History of The Global Jam 4 Peace
THE VISION: Back before the turn of the century, in the late 1900's, a small boy on a sunny island received a life Vision. He had arrived on Summer vacation and quickly became mesmerized by the natural surroundings of the tropical landscape where the music of nature was bursting with the brilliance of life climbing to a crescendo one minute, and shifting to silence in another. He studied the movement of animals, birds, reptiles, and even the salty breezes on sandy beaches. He watched the mighty Atlantic ocean thrusting back and forth into Florida Bay each day. He found it to be a paradise where the symphony of all life ebbs and flows abundantly. The vacation extended into months, a new school year, and into the next Summer. He listened to songs on a small portable battery radio and sang along with every style of music he heard. His single speaker record player spun vinyl daily. During the adventures that youth will find in the moments of curiosity, something became evident in this boy's experience. Music was more than just something you listen to on the turntable or the radio. Music is an experience. It is energy, it is moving, and it is alive. It was akin to the natural surroundings of the islands. Music is dancing energy with mysteries weaved into it that are asking for it's unraveling.
The vision the boy discovered was a mission to bring peace, love, and unity to people around the entire globe. It came as a tale of woes and wise, music and adventure. The boy was impassioned to write about what he could see in his mind. He took thin lined paper and a big round pencil and began journaling the story. His mother repeatedly looked on with intrigue. He finished 13 pages, front, and back, in less than a week. For this nine-year-old boy in the Summer of 77, it was an excellent first draft. The vision came from the world of the unseen. An angsty teenage boy wrote it down again. The story expanded and inspired him more, and as he woke each day, he began to live it in his daydream adventures. The young man impelled by his Vision began searching for a way to bring this VISION into real life.
He strummed a guitar, and he learned a few chords. He created songs, wrote down poems and let his heart paint magic on the page and etch emotion into the air. He opened a door at the back of his mind and took the stairs into the depth of his soul. He found the footprints of mentors, and he followed. He learned the joy of giving and the power of helping others. He smiled through tragedy and encouraged others to do the same.
The call of wild places coaxed him along for the next two decades. Every experience fed his curiosity and led him deeper and sometimes into dangerous places. He lived and learned and encountered many new faces.
He briefly rock the local stages of the saloons in the fabulous Florida Keys until his band crash into a rocky reality. Two band members were arrested for robbing banks after years of eluding the FBI, and a authorities in several states.
Fast-forward to 2001. After series of misfortunes and attempts to shift out of despair and desperation, just beginning his third decade this young man ventured into the wilderness to shed feelings that were spinning around inside his heart and his mind. He carried a guitar with him through most of his travels. Songs were coming through him. At this point, he had acquired several years of wilderness survival/search and rescue training and had spent time teaching and continuing to learn from experts in the field of tracking and awareness. He studied the rhythms of nature with the voices, calls, and songs of birds and animals ebbing and flowing with the movement of light energy of the sunrise and sunset. The sun rays composed unique symphonies with it's warm and bright touch on trees, grasses, waters, birds, and animals. He tracked coyotes and rabbits, owls and ants, and mice on mossy rocks. He listened to the melody of the waters in the creeks and waterways. All of this led him deeper within the mysteries of life and deeper within himself, looking at choices he made through his years. With an introspective mind's eye, he viewed himself from above as if watching a movie. He saw himself growing tired of his backbreaking profession as a carpenter in the construction industry, and his doctor advising his need for an MRI, and then back surgery.
With that advice, he had reluctantly moved into construction management which proved to be mentally stressful and spiritually unfulfilling.
Feeling the constant call of music and the vision of peace, he set out on a traditional vision quest. During his time with his wilderness survival teachers, he'd spent many hours learning about how to embark on a vision quest. On a chilly Mother's Day weekend he headed into the woods for a full 96 hours. He took only water and his desire for answers. The full story is available in his epic autobiography Set Me Free: The True Story of A Real Guitar Hero (Release Summer 2018 (The Full Motion Picture Coming in 2019).
In spring of 2005, Gregg Hammond began his full-time profession of teaching guitar lessons with a full schedule of eager students ranging from all levels and experience. There was a strong desire from many students who were requesting to understand the elements of playing with other musicians. Gregg started a guitar circle at the local park down the street. Meridian Hill Park at 16th and W St. NW. Washington DC. Each Sunday his students gathered for a jam session, and Gregg facilitated the jam, using easy songs and simple scales.
Meridian Hill Park's musical history included many concerts and performances by well-known musicians before the economic decline of Washington DC in the 1970s. Not yet knowing this Gregg recalls being drawn in by the energy of the park, although the neighborhood was considered dangerous and the park was not a place to venture alone.
In 2007, in a Q&A session with Joe Satriani Gregg asked: "Joe, as a guitar teacher talking to a guitars teacher, what would you recommend as the most important thing for me to pass along to my students?" Joe's answer was a long one shared in the form of a story. The summary: "make sure students know the importance of playing with other musicians as soon as possible. Don't spend too much time alone in the practice room." Joe's answer was a confirmation that Gregg was doing a great thing for his students. These jam sessions grew, and more musicians on multiple instruments started joining in.
One Winter night while walking home from U St NW DC with a hot sandwich from YUM's Take Out he rounded the corner of 14th Street NW. A white Toyota sedan made the turn and parked at the edge of an alley on Florida Avenue. Two teenagers jumped out, pulled a gun and attempted to rob Gregg. His wilderness survival training kicked in, and he surprised the youth, fouling their attempt. He disappeared out of their sight, escaping and making a call the Washington DC MPD. The officers told him that he was lucky to be alive. This type of crime happens all the time in DC. And indeed a few months later a red jeep wrangler pulled over, and four youth jumped out to ambush Gregg. He fouled this attempt even faster than the last and had MPD on the phone in seconds, as the jeep speed away. This time the arriving officers got a call from the dispatch that the same youth had just robbed someone five blocks east of 14th Street.
He thought back to 2004 when a gang of teenagers in SW DC had attacked and assaulted him and his father in broad daylight in front of Arena Stage on Maine Avenue. Youth violence in the city of Washington DC. Gang initiation. He knew there was a solution and he was aware that he was part of it. It was a calling from above to take action.
Knowing the power of practicing an instrument and the magic of mentoring Gregg used his daily personal meditations (Sixty Seconds To Serenity) to go within for answers, and he journaled ideas and thoughts.
One night Gregg and a group of friends were walking on 14th street near Florida Ave, and a group of men who were loitering in front of The Mercidito Grocery and drinking from brown paper bags began to harass the ladies with cat-calls and physical advances. Gregg stepped in and stalled the escalation of the situation but not without some hostile responses and threatening words from the men. Something brewed in Gregg's mind as he thought about the facts. What could change the dynamic of the situation like this? What was the peaceful and zen approach to this type of situation?
In the depth of his thinking, he heard a Bob Marley song "Don't worry, about a thing. Cause everything little things gonna be alright" As he sang softly to himself, a series of light bulbs went off in his brain. Music! Instruments. If all the desolate vagrant men loitering around the store had musical instruments and were playing music, the scene would be different. The dynamic of the brief relationship between all the people involved would have been positive and engaging in a very different way.
All of these incidents and experiences came together in Gregg's mind as he meditated. In his meditations, he was able to reach a place where his intuitive mind would settle into a scene of a beach with a long stretch of golden sand and calm, brilliant blue ocean. Near the water's edge, there was an enormous boulder, flat on top. In his mind, he would see himself walk up the side of the massive rock, on steps carved into the stone, and the sit on the flat spot and face the calm ocean. On his left were some tiki huts with tables, benches and many familiar faces. Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and more (list is on this webpage)
Answers would come to his mind in the form of pictures, objects, sentences in the sky. He kept seeing peace signs, G Clef, Bass Clef, large stadiums of people at concerts, and festivals like Woodstock 1969. The words Music, Peace, Unify, Symphony, Global appeared over and over. The words would show up on the sandy shoreline and in the clouds. Another time revealed upon on a sailing boat in the sails. More journaling.
After being featured on Fox five news Washington DC for two separate interviews, Gregg was contacted by a nonprofit asking him to run their guitar program as a volunteer. He took on the mission and spent six months working with kids in Northeast DC through the Atlas theater on H St. many of the students were at-risk kids, and Gregg saw how well they were taking to playing tiny guitars. It was so uplifting to him to see the smiles each week as these children enjoyed their guitar playing time. Unfortunately, none of the students had instruments, and their families had no way to acquire them. The organization wasn't designed to provide guitars for home practice which meant there was no way for the children to practice outside of the classes and so progress was slow on the guitar element of the program. But the thing that was working very well was the mentoring. At the end of the second semester, the director of the program informed Gregg that the students would be dismissed from the class since they couldn't afford instruments of their own and were not making enough progress for recitals. Broken hearted Gregg set out to find a way to provide guitars and lessons along with the mentoring element that he felt was missing from many neighborhoods in the Washington DC area. He knew firsthand the result of lack of mentoring programs for kids.
It wasn't long before Gregg found another program that was better aligned with music and mentoring he was envisioning. He inquired about volunteering for that program and discovered that there was no local chapter set up in the Washington DC area. He took action to find out what was required to get things going and set out to do it. Within just a couple of months, he had his first classroom going and had recruited members for a very small Board of Directors, and two assistant teachers. He quickly began expanding and with the support of friends and some of his guitar students he created a robust all-volunteer program serving all four quadrants in the District of Columbia (Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest). He served many roles, as a volunteer attempting to keep programs running. He saw incredible results in the classes that he taught. Most schools he taught in were for kids who were expelled from other schools, had criminal records, were in foster care, or were in a rehab program of some type. Therapists at the schools were commenting that the results Gregg was getting in his classrooms were outstanding and reached the students in a way that they had not been able to do with standard traditional therapy. Knowing the power of performance with an instrument and vocal chords, Gregg set out to get the students to be comfortable playing in front of other people. He knew if he could get the students on stage as a group they would be able to lift their self-esteem. He knew this would break through on a level that wouldn't be possible through traditional methods of mentoring and therapy and do it in a shorter time. Also, there was the power of the participant's realization of self-accomplishment that comes from the applause from an audience.
In 2009 he wrote The Peace Anthem (Set Me Free)
with his friend and fellow songwriter Vince Scheuerman, (who became a volunteer teacher after learning about Gregg's music and mentoring programs). Demo recordings were done at Sirius/XM P-1 Performance Studio, the same place that superstar musicians Paul McCartney and Robert Plant performed and recorded.
One of the goals of writing The Peace Anthem was to provide an inspiring song for the participants of the programs, the teachers, and all musicians to have a power song to play that would unite people, reaching beyond the barriers of religions, politics, background or belief systems. Musicians empowered with their instruments and voices using the universal language of music have enjoyed this sweet song of unity, peace, love, and understanding. This is the magic that happens when people harness the music inside themselves.
At Meridian Hill Park, late Fall of 2010, Gregg and a group of musicians gathered to play The Peace Anthem with intentions of
a mass appeal event of guitarists. The cold and rainy weather proved to be enough to keep the numbers low. The ideas were still coming together, and the journals were filling up with the creation of something still to come. He dreamed of broadcasting through cameras, from multiple venues, with musicians known and unknown.
In 2011, the founder of the Crown Guitar Workshop & Festival (CGWF) in Big Fork Montana, David Feffer, invited Gregg to teach and perform The Peace Anthem during the festival and workshop.
David visited the DC Guitar Lessons studio a couple of weeks before CGWF and discussed how their missions aligned. He had established an outstanding guitar and music event in a magical mountain setting.
Just days before he boarded a flight to Montana, Gregg's mother made her transition. The first night under the Montana sky, while looking up at the sky, he saw a brilliant star zip across the sky. The VISION was coming true.
On the opening night, David introduced Gregg to an eager crowd of music lovers, and he shared some of his story about writing the song, played solo and sang it.
The schedule proved to be more hectic than anticipated and teaching The Peace Anthem to over 100 guitarist participants wasn't possible.
On the last night of the festival, with an all-star line up of musicians, Gregg stood on the stage again.
An enthusiastic crowd of music lovers listened to the beautiful visualization of a world filled with love and peace. The performance was enriched with the audience singing on the chorus.
On December 14th, 2013 Gregg brought a group of children with instruments into Sirius/XM P-1 Performance Studio (where he first recorded The Peace Anthem), and the young musicians performed the song, live in front of a studio audience while broadcasting around the globe on satellite radio.
He returned to Crown Guitar Festival in 2014 for another performance and musical adventure. Gregg began talking with Dweezil Zappa during a breakfast gathering. Crown Guitar Founder David Feffer joined the table, and a conversation began about the community service of music and mentoring that Gregg had been accomplishing. Dweezil asked how he could help. His passion for helping kids aligned with Gregg's mission. This started a partnership of using music, peace, and love to empower more children with instruments. Ever since that day, Dweezil has helped Gregg get instruments and lessons to many children.
August 4th, 2014 Leon Harris, Newscaster at WJLA ABC 7 and host of Harris' Heroes, featured Gregg Hammond on his weekly segment. The news team filmed in classrooms and interviewed several of the students who had received a guitar, lessons, and mentoring. The segment glimpsed into the response to being attacked and the power of choosing to become part of the solution.
March 2015, at his home in Santa Barbara, CA Jack Canfield (co-author of the bestselling series Chicken Soup for the Soul and author of The Success Principles) interviewed Gregg. In Jack's home studio the two authors played guitar and talked about Gregg's passionate and dedicated charity work inspired by being attacked by the gang in 2004, writing several books, turning one book into a movie, and his big VISION to unite the world in love and peace using the universal language of music. Gregg sang and played The Peace Anthem, and Jack stated that while he listened, he saw the VISION as well. A stage in Nashville filled with all the top guitar players all playing The Peace Anthem.
Summer Solstice 2015: Gregg and a small group of DC musicians gathered at Meridian Hill Park with The MHP Guitar Circle and created the birth of Make Music Day DC (MMDDC) playing The Peace Anthem along with dozens of favorite songs. The concept of many local musicians performing throughout the city in public places, providing a day of free concerts, had been adopted from Make Music Alliance and began in Paris in 1982. Washington DC was ready and long overdue for a recognized day of musical celebration. The city demonstrated a rich history of being an incubator for new and incredible music talent for decades. Unfortunately, that trend had simmered through the 1990's and the first decade of the new millennium as crime, poverty, and gangs became widespread. It was time for healing through music. More on that in a minute.
By the Fall of 2015 Gregg and his teams of volunteers had served more than 1,000 kids in the Washington DC (DMV) region. Many youth groups had the opportunity to play on stages around the city. One young man from South East DC, Tyvon Hewitt (who graduated and came back to teach with Gregg and other mentors), received a Guitar Study scholarship to CGWF 2015 and he even performed with Dweezil Zappa, singing lead vocals on Frank Zappa's song Muffin Man during the closing night. It foreshadowed a curtain call.
The extreme amount of volunteer hours (averaging 30-40 hours per week) over seven years, on top of a full schedule of teaching, performing, and writing swung a heavy blow to Gregg Hammond during the final week of September 2015, and he collapsed in his Washington DC home. Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome.
His doctor gave strict orders for absolute rest.
He spent 13 days in bed. His spirit deflated with having to stop. Intuitively the time of bedrest served as a two-week vision quest, inside the house. A fortuitous aligned decision began his reevaluation of life, service, music and the personal inner calling of the VISION to bring peace, love, and community to the world.
Over the next nine months, with proper diet, deep and restful sleep, more frequent meditation, and minimal workload, (very little time spent volunteering) he recovered and began working again on the continuation of the Vision knowing that he needed to be reaching beyond just helping inner-city at-risk youth. He knew there was a better way, a more precise path and a brilliant goal so big that the passion for dreaming it would envoke the power of the music angels and the voice of Apollo to bring forces of the unseen and eternal to lift all boats like a rising tide.
"For we are the offspring of a deathless soul" echoed in his head.
He remembered the writing of one of his favorite authors, James Allen.
In 2016 a more organized and city-wide celebration was fortified in conjunction with Make Music Alliance. Gregg wrote a proclamation for Make Music Day DC, honoring the spiritual essence of music and community. Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser made it an official city proclamation. Dozens of musical events scheduled throughout the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virgina (DMV) proved that DC musicians were tuned up and ready.
The culmination of all the journaling, meditations, performances, mentoring, life experiences and deep reflection blossomed in Gregg's mind. The Vision he had carried for almost four decades began weaving a grand web, and the big picture finally appearing in his "meditation mind's eye." The VISION of The Global Jam 4 Peace, and the next steps.
MMD 2016 boasted 120 countries and over 750 cities participating around the globe, with local events that included mass appeals of musicians playing the same instruments at the same time. Gregg knew that the next step was to have all these cities participate in using the universal language of music to raise the vibration of the people and planet, creating more peace and love than had ever been done before. This was exactly why Gregg had written The Peace Anthem (Set Me Free) and why it was ideally suited for a jam around the world. With this in mind, Gregg set out to organize the first official Global Jam 4 Peace at Meridian Hill Park (MHP) for the Summer Solstice of 2016.
He acquired permits from National Park Service and The District of Columbia (DCRA). Adam Levin of Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center offered the use of sound and stage equipment as a donation to GJ4P. Gregg booked local Washington DC band Skyline Hotel (who offered to donate their time) to perform for the late afternoon show, and be the band on stage as Gregg led a field of musicians and music lovers through a massive group performance of The Peace Anthem.
"It was a lot of stressful work, but things came together in the last week. Practicing with Skyline Hotel and hearing how professional they sounded, how dedicated to the project they were and how easy they were to work with gave me confidence we would have an amazing event", said Hammond.
Unfortunately, Gregg had a tough decision to make, and the GJ4P outdoor concert event was canceled 18 hours before showtime due to severe thunderstorms forecast. DC experienced record flooding in parts of the city and tornado warnings posted on weather stations throughout the day for the DC region. Fortunately several of the other MMD DC events were able to run on schedule.
Gregg had used all of the financial resources and a great deal of energy on this attempt at a GJ4P. It was an expensive education.
The next few months gave Gregg enough time to regroup his thoughts and look for volunteers to help. During his interaction with like-minded people on social media platforms that featured themes on personal growth, a GJ4P community was growing. He refocused his personal achievement studies with Bob Proctor Mentoring to upgrade his success rate through the shifting of paradigms. The power of personal commitment to changing patterns that didn't serve his life and The VISION.
In early 2017, Gregg's friend and mentor Ann McIndoo (The Author's Coach) reached out to ask how she could support him, offering to coach him, and loaning him some of her excellent staff. Together they created the foundation of a website. Action steps were outlined. The challenges were the crunch of the calendar and the zero balance budget starting point. Fortunately, Gregg's studies were strengthening his ability to keep steady focus, intuitive open-mindedness while harnessing the flow of creativity coming during meditations. A clear picture of The Sylvan Theatre Stage at the Washington Monument came to him. He rode his bike to the stage, and with the iconic stone monument behind him, he filmed a quick video announcement that GJ4P 2017 would take place at this location. He spoke and visualized it.
TO BE CONTINUED! Stay Tuned! Pun intended.