call from when my
father passed away was him because we said, you know what?
There's what's important is whether or not we are going to
be in relationship with each other so that we can be with one
(39:43):
another when the big things happen.
Now in these little ticky tack, you know, flare ups pop up.
And so that I was super important for me to to see that
this is possible. And I'm so thankful to all those
friends and to that experience. And, and I wish that more
people, you know, could have experiences like that.
I think we can, but it, it probably means we have to like
(40:06):
get out of the 24 hour news cycle and stop being led by the
algorithm all the time. That's just trying to feed us
more, you know, hate and act like everything's on fire all
the time. I've always said it's a lot
harder to be sexist, racist, whatever stereotype you want to
have against somebody when they're your brother.
(40:27):
Yes. When you when you see them every
day and you communicate with them every day and you're like,
hey, that guy's not racist. That's Bob.
He does this. That's net right.
Or, or when you're having a culture like, hey, maybe you
shouldn't have said that. Like why it is this, this, this
OK, because you're you. I'll take your word for it and
agree with you. A lot of people are a lot more
willing to have that conversation when they know and
(40:50):
respect the person. Yes, yes, you, you know where,
where I see that actually, it's,that's really funny.
I've never thought about it thatway.
But you know, when we do this, we do this when it's our kids,
we do this all the time, right? Meaning when our kids, when our
(41:10):
kid, when somebody comes and tells you that your kid did
something bad, what do you do? You you go into defense mode.
Yes, you're like my kid. No, never not my my kid wouldn't
do that. We raised them much better than
that. They know better than to do
whatever. Fill in the blank thing right.
Meanwhile, if it's somebody else's kid who did the same
(41:31):
thing, we'd be like, I cannot believe that kid.
No manners who raised that kid, that kids.
You know why just whiling out all the time.
We do this with that kids. But but why?
It's because, yes, we are aroundthem all the time.
We deeply care for them, we lovethem, obviously, but we all are
also willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, even if
(41:52):
you know that your kid is a little Batty.
Yes. In public, we will, we will
defend them to the death and we will give them the benefit of
the doubt. And, and some of that we just
have to, yeah, be willing to extend to one another and be
like, hey, I know that you are offended by what Delvin said,
but let me tell. But let me tell you, I know him
and I don't think that's what hewas trying to do.
(42:14):
He certainly, he may have offended you, but he was
probably not trying to offend you, right?
And extending some grace so important.
Grace and understanding and context.
I think those are like a lot of point thing.
Like a lot of times you see things on the Internet without
the context of it. Then with the content on this a
whole different perspective likeoh this makes a lot more sense
(42:36):
then. Oh, yeah, Yeah.
Well, listen, I mean, you know this because you're, you've,
you've done hundreds of these podcasts now, right.
But if, if somebody wants to take some clip out of context,
they can probably find it. Yeah, right.
It's it's out there. And who knows how long the
(42:57):
internet's gonna last, but it's it's out there.
And so, yeah, I think we need tobe willing to kind of appreciate
the context and be willing to, you know, appreciate that
there's nuance with a lot of these issues.
You know, I, I would, I did a session come together music
session with two guys talking about context.
(43:21):
And I asked him a question. I said, hey, what's the song
that reminds you of COVID? Takes you back to COVID?
Great question. The one picked a song.
It was actually a jazz song. I did not know.
I think it was called I don't have time.
I forget the artist name, but itwas a jazz song.
(43:42):
And this, this particular guest,he's African American lawyer
down in New Orleans. He picked that song because he
said, Oh, yeah, I remember listening to that song during
Hurricane Ida because I had, I mean, you probably remember
because you're down there in hurricane territory.
(44:03):
But correct. You know, I had sort of
forgotten that during COVID, Hurricane Ida had come up and
hit, you know, New Orleans and kind of Houston, that area.
And so he had evacuated. So he was talking about that and
he was talking about listening to that song when he was on his
way back into New Orleans. And some friends told him, Hey,
you need to make sure you have gasoline, you know, generator
(44:27):
water and your firearm. And he was like, firearm, why do
I need a firearm? And they were like, because if
you're driving in with all thesesupplies, you need to make sure
you can defend yourself, you know, and he was like, man, I'm
not a I'm not a gun guy. He's a pretty, you know,
left-leaning, you know, progressive guy.
He's like, but there I was in Houston trying to figure out if
(44:49):
I can like how quickly I could buy a handgun.
All right, the other guy is thisconservative political science
professor white guy outside Nashville.
And the song he picked was the theme song to The Sopranos
because when COVID hit, he started rewatching The Sopranos.
(45:11):
And he and the, I don't know if you ever watched it, but the,
you know, the theme, the chorus to that song is woke up this
morning, got yourself a gun. Yeah, yeah.
One of my favorite non song samples then.
Yep, Yep, that's right. That's right.
Great song, by the way, Right. And so he said he picked it
because A, he started watching The Sopranos again and B, he
(45:31):
said when he would leave his house that everything was closed
except the gun shop. So we asked a question about
what music reminds you of COVID.We end up having this really
interesting discussion about firearms in the United States.
This liberal and conservative guy talking about this, if we, I
(45:56):
guarantee if we had just picked a, a liberal person and a
conservative person and we said,hey, let's have a conversation
about guns, they would have said, Nope, not interested.
Not interested because we kind of came in through the side
door. I mean, I, I didn't know the
conversation was going to go there.
I had no idea why they picked these songs, but that's where it
(46:16):
went. And I'll tell you, every time we
do this, there's something like that that surprises me that just
that I'm thankful for. And it's actually how we finish
every episode. I asked the guest to say, hey,
what's something that you heard that surprised you about the
other person? So we're trying to model it for
our audience to say, hey, this is these things are out there.
(46:38):
There's these surprises, these really unique things, almost
like Easter eggs. You just have to kind of keep
your eyes and ears open. Love it.
That is fantastic. So before we go, let them know
where to find you the podcast atwhere to check this stuff out
because this is amazing. I'm definitely going to come on
as soon as you let me come on. I'm all for it.
(47:01):
Love it. Yeah, we'd love to have you on.
And yeah, people can can check out what we're doing at Come
Together Music Project. That's the name of it.
Come Together Music Project. You can see we've got episodes
being uploaded to YouTube, we'reon Instagram, Spotify, iTunes,
all that come together. podcast.com is the website
(47:24):
cometogetherpodcast.com. And yeah, would love to, you
know, have your get your audience check it out 'cause I
really do think that music has got this power to help us find
common ground. And I think it's something that
really everybody can tap into. Agree man.
This has been a blast, man I'm honored.
(47:45):
Thank you for coming on the podcast, brother.
Super enjoyed it, thank you. My pleasure as always Devin Cox
experience. We are out peace.
This podcast is sponsored by patreon.com/devil Cock
Experience. If you want more content,
including exclusive shows, make sure you go to patreon.com/devil
Cock Experience. Also, special shout out to
Patreon producer Douglas Mcgirt Johnson.
(00:20):
Thank you. Music.
(01:16):
Welcome to the Delvin Cox Experience, the podcast which
each week I'm on a one man mission to United Coast to
diversity. I'm your host, Delvin Cox, and
with me on this podcast as a special guest, a brother who's
done and doing because he's not done yet, a lot of things,
including talk in front of Congress.
(01:36):
You may be the first person I'veever had on this podcast to talk
in front of Congress. My boy Shaka Mitch, how you
doing, brother? Hey, I'm doing all right,
Delvin. Yeah, I I was in front of
Congress and I made it out. That's the key.
I made it out. That's the more important one.
You talked in front of Congress and you survived it.
I survived. Yeah, that's right.
That's right. They should give you a T-shirt
on the way out. I survived Congress.
(01:58):
Yeah, I survived this Congress. It was good, though.
It was good. You know, I mean, it was, it's
wild. It's crazy to be up there, but
it was really an honor. And, you know, I mean, I was, I
was actually talking to my parents about it.
And, you know, if you would havetold them like 45 years ago,
(02:20):
hey, this little guy is going tobe, you know, have the
opportunity to go and share someof his expertise in front of the
US Congress. I mean, it's a, it's a pretty
special thing. Still, that's a huge deal no
matter what Congress is in frontof.
The idea that a black man is going in front of Congress and
sharing thing that's important to our society, Yeah, is there
(02:41):
was a time where that wouldn't happen, you know?
So the fact that isn't even happening is a big deal to me,
and I salute you for that. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Yeah, of course, of course.
As always, let's start the podcast off with the five for
five, five questions, 5 minutes to get the ball rolling.
Shaka, you ready? Let's do it.
OK question #1 as a kid, get up in the morning, get breakfast,
(03:07):
what type of cereal are you reaching for?
You know, as a kid, I really didlike Raisin Bran.
Oh, you like the old man cereal?I did.
In part because my parents neverbought us the good stuff.
Oh yeah, You know, like the realsugar.
So Raisin Bran was kind of like as close as we could get, you
(03:28):
know, to Lucky Charms. I get it.
I had, it's funny you mentioned that because I had that
conversation. My mom was in town this weekend.
I had that conversation with herabout like, why don't you just
buying us this crappy cereal? You're just going to like spent
the extra $0.30 and got us actual cereal that you.
Like, yeah, we there was always one box of Frosted Flakes, but
(03:49):
that was my dad's. And you knew like, don't mess
around with that box. Yeah, that's like my box of
Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But even then, my kids eat it.
They don't care. Like, whatever we just said.
The results crunch. All right.
Question #2 And this is an important question, but it's
also a question that kind of pertains to some of the things
(04:11):
you do. What are some of the songs in
your life that you think define who you are?
Man, that is a super challengingquestion.
Songs that define who I am. You know, I think a lot about
(04:33):
the songs that we kind of grew up with.
I mean, I'll tell you what, you know what?
Honestly, one of the first songsthat came to mind, it's because
my initials Shotgun Lawrence Mitchell.
It's like slam. You remember the song Slam by
Onyx? Of course, that's fantastic
(04:54):
song. Yeah, and I remember, but you
know, even more than the song, right, 'cause it's, I mean,
whatever. I was a kid.
I was in middle school, but I was in middle school.
Those are some formative years. I lived in New York on Long
Island. That song was huge.
We would listen to it a lot. So it just kind of takes me back
to growing up on Long Island with such a a mix of kids, such
(05:16):
a diverse, you know, school and student population.
So that would be one of them. You know, then we moved.
I I went to high school in in Marietta, GA, outside Atlanta.
So their songs like AT Aliens was big when I was in high
school. That's another one that's just
like a Seminole kind of song. So yeah, that that's, that's 2.
(05:37):
Those are two great ones, honestly, just that 2 great ones
from two different coasts. That kind of just define culture
like outcast and Onyx, you know they.
They really did like you. I mean, you really couldn't
touch either one of those groupsat the time.
Yes. You know, when they were, when
they were, like, in their prime,like, yeah.
I agree. Question #3 this is a This is a
(06:01):
fun question. The easy question.
All right, let's do it. When you're in the streets, you
walk around, who'd they say you look like, 'cause everybody had
that one guy was like, hey, you know, you like that guy.
You're like, I don't look nothing like.
That guy. Thank you.
Who do they say I look like? Man, you know, this is really,
(06:21):
it's kind of top of mind becausewe've been moving my grandmother
into like nursing care, nursing.Yeah.
And, and I really do favor my grandmother.
So every time I walk into the senior living place, old people
(06:42):
are like, you must be Emma's son, you must be Emma's
grandson. I'm like, I know, I know, I
know, I know, I know. So honestly that you know.
People, that's cool. That's a funny thing, but yeah,
who do people say I look like? They say I look like my
grandmother, which, you know, they're not.
Wrong. Yeah, that's really cool.
Yeah. Who do people say you look like?
Oh, I can't say I'll just podcast anymore.
(07:04):
That guy got cancelled. I can't.
Well, I can say it. When I was in high school, they
used to sell like Puff Daddy. I like, I don't like Puff Daddy.
I had like, that's back when I had more hair like, and now I'm
like, don't say I was like that guy now.
Yeah, yeah. No more.
You can't. Do that.
Now pick somebody else. But yeah, when I was when I was
in high school, I wore, I had like the shades and stuff like
(07:26):
that. And even these are transitional
glasses. I've always had like
transitional glasses. So when I was at school, I had
to like the dark shades because I was in the sunlight and stuff
like that. And they're like, oh, you like
Puff Daddy? Like, no, I don't like.
That's funny. You know who I was going to say?
I was going to say, I think you kind of look a little similar to
Eric's sermon. I'll.
I'll take that, I'll take that. I'm a puff, Danny.
(07:48):
Yeah, no, Diddy. Yeah.
No, Dan, Definitely no Diddy. Literally can't be saying that
now. Nope.
Nope. Question number.
What are we on #4 Number four question #4 Since we're I think
we have the same generation, I'mgoing to ask you a simple
(08:09):
question, Super Nintendo or SegaGenesis?
How was the Super Nintendo? What?
Was your favorite game on Super Nintendo?
I was the Super Nintendo. Oh man, on Super Nintendo, you
know? I was heavy in the Street
Fighter. Yeah, Street Fighter.
(08:30):
That's that's true. Street Fighter was.
That was probably the best game on Super Nintendo honestly.
I was amazed how close it lookedto the arcade version and I was
like this is this is incredible.Like even Mortal Kombat, I was
amazed how close it looked to the arcade version but the Super
Nintendo version didn't have thefatalities on.
(08:50):
Right, Yeah. I mean, Street Fighter, you
know, Ninja Turtles was a Super Nintendo game that, you know, I
remember playing a lot even though I didn't really, I wasn't
into Ninja Turtles. I remember playing that game a
lot because it was super popular.
I mean, Sega Genesis, not going to sleep on that though.
(09:11):
Oh, you know what it was though.I know what my favorite Super
Nintendo game was. It was Madden.
I mean. That's what Madden.
Was really coming up and I mean like Madden 95.
That's the one, yeah, Madden 5 was so.
Good Madden 95 you could not touch the Cowboys.
I mean, that's just how it was just.
(09:32):
Get Emma smipped the ball and run.
Done. It's a wrap.
It's a great game. Yep, I I missed when they made
games like that. I think that was one of the
Maddens that came out. I want to say a few years ago
that if you bought like the collector's edition it I think
it came with Madden 95 in it. Oh wow, yeah, I know.
I guess I got to play. I'm not going to be playing the
(09:52):
regular mad. I'm just gonna be playing Madden
95 again. Yeah, basically, you know, they
the the games, the sports games in particular, like Madden
started getting so intense. It was like this hybrid of
playing the game but also doing like a almost like an owner's
experience. And I was like, I just want to
play the game. I'm not trying to spent an
(10:13):
entire season. I mean, you just spent half your
life like making all these trades and whatnot.
And that was for me, that was just too much.
Yes, I don't do that for Madden.I do that.
I I do that for NBA 2K though. OK, NBA 2K, I'm all in.
I'm like making the trades. Like, you know, we're getting
LeBron back on the Heat. We're going to fix this roster
(10:34):
right back up. Question #5 shocking zombie
apocalypse happens Walking Dead style.
You got to take 5 things to go out in the world to survive.
What are the five things you're going to take out in the world
to survive? Your your family automatically
go over you so you don't have topick like which which is your
favorite kid? Nothing like that.
(10:55):
Only one of them gets to come Zombie.
OK, five things. What am I taking with me?
I am taking I, you know, I like to think that I'm pretty
resourceful so that there's a lot of things out there that I
can just like that I can work with like.
MacGyver, you like you like I'm.I'm going to take this rock and
(11:18):
make it to a sword. Yeah, I don't know about all
that. I don't know about all that.
But I have, you know, I've just read a lot of books about people
who have been in these just wildsituations.
So like, I know that one of the first things, you know, one of
the things that people forget about is water, right?
So many people when they're justout there in the woods by
themselves or whatever diet, dehydration because they don't
(11:39):
know 'cause they can't purify their water and they can't drink
it. So out the stream.
So, you know, I think I, I'd be pretty resourceful that way.
So, but you can't take enough water to last the zombie
apocalypse. So what am I taking with me?
And I, I think I would take honestly, I think I would take a
(12:02):
he maybe gasoline and a generator.
OK, that's good. Two good things.
'Cause I feel like that could, you know, spawn some of the next
things that you're gonna end up needing.
You know, I'm not really like a firearms guy, but I feel like.
You may need one. You know, be helpful, you know,
(12:24):
have a have some kind of weapon with you.
It did at distance 'cause I'm also not trying to get up close
and personal with, you know, zombies the the horde.
Yeah. I mean, I think you just have to
have like some kind of very goodmulti tool with you.
(12:45):
Yeah, kind of. That's a good idea.
Do that thing and then last thing, last thing, you know,
man, I feel I want to say you got to have something that's
gonna, you know, bring a little bit of joy.
Hard to know what that is hard, hard to hard to I think you'd
(13:09):
want to pack light. But, you know, I did read a book
and there was a similar thing. There was like a virus that
wiped out society. And one of the things that made
it through is all the people whowere musicians got together and
formed an orchestra. And I thought that was a pretty
beautiful thing, so. That's really cool.
So maybe I'll take some kind of instrument.
(13:29):
That's cool. I like that a lot.
You know when the pandemic happened in 20, that was
2019-2020. What happened?
20, Yeah, yeah. I got like really into like just
keeping stuff in my house just in case there was a power surge.
So like I like even now around my house.
I have you ever seen those giantbattery packs they sell now that
(13:53):
you can like you can change up. Camping and whatnot and
whatever. Yes I have like four of those.
I just can like just cuz I have a power surge in my house which
came in handy a few months ago, but I had like four of those.
I had like a generator and I almost bought.
I don't know if you've ever seenthis before.
The straws that they have that you can take to a stream and
(14:17):
drink from the stream and put the purify the water from the
stream. Filters it.
Yes. Oh, that's cool.
I was almost like, maybe I should buy this just in case
something happens. Yeah, like I don't want to drink
from the stream. Sound like a bad idea.
Don't. Do it.
I don't know if this straw worksAmazon.
Yeah, that's the truth. All the instructions are in, you
(14:38):
know, Chinese or Korean or something.
And you're like, well, we'll see.
We'll see. Definitely won't work for me
then. I have malaria, that's right.
That's good. So, so Shaka, let all these
people know some of the things you do because you do a lot,
especially when it comes to music and stuff.
Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for, you know,
(14:59):
again for having me on. It's good to just kind of chop
it up a little bit with you. And yeah, you know, so most of
my professional career has been in education and education
policy, advocacy, whatever. I'm a lawyer by training.
And so I spent a lot of time working on laws and legislation,
(15:21):
you know, in various states, mostly having to do with
education. I was a school administrator for
a little while and spent some time helping to start schools in
Nashville here where I live. But most recently I have turned
to this music project. I call it the Come Together
Music Project. It's a, it's a nonprofit.
(15:41):
And the way I would describe kind of that shift, somebody
asked me to say, why did you do?Why are you doing this?
Because you, you know, I'm not getting paid for it.
It's just kind of a passion project.
I still do my, you know, my day job is working in education.
I still care very much about that.
What I would say is like, you know, I spent 2025 years
(16:02):
preparing or trying to make surethat children are better
prepared to enter, you know, thethe constructive to, to be
productive and to enter the, theworld in a constructive way,
right? What I would say now is that I
think things have shifted and I am more concerned with making
(16:25):
sure that the country is ready for our children.
So rather than preparing them, Ithink we actually need to do a
whole lot to prepare our country, get it back to a place
where we can speak with one another, talk to one another, be
in relationship and community with one another.
Because that's something, you know, you were talking about
(16:47):
COVID. That's something that just
really deteriorated. We lost so much community and
everything got so polarized, so political.
You know, you can hardly have any opinion.
I'm, I'm sure probably somebody's going to leave you
comments about Sega Genesis and Super, you know, SNES and
talking about how terrible we are because we preferred one
(17:08):
over the other. And it's like we need to get
back to a place where we can have a conversation.
I think that music is a way to help people do that.
And so we started this project basically to show how music can
deepen existing relationships, create new ones and build
bridges. And so, yeah, happy to talk more
about that, but that's I've beenspending a lot more time on that
(17:29):
kind of in my in my spare time growing that organization.
I thought it fascinating that you are in these three worlds,
these three similar but different worlds.
One side is your lawyer and everything that comes with that,
(17:50):
and especially considering what's been going on with the
law these past few years. We've been busy.
Yes. Then on the other side, you, you
deal with education and then going back to everything that's
going on with the educational system these past few years in
general. And then I think it's the one,
(18:11):
Then it's the third side, the one thing that connects everyone
together. Whether you love it or hate it,
it's music. And I've always had the thing.
My thought process was that music is a universal language A.
100% agree. And it's the one genre that can
(18:31):
pretty much bring everyone together, no matter who you are.
A good song is a good song, people, no matter whether you're
racist, whether you're gay, trans, no matter what background
you come from. You know, a Michael Jackson song
when you hear it, you know, a Prince song when you hear it,
you know, a Boy George, Cyndi Lauper.
There are certain artists that transcends everything.
(18:55):
And music plays a huge part of that.
And I think it's it's one of thefew things that can even
transcend politics. And I know there are people
like, oh, how so? Because people that sit there
and say certain things about like the artists themselves, but
when that Beyoncé song comes on the radio, it hits.
(19:15):
They they listen to that Beyoncésong.
Man, I'm, I'm so glad that you mentioned that.
I mean, I'm plus one, all of that.
So let me say a funny story. So one of the first times that I
realized that this idea that there might be something to this
idea that I was having, OK, I was for work.
(19:35):
I was at this conference out in Colorado and it was a meeting of
Republican speakers of the House, OK?
So like, you know, every state has a legislature and whatever
it's got a House, got a Senate. And so they have a speaker in
the House. And and so this was one where a
(19:58):
lot of the Republican speakers of the House we're getting
together and it's just this like, you know, we were there to
to make a presentation about education, whatever.
OK. I'm at breakfast.
And so as you might imagine, this is a pretty conservative
group, right? It's a it's a conservative
group. It's a group that skews a little
bit older also, right? I mean, because these are people
(20:20):
who are in leadership position. So it's not, you're not talking
about like your 26 year old, these people who've been around
for a minute. OK, so I'm at breakfast.
I get up at breakfast and you know, the conference people
picked the, the breakfast. They, they coordinate
everything. They pick the playlist.
You know what's playing over theloudspeaker or over the speakers
(20:42):
as we're eating and stuff. And we're coming through the
line for breakfast. I'm coming through the buffet
line. And what do I hear?
Michael Jackson, PYT. And everybody is like coming
through the line, getting their eggs, whatever, getting their
little sausage, whatever. And just like feeling it.
(21:03):
And, and I looked around and I was like, I cannot believe I am
at this meeting. And the thing that everybody
right now is waking up to and feeling pretty good about is
PYT. And it's because to your point,
music is so universal. Music has been a part of every
known civilization. Music is a part of every, you
(21:28):
know, faith tradition, right? We did, we have it in worship
ceremonies of all kinds. It doesn't matter if you're, you
know, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, whatever.
Music is a part of this. There's this quote that I love
that says that every memory has a soundtrack all its own.
Music just takes you back. It helps you remember things.
So it is, it is kind of a universal language.
(21:49):
And so we're we're trying to useit in some really interesting
ways, I think, to bring people together.
You, you reminded me of something that happened earlier
this year where when the person,person who's in office now got
elected, they had like these inaugurational concerts and
stuff like that. And it became a big deal because
(22:11):
two artists that black culture love, Nelly and Snoop Dogg
performed at them. I remember being a good a big
deal. People were very mad at Nelly,
and Nelly put out a statement, and Snoop Dogg had to put out a
statement about it and everything like that.
And after, you know, after the, you know, the anger and stuff,
Todd calmed down from certain people.
One of the things that came to my mind was that Republicans
(22:34):
listen to Snoop Dogg. You know, they would, you know,
you know, I remember growing up that was like, you know, gin and
juice and all those songs. Yeah.
That that those songs were taboo, but now they're out here
like cheering Snoop on like it'sSnoop Dogg, he transcends that
it's Nelly we don't care about like have y'all heard of Snoop
(22:55):
Dogg's? And it's just so it just shows
you how good music really transcends everything.
Like, you know, even if you knowthere are people who like we
don't understand it, then futuregenerations understand it and
they're like, you know what, we don't care that's Snoop Dogg.
We want Snoop Dogg here. You know, it's crazy to think
that even people who don't see the same views that are group
(23:17):
the same thing the Snoop Dogg agrees with.
Still can't deny that Snoop Dogg's an amazing artist.
That's right, that's right. Yeah.
And and you know, so one of the one of the things that we do
when we have a session and you know, maybe you can come on on
the Come Together music podcast at some point.
Love to have you on and. Of course.
Because that would be a lot of fun.
(23:38):
So one of the the way that it works is I have two guests and
we do this virtually like on thepodcast, and we also do it in
person. So recently I was out in Arizona
kind of putting my worlds together.
I was out at the Arizona State University College of Law and my
guests were an Arizona Supreme Court Justice and a judge who's
(24:02):
on the Arizona Court of Appeals.One of them was more like
conservative libertarian. The other one was more
progressive, you know, kind of left-leaning.
They had never met before, all right, because one had just been
appointed. He's the newest judge on the
court. So we go out there and we're in
a room full of people. You know, there's students,
(24:22):
there's actually the the Chief Justice came out and she's
watching, which is a little bit intimidating because she's just,
you know, sitting there. So there's lawyers as students
is just people from the community came out.
And what I do is that I ask thema series of questions, kind of
like you have your, your five. I ask my guests a series of
(24:44):
questions and they change dependent upon the guests and
the guests have to respond to each question with a song.
So they have questions ahead of time and, and then what we do is
we listen to like 45 seconds of it and then they explain why.
And what I find is that that process for a, for a number of
(25:06):
different reasons, but the process of just sitting down
together, listening to music together, just being silent
still and, and hearing the musicright, all in a room together.
I, I actually think it, it's really helpful to just kind of
slow down because we're in this giant go go go culture.
(25:26):
And so you, you stop for a moment, you listen to it, then
you hear the story about why. So I'll give you an example.
The actually, I mean, there wereso many good ones from that
College of law one, but right out the gate, the question was,
what's the song that reminds youof your hometown?
OK, so the Supreme Court Justicepicks this song.
(25:46):
It's, it's a Billy Joel song called Allentown.
I'd never heard. Heard the song before.
Yeah. So you know Allentown, it's
about Allentown, PA and he's notfrom Allentown, but he's from a
a small city in New Jersey that's pretty close to
Allentown. And he said, you know, this just
I hit heard that song and alwaysreminded me of where I grew up.
So here's a guy, he's on the Arizona Supreme Court.
(26:10):
He started a firm, a law firm back in the day.
He's just like very accomplishedlawyer.
He said that when he grew up, hewould sit in the window.
I asked him, did you always wantto be a lawyer?
And he kind of got emotional. He said, no.
He said, you know, I could. I never imagined being a lawyer.
We lived in a town that was all working class.
(26:31):
Dad's a welder. He said, I remember sitting in
the front window and I would watch the sanitation truck drive
by and I thought, oh, man, it would be great to be a
sanitation truck driver because that's a that's a job that has
benefits and it's a steady job. He said, So that's what that's
what I aspired to. Never could have imagined being
(26:52):
on the Supreme Court. You never would have guessed
that about this man. You know, and that's part of
what I think music does is it forces us to kind of put our
assumptions aside, right. So like, it's easy to just
typecast. Oh, I know what a Republican
speaker of the House is going tobe like.
No, you don't. No, you don't.
You don't know that when that Republican speaker of the House
(27:13):
gets in his car, he puts on gin and juice.
Yes. You didn't know that you were
not anticipating that you don't know that he knows every word.
The thriller or whatever it is, you know, pick your pick your
song and music allows us to tellthose stories and I think kind
of recapture, reclaim some of our humanity.
(27:37):
I. Love that.
Let let me ask you a question. I think this is an important
question based off the word we're talking about.
Who introduced you to music? Oh, that's a great question.
That is a great question. You know, I probably have to say
I just remember there always kind of being music around, you
(27:58):
know, my, my, my mother. I mean, when I was a kid, my
parents divorced when I was young.
So for a while it's just me and my mom, me and my mom and and my
grandmother, my abuela that's out of the family's Puerto
Rican. And I remember my abuela would,
we would listen to a lot of music together.
And I remember I can picture even the house that we lived in.
(28:25):
I can picture my abuela playing DeBarge.
One of my favorite artists. She was super into DeBarge and
so I can picture it so I. Think it's probably.
Yeah, yeah, she really did. She really did.
So yeah, I think it kind of started internally, like family
and yeah. And I'm, you know, and I, I'm
(28:48):
not really a musician. I play a little bit, but like,
not great. It's, you know, I stick with
law, not music, but I just love it.
I just love it. And that's one of the one of the
other beautiful things about music.
It's not like you don't have to be a musician to go to a concert
and enjoy it every bit as much as somebody who's trained, you
(29:09):
know? I agree.
What was the last concert you think you went to?
Last concert I went to was Leon Bridges.
OK. Yeah.
Look up who Leon Bridges is. What kind of artist is Leon
Bridges? Leon Bridges is Leon.
(29:30):
He's he's a little bit younger than us.
He's probably that brothers. Probably, I don't know, 30.
I would. Say.
From Texas. And so he so he's kind of got an
interesting thing going on the alittle bit like obviously you
know, you mentioned Beyoncé earlier.
Obviously, Beyoncé is R&B pop. Yes.
(29:54):
But you know, she's from Houstonand she is.
And she's not faking. She is really from Houston like.
Houston girl, she's. A Houston girl, she can do
country. She knows that genre, you know.
And I think Leon Bridges really similar, like he came out, he's
playing guitar some, but some ofhis, he's got a full band with
(30:14):
him and some of his songs feel much more like a like a like neo
soul with a full band. So yeah.
I I asked that because the last concert I went to was with my
son for his birthday. He wanted to go see the weekend.
OK. And I've heard a weekend song
(30:35):
for, you know, I wouldn't like aa die hard weekend fan, but
what? So we went to the concert.
What amazed me was how multicultural the crowd was.
And like, I mean, like, it was acornucopia of races, blacks,
whites, Asians, all united singing these weekend songs,
(30:59):
like word for word, lyric for lyric.
And it was just an amazing sightto see that it was like, like,
truly people unified. Yeah.
And just just their mind is off of the the horrors of the world.
And just listening to weekend songs, loving life.
It's amazing. That's it.
This is this is music, right? I mean it.
(31:20):
And, and probably I don't want to, I don't want to overstate
it. It's your experience.
But when I went to this Leon Bridges concert, so it was here
in Nashville, is that this kind of historic theater is called
the Ryman Auditorium. And the Ryman, they call it the
Mother church because it was, itwas actually built, you know,
(31:41):
like a church. It's sort of taken over that
way. And it's got pews.
It's actually very uncomfortableseating because it's these old
wooden pews. But it's a mother church.
And when everybody's in there singing along, kind of like you
said, that's what it feels like.It feels like you're in a
worship service, right? And so again, I just think music
is such a, it can be such a unifier.
(32:03):
And so, you know, my thought is like, I don't think anybody's
going to leave our come togethermusic session and is necessarily
going to have changed their politics.
I'm not expecting that. What I what I do hope, though,
is that when they leave, they are much more willing to now
actually engage in conversation with this person, with somebody
(32:24):
who's different from them, because I say, you know what?
I didn't know Delvin, but we just found out that we really
had this in common. I heard a little bit of his
story. He's, he is a person.
He's got ideas, he's got things he cares about, just like me.
Now we can actually talk about, you know, the next things.
(32:47):
What I love about that is that what you're doing is kind of
like what I've been doing with this podcast for quite some time
now. You know, the tagline and
uniting the coastal diversity isa true statement.
You know, I've always reached out to people from different
cultures and different backgrounds, not because I knew
(33:08):
that background, their culture, because I want to learn.
I wanted other people to learn and open up the, the, the window
of conversation. So we may not get it, but we can
understand aspects of it. Like, OK, this guy, he may be
right leaning, but this is this is, This is why he's right
leaning on this guy. He may be super left, but This
(33:29):
is why he's super left and This is why he has these views.
But at the same time, we have a common ground with certain
things like, hey, our favorite show growing up was good times.
Or, you know, our favorite serial was Sentiment Toast
Crunch. And the, the, our core values
are still there. There's certain things that make
(33:50):
us human beings. Right.
But we have to get back to appreciating those things as
opposed to the things that don'tmake us human beings in terms.
Of man, I, I love that because Ithink, I think there's just so,
so much of that what you're talking about is lacking, right?
Not enough people are willing toeven engage.
You know, there's there's a statthat something like close to 51%
(34:12):
this maybe 2 years old now, but close to 51% of Gen.
Z avoided going home for Thanksgiving because they didn't
want to engage in conversations about politics and whatnot.
So Can you imagine? Right?
Like things got so bad that we don't even want to talk to
people around the dinner table, our family around the dinner
(34:33):
table because we kind of forgot to have those how to have the
conversations. So, yeah, what you're doing, the
willingness to be inquisitive about what other people believe,
why they believe that. And, and I think you're
absolutely right. Like if, if one of the things I
(34:53):
think that we risk when we get so frustrated and angry and
hostile and live and whatever, however you want to say it over
little kind of issues is that you end up breaking a
relationship over something thata year or two from now you go,
(35:16):
man, I can't believe we I lost afriend because we disagreed
about whether or not to take a certain type of medicine.
Yeah. That's crazy, right?
You really, you really stopped talking to your sister because
you guys had a different difference of opinion about
(35:37):
whether or not your children should have cell phones like
this stuff is. It's important, but it's not
that important. Yeah, I think people need to
realize as bad as things are right now, and I think they
probably will get worse before they get better, eventually
(35:58):
we're going to have to come together.
Yeah. We're going to have to have,
we're going to have a conversation about what
happened, how we got there and how we fix it.
That conversation is going to have to happen.
Yeah, whether whether we like itor not, it's going to have to
happen. It can't go on like this
forever. And we need to start opening
those doors now. We need to start opening those
(36:19):
doors now. Reconciliation, right?
Yes, opening those doors now andbeing united in terms of what we
can fix, because if we keep allowing these things to happen,
it's going to get worse. And it, and what I think the
thing that alarms about everything the most is the fact
that instead of trying to fix the problem and admitting like
(36:43):
we're wrong, or maybe we, we, weoverreacted on a certain things,
we just ignore it or we just like make excuses for it and it
causes the problem to get worse.And that's what I think we're
seeing right now as we watch oureconomy decline and things get
worse and worse, Instead of saying, Hey, we need to do
something about this to protect everybody, we're sitting here
(37:05):
trying to blame sides. We're trying to sit here and do
this. Well, they wouldn't do this, and
that's not solving the problem. Yeah.
Yeah, let us solve the problem. It's.
Constructive. Yeah, Yeah, for sure it's not
constructive. And you know, a couple years ago
I got to be a part of this, thisgroup called the Civil Society
Fellowship out of the Aspen Institute and really just
(37:29):
honored to be a part of that. It's like 15 of us from around
the country got to be, you know,part of this thing.
And it you talk about a diverse group.
I'm in this thing. There's one of my one of my
classmates is what or was, I should say, the secretary of
health for North Carolina. Another one is, you know, I've
(37:54):
got a a friend who's working on hunger and homelessness issues
in Texas. I've got a friend who's working
on water issues in, you know, California and, you know, on, on
Native American reservations. I mean, just people all over the
place, a police chief from Baltimore County, just very
different. And one of the things that we
(38:15):
found is that now these are someof my best friends, right?
Because why we stuck it out. And we said, you know what, we
are going to just like life on life, we're going to press
against each other and we're going to and that takes time.
It takes patience and we're going to get to know one another
and we're not going to agree about everything.
(38:37):
And that's fine. We might not even agree about a
majority of things, but we're going wait.
We know that we can still have the conversation.
We know that we can agree disagree.
We can disagree strongly even and still after the fact come
back together and be in relationship.
There was one I remember one of my one of my classmates, the
(39:02):
first session I had said something in a group and he got
it. It just did not hit him right.
It did not land on him. Well, I was not trying.
I promise. I wasn't trying to offend him or
anything. You know what I said something
and he just kind of like came back at me hard.
He was just like, you know, F that.
That's I don't I totally disagree.
(39:23):
And I mean he was it was coming in hot.
You Fast forward, the first person I got a call from when my
father passed away was him because we said, you know what?
There's what's important is whether or not we are going to
be in relationship with each other so that we can be with one
(39:43):
another when the big things happen.
Now in these little ticky tack, you know, flare ups pop up.
And so that I was super important for me to to see that
this is possible. And I'm so thankful to all those
friends and to that experience. And, and I wish that more
people, you know, could have experiences like that.
I think we can, but it, it probably means we have to like
(40:06):
get out of the 24 hour news cycle and stop being led by the
algorithm all the time. That's just trying to feed us
more, you know, hate and act like everything's on fire all
the time. I've always said it's a lot
harder to be sexist, racist, whatever stereotype you want to
have against somebody when they're your brother.
(40:27):
Yes. When you when you see them every
day and you communicate with them every day and you're like,
hey, that guy's not racist. That's Bob.
He does this. That's net right.
Or, or when you're having a culture like, hey, maybe you
shouldn't have said that. Like why it is this, this, this
OK, because you're you. I'll take your word for it and
agree with you. A lot of people are a lot more
willing to have that conversation when they know and
(40:50):
respect the person. Yes, yes, you, you know where,
where I see that actually, it's,that's really funny.
I've never thought about it thatway.
But you know, when we do this, we do this when it's our kids,
we do this all the time, right? Meaning when our kids, when our
(41:10):
kid, when somebody comes and tells you that your kid did
something bad, what do you do? You you go into defense mode.
Yes, you're like my kid. No, never not my my kid wouldn't
do that. We raised them much better than
that. They know better than to do
whatever. Fill in the blank thing right.
Meanwhile, if it's somebody else's kid who did the same
(41:31):
thing, we'd be like, I cannot believe that kid.
No manners who raised that kid, that kids.
You know why just whiling out all the time.
We do this with that kids. But but why?
It's because, yes, we are aroundthem all the time.
We deeply care for them, we lovethem, obviously, but we all are
also willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, even if
(41:52):
you know that your kid is a little Batty.
Yes. In public, we will, we will
defend them to the death and we will give them the benefit of
the doubt. And, and some of that we just
have to, yeah, be willing to extend to one another and be
like, hey, I know that you are offended by what Delvin said,
but let me tell. But let me tell you, I know him
and I don't think that's what hewas trying to do.
(42:14):
He certainly, he may have offended you, but he was
probably not trying to offend you, right?
And extending some grace so important.
Grace and understanding and context.
I think those are like a lot of point thing.
Like a lot of times you see things on the Internet without
the context of it. Then with the content on this a
whole different perspective likeoh this makes a lot more sense
(42:36):
then. Oh, yeah, Yeah.
Well, listen, I mean, you know this because you're, you've,
you've done hundreds of these podcasts now, right.
But if, if somebody wants to take some clip out of context,
they can probably find it. Yeah, right.
It's it's out there. And who knows how long the
(42:57):
internet's gonna last, but it's it's out there.
And so, yeah, I think we need tobe willing to kind of appreciate
the context and be willing to, you know, appreciate that
there's nuance with a lot of these issues.
You know, I, I would, I did a session come together music
session with two guys talking about context.
(43:21):
And I asked him a question. I said, hey, what's the song
that reminds you of COVID? Takes you back to COVID?
Great question. The one picked a song.
It was actually a jazz song. I did not know.
I think it was called I don't have time.
I forget the artist name, but itwas a jazz song.
(43:42):
And this, this particular guest,he's African American lawyer
down in New Orleans. He picked that song because he
said, Oh, yeah, I remember listening to that song during
Hurricane Ida because I had, I mean, you probably remember
because you're down there in hurricane territory.
(44:03):
But correct. You know, I had sort of
forgotten that during COVID, Hurricane Ida had come up and
hit, you know, New Orleans and kind of Houston, that area.
And so he had evacuated. So he was talking about that and
he was talking about listening to that song when he was on his
way back into New Orleans. And some friends told him, Hey,
you need to make sure you have gasoline, you know, generator
(44:27):
water and your firearm. And he was like, firearm, why do
I need a firearm? And they were like, because if
you're driving in with all thesesupplies, you need to make sure
you can defend yourself, you know, and he was like, man, I'm
not a I'm not a gun guy. He's a pretty, you know,
left-leaning, you know, progressive guy.
He's like, but there I was in Houston trying to figure out if
(44:49):
I can like how quickly I could buy a handgun.
All right, the other guy is thisconservative political science
professor white guy outside Nashville.
And the song he picked was the theme song to The Sopranos
because when COVID hit, he started rewatching The Sopranos.
(45:11):
And he and the, I don't know if you ever watched it, but the,
you know, the theme, the chorus to that song is woke up this
morning, got yourself a gun. Yeah, yeah.
One of my favorite non song samples then.
Yep, Yep, that's right. That's right.
Great song, by the way, Right. And so he said he picked it
because A, he started watching The Sopranos again and B, he
(45:31):
said when he would leave his house that everything was closed
except the gun shop. So we asked a question about
what music reminds you of COVID.We end up having this really
interesting discussion about firearms in the United States.
This liberal and conservative guy talking about this, if we, I
(45:56):
guarantee if we had just picked a, a liberal person and a
conservative person and we said,hey, let's have a conversation
about guns, they would have said, Nope, not interested.
Not interested because we kind of came in through the side
door. I mean, I, I didn't know the
conversation was going to go there.
I had no idea why they picked these songs, but that's where it
(46:16):
went. And I'll tell you, every time we
do this, there's something like that that surprises me that just
that I'm thankful for. And it's actually how we finish
every episode. I asked the guest to say, hey,
what's something that you heard that surprised you about the
other person? So we're trying to model it for
our audience to say, hey, this is these things are out there.
(46:38):
There's these surprises, these really unique things, almost
like Easter eggs. You just have to kind of keep
your eyes and ears open. Love it.
That is fantastic. So before we go, let them know
where to find you the podcast atwhere to check this stuff out
because this is amazing. I'm definitely going to come on
as soon as you let me come on. I'm all for it.
(47:01):
Love it. Yeah, we'd love to have you on.
And yeah, people can can check out what we're doing at Come
Together Music Project. That's the name of it.
Come Together Music Project. You can see we've got episodes
being uploaded to YouTube, we'reon Instagram, Spotify, iTunes,
all that come together. podcast.com is the website
(47:24):
cometogetherpodcast.com. And yeah, would love to, you
know, have your get your audience check it out 'cause I
really do think that music has got this power to help us find
common ground. And I think it's something that
really everybody can tap into. Agree man.
This has been a blast, man I'm honored.
(47:45):
Thank you for coming on the podcast, brother.
Super enjoyed it, thank you. My pleasure as always Devin Cox
experience. We are out peace.
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