Songwriter David LaMotte: Harmony in Action

Summary

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Rotary Voices Podcast

Episode: Songwriter David LaMotte: Harmony in Action
Date: March 11, 2026
Host: Andy Sternberg

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Episode Overview

This episode features an inspiring conversation with singer-songwriter, humanitarian, and Rotary Peace Fellow David LaMotte. Known for his music, activism, and leadership in conflict transformation, LaMotte shares insights on the intersections of art and activism, the nature of peacemaking, building community, and the real work behind social change. He discusses the deep connections forged through music, his journey into peace work, lessons from Rotary Peace Fellowship, and the importance of collective, everyday action over hero-centric narratives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Power of Music in Peacemaking

[01:41–04:06]

• Music as Connector:
  • Music transcends cultural, social, and linguistic boundaries, creating experiences of togetherness and empathy.
    • “If you have a room full of folks…when a song touches everybody...there's that palpable sense of togetherness that gives us a reason to do the work, to figure out how to move forward together.” – David LaMotte [01:48]
• Bridging vs. Dividing:
  • Music can both connect and separate, but its greatest moments are in shared, silent, emotional resonance.
    • “When a song ends and there is silence in the room...I want to know how 800 people decide together...that perhaps our sense of disconnectedness...is not the deepest truth. I think maybe our connectedness is a deeper truth.” – David LaMotte [03:10]

Art and Addressing Global Challenges

[04:06–05:41]

• Remembering Humanity:
  • The purpose of peacemaking isn’t agreement but finding ways forward with mutual respect.
    • “The point of peacemaking is not that we all agree...we find a way forward together with mutual respect and dignity. And we remember each other's humanity.” – David LaMotte [04:14]
• Harmony Over Unity:
  • LaMotte describes the “Abraham Jam”—a band bridging Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions—not for unity, but for richer harmony:
    • “We don't actually have to sing in unity…my favorite music drips with harmony…Of the many synonyms we have for peace, I'm more drawn to harmony than I am to unity.” – David LaMotte [05:17]

Peace Fellowship, Activism, and Personal Journey

[05:41–13:29]

• Origins of Peace Work:
  • Raised in a service-oriented family, LaMotte found his calling split between mediation and music.
  • Built a nonprofit in rural Guatemala, leveraging music-driven trust to support community education projects.
    • “We did that. It was $2,500 we needed…a small school…give these kids a place to study and learn. And we did that fairly easily.” – David LaMotte [07:10]
• Rotary Peace Fellowship:
  • Inspired by a friend’s example, LaMotte pursued (and won) the Peace Fellowship; studied peace and conflict resolution in Australia, profoundly enriching his life and opening doors.
    • “I heard from a friend...wait, what? There's a master's degree in Peace Studies that could be funded by Rotary International. Wow.” – David LaMotte [10:09]
• Surprise at Rotary Peace Center:
  • Greatest learning wasn’t just from academia but from experienced, diverse global cohort of Peace Fellows.
    • “I learned so much from them as well as from my professors. It was a rich academic program and it was made even richer by my colleagues.” – David LaMotte [12:52]

Integrating Art and Peacebuilding

[13:45–16:11]

• Lectures, Workshops & Teaching:
  • LaMotte now splits his time between music and teaching, influencing students and communities using both art and peace studies.
  • Emphasizes that large change is always comprised of many small actions:
    • “All big things are made up of millions of small ones…It's not that we're powerless. It's that we misunderstand the shape of our power.” – David LaMotte [15:51]

Challenging Hero Myths in Social Change

[16:11–20:25]

• Movement Over Heroes:
  • Critiques the U.S. preference for hero-centric stories, which diminish the role of collective action.
    • “If you're not the hero in the hero story, your only job is to clap. Whereas a movement story invites you to show up and do the work.” – David LaMotte [18:31]
  • Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott as collective, not individual, achievements.
• Stories Shape Action:
  • The narratives we adopt shape our actions and possibilities for change.
    • “Telling a better story literally can change the world. It can cause us to act differently in our lives, which is how things change.” – David LaMotte [20:13]

Writing, Illness, and Shifting Priorities

[20:25–24:26]

• Books & Inspiration:
  • Written children’s books and “You Are Changing the World Whether You Like It Or Not.”
  • Life-threatening illness prompted reflection on purpose and priorities:
    • “What was taken away from me and then returned was the use of my hands…and my words…It felt like there was just a neon sign in the sky saying, okay, I've given you these tools. What are you doing with them?” – David LaMotte [22:22]
• Peace Work in Practice:
  • Peace Fellowship led to hands-on service in India, catalyzing efforts to share his own stories.

Advice for Change-Makers

[24:26–27:56]

• Overcoming Powerlessness:
  • The antidote to feeling powerless is collective action in small, measurable steps.
    • “The question is not what can I do? The question is what can we do?...do an asset inventory…Gather with those folks. Make a short term goal. Do it.” – David LaMotte [25:20]
    • “There is no antidote for powerlessness as strong as action.” – David LaMotte [27:47]
• Find Your People:
  • Emphasizes community and shared purpose: “Find your people and be intentional about doing the work together.”

Habits for Fostering Peace

[27:56–30:03]

• Listen & Build Relationships:
  • Listening deeply—“to interests not just positions”—is foundational.
    • “Relationship predates transformation.” – David LaMotte [28:30]
• Context Matters:
  • Listening for private dialogue; active speaking in public spaces when necessary (e.g., confronting hate groups).
  • Relational bridges reduce potential for dehumanization and division.

Music, Collaboration, and Ongoing Inspiration

[30:03–32:04]

• Favorite Songs and Collaborations:
  • Currently most inspired by “Kirungi” (Luganda for “beauty”), a new, multicultural song co-written with Ugandan musician Chinobe.
    • “It sounds authentically like me and it sounds authentically like him, but it doesn't sound like anything that either of us has ever done before…The song actually has five different languages spoken in the song.” – David LaMotte [30:32]
  • Deeply moved by the song “We Are Each Other's Angels” by Chuck Brodsky.

Hope: Deep vs. Cheap

[32:04–38:37]

• Redefining Hope:
  • Distinguishes “cheap hope” (complacent optimism) from “deep hope” (serious, effortful engagement).
    • “Cheap hope is optimism....That's the opposite of deep hope, which says things are very, very serious and there is no guarantee that they're going to come out well, that's all the more reason for us to show up and do the work.” – David LaMotte [32:34]
• Community in Crisis:
  • Shares story of communal resilience in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene—neighbors helped neighbors without regard to political divides.
• Let's Be Neighbors Sign:
  • Created a large sign offering support regardless of differences, sparking positive conversations and spreading nationwide:
    • “You are our neighbors. No matter who you vote for, your skin color, who you love, or where you’re from, we will try to be here for you. That's what community means. Let's be neighbors.” – David LaMotte [37:21]

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Perhaps our sense of disconnectedness...is not the deepest truth. I think maybe our connectedness is a deeper truth.” – David LaMotte [03:24]
• “Of the many synonyms we have for peace, I'm more drawn to harmony than I am to unity.” – David LaMotte [05:27]
• “It's not that we're powerless. It's that we misunderstand the shape of our power.” – David LaMotte [15:51]
• “Hero stories are easier to tell...But a movement story invites you to show up and do the work.” – David LaMotte [18:31]
• “Telling a better story literally can change the world. It can cause us to act differently in our lives, which is how things change.” – David LaMotte [20:13]
• “There is no antidote for powerlessness as strong as action.” – David LaMotte [27:47]
• “Relationship predates transformation.” – David LaMotte [28:30]
• “Cheap hope is optimism…deep hope...there is no guarantee that they're going to come out well, that's all the more reason for us to show up and do the work.” – David LaMotte [32:34]
• “You are our neighbors. No matter who you vote for, your skin color, who you love, or where you’re from, we will try to be here for you. That's what community means. Let's be neighbors.” – David LaMotte [37:21]

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Notable Timestamps for Key Segments

• Power of Music in Connection: [01:48–04:06]
• Role of Harmony in Peace: [04:14–05:41]
• Journey to Peace Fellowship: [06:35–12:23]
• Movement vs. Heroic Change: [16:18–20:25]
• Living with Deep Hope: [32:17–38:37]
• Let’s Be Neighbors Story: [36:30–38:00]

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Music and art are profound tools for building connection and fostering peace across differences.
• True social change is collective and incremental, not the work of isolated heroes.
• Storytelling shapes our collective sense of possibility and agency; telling “movement stories” can inspire real involvement.
• Community and relationship are central to both healing division and achieving durable change.
• Hope is most meaningful when it is realistic, grounded, and calls us to action—even in uncertainty.
• Acts of neighborliness and shared public commitments to care are vital in times of division and crisis.

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For more resources:

• Visit davidlamotte.com
• Explore the Rotary Peace Fellowship and local clubs at rotary.org

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Transcript

[Andy Sternberg]

From rotary magazine, this is the rotary voices podcast. I'm andy sternberg. At the Rotary International Convention in Calgary, attendees were met with a beautifully heartfelt performance from singer songwriter David Lamotte. His warm, emotional songs stretch over 13 albums and he's performed more than 3,500 concerts worldwide.

[David Lamotte]

There are many who need comfort. There are many mouths to feed. So bring what you can offer and ask for what you need.

[Andy Sternberg]

But David wasn't just in Calgary to share his music with the Rotary world. He was a keynote speaker.

[David Lamotte]

Greetings, Rotary family. I am truly honored to be with you. It's not a word I choose lightly and to be part of this conversation about changing the world, the Rotary way

[Andy Sternberg]

outside of his music career, David is an author and Rotary Peace Fellow who has worked in conflict transformation and grassroots initiatives. His humanitarian work has taken him around the globe. In fact, David once paused a world tour to co found a nonprofit building schools in rural Guatemala because he believes peace starts with education. That decision changed thousands of lives. Today, David Lamott is joining us to discuss the intersection of art and activism. David, welcome to the Rotary Voices podcast.

[David Lamotte]

Hi, Andy. Thanks so much.

[Andy Sternberg]

You've mentioned on multiple occasions that music can teach us about peacemaking. What does that look like in practice?

[David Lamotte]

Well, I think music has an extraordinary capacity to remind us of our connectedness. If you have a room full of folks who see the world quite differently, who maybe grew up in different places, even speak different languages, when a song touches everybody in the room, there's that palpable sense of togetherness that gives us a reason to do the work, to figure out how to move forward together.

[Andy Sternberg]

That's great. I think we all felt that in Calgary. Can you share a story where a song or performance bridged or divided a community?

[David Lamotte]

It's a really wonderfully put question because I do think there's the capacity for music both to bridge and to divide. Right. Both of those things can happen out of music. There are so many examples that come to me in the history of my music career. I recall just in the Aftermath of the 2016 election, I did a concert here in Black Mountain, North Carolina, where I live. And. And there was a sense in the room of unease with each other. And I think that that's how it felt at the beginning of the night and at the end of the night, it felt quite different. My favorite moment in a concert when I really feel people connected in that way is when a song ends and it's a tender song. And we have a clear understanding in our culture that what you do when you appreciate something is you clap. And we all know that that's the rule. But there are moments when a song kind of opens people's hearts in such a way that nobody wants to break the moment. And when a song ends and there is silence in the room for seconds, maybe 30 seconds before anybody claps, I want to know how 800 people decide together without discussing it. We are now going to break the societal convention and we're not going to clap. And. And any one person in the room could have broken that moment, and nobody did. That makes me think that perhaps our sense of disconnectedness that so many of us walk around with every day is not the deepest truth. I think maybe our connectedness is a deeper truth, and somehow we need to remember that that is true.

[Andy Sternberg]

Very well said. I agree. What is the role of art in and addressing global challenges like polarization and conflict?

[David Lamotte]

The question of remembering each other's humanity is huge. The point of peacemaking is not that we all agree. The point of peacemaking is that we find a way forward together with mutual respect and dignity. And we remember each other's humanity. And when we remember each other's humanity, we have the capacity to remember our own. It rehumanizes everybody in the equation. And so shared experiences of beauty, of sorrow, just shared emotional experiences can connect us in ways that are extraordinarily powerful. I spent about 10 years working on the road with a band called Abraham Jam. There are three of us in the band. Billy Jonas is Jewish, Dawoud Warnsby is Muslim, and I'm a Quaker Christian. And the three of us formed this band and we called it the Abraham Jam because the Abrahamic faiths are all represented there on the same stage. Our kind of core argument that we were making to the world was that we don't actually have to sing in unity. We don't all have to sing the same note. In fact, my favorite music drips with harmony. And harmony is where people are singing different notes, but they are tuned together so that we can bring that difference. And the difference really does make it a richer experience. And I think that's something that's extraordinarily important to remember right now. Of the many synonyms we have for peace, I'm more drawn to harmony than. Than I am to unity.

[Andy Sternberg]

The beauty of harmony and how performance also can inspire that harmony is wonderful. I would agree. And speaking of peace, what inspired you to apply for the Rotary Peace Fellowship and how did that change your trajectory?

[David Lamotte]

Yeah, it's been a life changing experience, no question. Becoming A Rotary Peace Fellow. I grew up in a house where my parents cared about such things. I'm a preacher's kid. My father and my grandfather and my sister are actually all Presbyterian ministers. And. And dinnertime conversation included what's happening in the world and how we can have a positive influence locally and more broadly. My mom was doing extraordinary volunteer work with various organizations that were trying to make a difference in our own community. She later was the founding chair of the chapter of Habitat for Humanity in Roanoke, Virginia.

[Andy Sternberg]

That's great.

[David Lamotte]

That was a big part of her life for a lot of years. So I grew up with those kinds of influences around me. And I went to college and I actually studied mediation, community conflict resolution. And I also started playing gigs in college and started playing out in front of people in the summer following my graduation. I really sat with this very difficult decision of having these two deep senses of call and which of them I was going to pursue, primarily because they're not terribly compatible. Mediation requires that you be a presence in the community, that you be very physically present, geographically present, and music requires that you be on the road. So I had to choose one or the other to focus on for a time. And I decided to give myself two years to see if I could play music as a living, pay my bills for that, if I kept my life very simple. So much of being a young musician is about keeping a low overhead, but I managed to do that, and within about four months, I quit my last side job, and I've been a professional musician since then. But years later, when I heard about the Rotary Peace Fellowship, I kept my hand in peace work. Of course, I played lots of benefit concerts, and I was engaged in various different, different efforts along the way. And I had begun this work in Guatemala. My wife and I went to Guatemala in 2004 on our honeymoon to go to study Spanish and to have fun looking around at Guatemala. We were not looking for a project, but we made some friends while we were there, and we began to understand a little bit about the Guatemalan education system and some of the particular challenges they have in that country. And we also became aware of how far US dollars can go in that particular country. And so when a friend there asked us to help out with an education project that he had going, a Mayan man named Nino Tikun in his village, which is called Sanchak, he asked us to help raise some money to build this one room schoolhouse. And we did that. It was $2,500 we needed to raise. Not $25,000, 2500 dollars to build a small school, a cinder block structure with electricity and a good roof, and give these kids a place to study and learn. And we did that fairly easily. I came home and I started talking to my audiences about what was going on in Guatemala and this project that we were trying to raise money for. And it was so easy to raise that money because people knew me from my music and they. They trusted me to get that money where it was going. And I told them, look, I'll buy my own plane ticket. We'll take every penny of anything you want to chip in back to Sanchak to build this little school. And so we did that together, and that was inspiring for me. And out of that grew a nonprofit that is now much bigger than that, and it's doing good work in Guatemala with a great team of people pitching in. So that work had given me some inclination and some indication that it is possible to have a positive influence in the world. I think there's so much cynicism out there right now that says, look, it doesn't matter what you try to do, it's not going to work. Okay, possibly, yes, the world is a mess, and it is likely still to be messy in many places, but the fact that we can't fix it all doesn't mean that we shouldn't make an effort to make something better. Right? There's a tree outside my window right now that I'm looking at, just out this window. I could look at that tree and say, wow, what a failure. That tree has spent its entire life reaching for the sun and it's not even getting close. But that would be a really foolish way to look at that tree, right? That's a beautiful tree that is living into what it is to be a tree giving us oxygen and reaching for the sun is how it is, a healthy tree. It doesn't have anything to do with getting there. Right. It has to do with us living toward a better world. So, years later, getting finally to your question, I heard from a friend of mine who had just graduated from the Rotary Peace Fellowship program in Bradford, England, and she was graduating. And she sent out an email to all of her friends to say, hey, I've just finished this master's program in peace studies, and I just thought I'd let everybody I know be aware of what I'm doing and what I'm looking for. If you have job opportunities, I'm thinking about what to do next. And I read her email and I was moved by her commitment. And she was somebody who was always inspiring to me. Me. And I also thought, wait, what? There's a master's degree in Peace Studies that could be funded by Rotary International. Wow. And so here my old calling to put piecework in the middle of my life called to me very loudly and clearly. And I felt a spiritual sense of vocation in that moment of thinking, you know What, I've spent 18 years on the road as a musician. Now it's time for me to put the piecework back in the middle and scoot the music work to support that. And so I decided to apply for the fellowship. And I had such a strong feeling about it that as you know, it's an internationally competitive fellowship. And I had no reason to believe that I would get it, no logical reason. But I announced a farewell tour before I heard back from Rotary that I had been awarded the fellowship. Because I believed so strongly. I had such a deep sense that it was time for, for me to prioritize peacework. And so even if I hadn't gotten the fellowship, I was going to find a way to put piecework back in the middle of my life. But I did. And I moved to Australia with my wife and my brand new baby. And we spent a couple of amazing years at the University of Queensland in Brisbane studying in this degree program. It was profoundly enriching for my life and it's opened so many doors for me since then to do more work that I believe in.

[Andy Sternberg]

What surprised you most about studying peace and conflict resolution at the Rotary Peace center in Queensland?

[David Lamotte]

One of the things that really struck me about that experience was how much I learned from the other peace fellows. Because part of the wisdom of this program is that it is open to people who already have a track record of having impact in the world. It's not fresh faced folks coming right out of college who seem to have a great resume and look like they might do good things someday. The fellowship is awarded to people who have done some stuff already. So the people who showed up there. I heard professors actually say in the program at University of Queensland that it was like having junior faculty in the class to have the Peace Fellows in there because these were folks from all over the world. I studied with folks from Kenya and from the Philippines and from Slovakia and all over the world. So I learned so much from them as well as from my professors. It was a rich academic program and it was made even richer by my colleagues.

[Andy Sternberg]

That's outstanding and it is, it is a very inspiring program. With now we have over a thousand Peace Fellows who have been through the program, continuing to do the work in their many ways. And how do you integrate Lessons from Peace building into your music today?

[David Lamotte]

Well, I'm doing various things. About half my work these days is lectures and workshops. So I'm having a chance to work on college campuses, which is a thrill working with students who are at this cuspy place in their lives where there's a chance to put a corner on their trajectory and start heading in a different direction. It's such a privilege to work with students whose minds are so open and they're thinking about all kinds of fascinating things and they teach me a lot. So last year there's a college called Westminster College in Pennsylvania that did a whole course on my book, which was really moving to me that they would choose to do that. And I zoomed in at the end of their course and did some Q and R. I like to say Q and R instead of Q and A because I may not have the answers, but I promise I'll respond. I did some Q and R at the end of that class and that was beautiful. And then this year, a different college also in Pennsylvania, coincidentally, Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania chose my book as their freshmen read. So their first year students coming into the school were all presented with a copy of the book and they integrated it into their freshman seminar classes that are required for all first year students. And then I got to go and speak there in a lecture series, which was one of the two biggest lectures I got to give this past year, along with the lecture in Calgary, which was really a privilege for me, of course. So a lot of what I'm doing these days is teaching and inviting people into different ways of approaching the work of changing the world for the better. Which sounds like such a naive thing to say to change the world. But the world isn't elsewhere, it's right here. So if we can make these small changes. I firmly believe that all large changes are made up of many, many small ones.

[Andy Sternberg]

Absolutely. Yep.

[David Lamotte]

I'm not saying that all small efforts lead to big changes, because they don't. Of course, I've tried lots of things that have kind of evaporated. My buddy Park Palmer would be quick to remind me, as he did recently, that there is still value in those because they work out our courage muscles, and that's important. What I am saying is that all big things are made up of millions of small ones. A lot of the case that I'm making right now is that we don't need to feel powerless because it's not that we're powerless. It's that we misunderstand the shape of our power.

[Andy Sternberg]

In your second TEDx talk, you talk about why heroes don't change the world. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[David Lamotte]

So I find it fascinating how we tell stories of social change. I believe that we have a cultural tendency, and I'll speak to my culture in the US Though, I think this is somewhat true of other cultures. I don't have the authority to speak to those because I didn't grow up in them. But certainly in the US we're quite attached to hero stories where one person fixes the problem by themselves. We're told that we have to be extraordinary people and we have to be heroic and do dramatic things in order to change the world. This is the story we're bombarded with all the time in movies and not just dramas, but in comedies and in children's entertainment and everything. We hear this story packaged that way so often in the United States. You can't talk about social change very long without the name Rosa Parks. Coming up, Rosa Parks was arrested on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1, 1955, for not giving up her seat when she was told to because of segregation laws. At the time, she refused to give up her seat, and she was arrested for that. And she was a very dignified woman. And she said why this was wrong so compellingly that many, many people joined the civil rights movement. And we sometimes dumb that story down by carving away facts from the story to make it sound like it was one action that changed everything by itself. Rosa Parks was an extraordinary human being. And the more I've learned about this story, the more my respect for her has grown. It hasn't diminished at all, but my respect is now rooted in the decades of activism that she was involved in. And not just this one simple moment. This didn't come out of the blue. And the movement that had organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which went on for over a year, finally ending in the laws being changed through a Supreme Court decision, that boycott had been organized a year in advance by an organization called the Women's Political Council, which was over 200 African American women who were working for social change, and they had been working there for nine years in Montgomery before Rosa Parks was arrested. And they had this boycott ready to launch. And the woman who was the president of the Women's Political Council was a woman named Joanne Robinson. She called the Montgomery Bus Boy Boycott, but nobody knows Joanne Robinson's name and has never heard of the Women's political council in general. I'm speaking hyperbolically, of course. There are a few people who know, but most people don't because we don't tell movement stories. We tell hero stories. Hero stories are easier to tell. But the main reason I think we tell hero stories all the time is that they get us off the hook. If you're not the hero in the hero story, your only job is to clap. Whereas a movement story invites you to show up and do the work. And the work isn't always glamorous, it's not always dramatic, it doesn't get you on tv. But that tedious work is what really changes the world. It's about showing up.

[Andy Sternberg]

Very true.

[David Lamotte]

And so I think it's extremely important that we recognize that in order for these kind of dramatic moments that seem inspiring to occur, there is pretty much always a ton of of background work that has happened in order to lead to this moment.

[Andy Sternberg]

Yes, there is. And as you said, it is the stories that get passed from generation to generation that may be simpler. Such as the Rosa Parks story, which resembles a whole movement but is so visual and shareable that it resonates with people over the years.

[David Lamotte]

Yeah. And stories matter, Andy, because we take our understanding of the world from the stories that we believe about the world and about ourselves. And from those understandings grow our actions. So telling a better story literally can change the world. It can cause us to act differently in our lives, which is how things change.

[Andy Sternberg]

As I've mentioned earlier, you are not only a musician, you are also an author. Tell me about the books you've written.

[David Lamotte]

I have several, actually. I've got a couple of kids books. The grown up book with more words in it is called you'd are changing the whether you like it or not, A great title.

[Andy Sternberg]

Something that all of our listeners should check out. In the first chapter of your book, you mentioned a debilitating illness and how that affected you. Would you say that was part of the inspiration for the book?

[David Lamotte]

Yeah, that was a powerful experience for me, Andy. I was on tour in Texas. I'd had a night off from shows and had caught up with an old friend. And the next morning I woke up and I was trying to do a little work on my laptop and I found that I couldn't see the screen. There was just kind of a hole in the middle of my vision and that hole grew and my vision was just going away, which was somewhat terrifying. And then my arms started going numb and then I started being nauseous and it was all pretty scary. I had no idea what was going on and. And I had nobody there with me. I was staying with a friend, but she had gone to work and so managed to call folks. And they came and took me to the er and I gradually lost the ability to speak. I had aphasia, like elderly folks sometimes have, where you just pick the wrong word. It's just a word salad. You just pick a random word. And my friend told me later that I pointed at a chair and I said, wedding. Wholly unassociated, right. And gradually I lost the capacity to speak at all and passed out. In the er, they were thinking maybe stroke or encephalitis or any number of things that would have been pretty catastrophic. And as it turned out, they diagnosed it as a complex migraine that had neurological symptoms and it presented kind of like a stroke. And that was very scary. They actually did a spinal tap to check my. My spinal fluid. But other than the pain from the spinal tap, two days later, I was completely fine. And it was interesting to me that what was taken away from me and then returned was the use of my hands. My arms had gone numb and my words. Yes. And playing guitar and writing and singing songs is the center of what I do in my life. So how fascinating to have these things taken away and then given back. And it felt like there was just a neon sign in the sky saying, okay, I've given you these tools. What are you doing with them? Because the truth is, as a singer songwriter, people clap for me at work. You know, I wish we lived in a world where every five minutes or so everybody got clapped for and appreciated. Right. But it's very easy to be self absorbed in my particular line of work. And so I was invited, I think, by this experience to think about what I'm giving and not just what I'm getting and how I'm using these tools to have a positive impact in the world. And so that, that really did put some. A corner on my life trajectory.

[Andy Sternberg]

Right.

[David Lamotte]

I was heading one direction and then it turned and I started heading another direction. And that invited me to dig deeper in some of the activism and the world changing work that I believe in and actually showing up for that. And then later, that kind of change in my life orientation certainly led to my being interested in the Peace Fellowship when I heard about it. Because of the Peace Fellowship, I ended up in India doing three months of field study working with an Indian nonprofit called Artik Samatha Mandal, and they were doing integrated development work. And while I was there in India, I started to write down some of these ideas. And it seemed important to me. I've learned so much from the stories others have shared with me about their lives and what their lives have taught them. It seemed like it might be time for me to share a little bit about what my life has taught me.

[Andy Sternberg]

What advice would you give to someone who feels powerless to make change in their community?

[David Lamotte]

I heard someone say one time, and it rings true in my ears that you write the book that you need to read. Right? So it is easy to feel powerless right now. There are huge currents moving in the world, many of them quite destructive and pretty terrifying. And it is easy to believe that we are powerless in the face of that. But I don't think it's true because we can look at history and what has actually worked. How has it happened that things that were heading in a terrible direction turned around and went in a better direction? I think it's important for me to remember that the question is not what can I do? The question is what can we do? And where are my people? And I think Rotary actually provides a beautiful example of how people can gather together and do work in the world that they could never begin to contemplate doing by themselves together. The impact that Rotary has. Of course, we always like to talk about polio. It's been such an extraordinary thing that Rotary has done through the Polio plus campaign. And I have dropped drops into children's mouths in India. And it is an extraordinary feeling to do that work. But you know that it only matters because it's happening all over the world with millions of children. And so the advice I would give to answer your question is one, to find your people. Figure out what you care about. Pick one thing to work on for a while because there's so many things we can't work on all of them. So pick on one thing that's pulling on your heart. Find the people who care about what you care about. They are probably already gathering somewhere, but if they're not, call up a few friends who you think might care about this and invite them for coffee and sit around and talk together about what you think needs to happen and how you might move things toward that incrementally. What's a realistic short term, small goal? What's something you could do in the next few weeks together to move this forward and do an asset inventory? Figure out what you bring together, who's sitting around the room, who's good at what. My wife taught me this wonderful tool about asset inventories to inventory the gifts of the head. Things you know about, the gifts of the heart, things that you're passionate about because you're more likely to stay in the work. Gifts of the hands, things you can actually do with your hands. Fix bicycles, make sandwiches, etc. Play guitar. And gifts of the hive, which is to say communities that you're connected to that you might be able to draw on in order to feed this work. Gather with those folks. Make a short term goal. Do it. Figure out when you're going to get back together to make sure that you actually got done what you said you were going to get done. That kind of work is incredibly heartening. You hang with these friends and you see that I'm not in this alone and that together we can do something. The advice would be twofold. One, find your people and be intentional about doing the work together. Two, do something small. Today there is no antidote for powerlessness as strong as action. And maybe that action is more about your own soul care than it is about impacting the world. But you never know. Sometimes the small things add up to bigger things.

[Andy Sternberg]

Well, that is great advice, David. If you could leave listeners with one habit or mindset for fostering peace, what would it be?

[David Lamotte]

It's kind of hard to boil it down to one thing, right? I think one of those things is to listen really closely to other people and listen to their interests and not just their positions. So remembering each other's humanity is really what it comes down to. For me, it's hard to get to the solutions without building the relationships first. I like to say that relationship predates transformation.

[Andy Sternberg]

I think that's great advice for listeners, to get to know your community, to listen and understand them.

[David Lamotte]

I'll say, Andy, if I can jump in, that's for interpersonal conversations, one on one in private spaces. I also think there are times when it's important to speak and not just to listen. And that happens more in public spaces. So if the Klan announces that they're going to have a rally in my town, I am going to go and interrupt that rally because I don't want that message to stand unopposed. That's not a time for listening, that's time for speaking, of course. But if a Klansman calls me up, if a prominent white supremacist calls me up and asks me to lunch, I'm gonna go. And I know this is true because it happened and I went and we did not convince each other of anything, but we did know each other a little bit. And what I see having grown out of that is that if there is going to be nasty violence that erupts in my little community, and I hear wind of that coming around, I would be able to contact him and talk about how we can mitigate the damage, how can we make this better? So relationship, I think, is a really important starting place. Not because it leads to agreement necessarily, but because it's better to know each other than to dehumanize each other. And it's much harder to dehumanize someone you actually know. Well, yes, that's.

[Andy Sternberg]

That is true. Going back to music, of course, do you have a favorite song you've written or one that you cover? Perhaps a favorite song of someone else that you like sharing with people or that inspires you?

[David Lamotte]

That's a great question. My friend David Wilcox says that his favorite song is always the most recent one. And I have to say, at the moment, I have been working on a song with a friend of mine from Uganda. His name is Chinobe. He's a world famous Ugandan musician, plays instruments that he built himself. He and I have been writing a song together. We recorded it, in fact, we're getting ready to release it in the spring. That is such a fascinating project to me because it sounds authentically like me and it sounds authentically like him, but it doesn't sound like anything that either of us has ever done before. Musically, it's synthesizing his African music with my singer, songwriter sound. And I'm just. Just very excited about this song. So that one's really on my heart right now. That song is going to be called Chirunji, which is spelled K I R U N G I and that's the Luganda word for beauty. The song actually has five different languages spoken in the song. We didn't set out to do that. It just happened organically because of the people who were in the room. So I'm very excited about that one. And I can reach back across the years to a song that I've played so many times that is a cover. Since you mentioned original songs and covers, my friend Chuck Brodsky wrote a song many years ago called We Are each Other's Angels. And I have to say that's among my favorite songs ever. It's hard to choose among my own songs because it's sort of like choosing a favorite child. But Chuck's song We Are each Other's Angels still moves me deeply. And I've had the opportunity to sing that song thousands of times all over the world.

[Andy Sternberg]

Yes, that's great. And I've noticed it's one of your most streamed songs as well.

[David Lamotte]

True Story.

[Andy Sternberg]

Well, that's great to hear. We will look forward to some new music coming from you in the coming months. Is there one word that again, this. We're going back to the one word or concept that defines hope for you.

[David Lamotte]

That's a powerful question. I think that word is hope. But where it gets tricky is the word hope is used very differently in our conversation. We often switch between definitions, and I think there's such a thing as cheap hope, and there's a lot of that out there right now. But that doesn't mean that there isn't also such a thing as deep hope. So cheap hope is optimism. It says, look, everything's going to be all right. Just chill out, go home. It's going to be okay. It'll work itself out. You don't have to do anything. That's the opposite of deep hope, which says things are very, very serious and there is no guarantee that they're going to come out. Well, that's all the more reason for us to show up and do the work right. Because we have seen ourselves do better. It is possible. I live here outside of Asheville, North Carolina, and just over a year ago, we had Hurricane Helene come through and take a hundred lives just in my county and have close friends who lost everything they own to the floods and the wind. And so it's been a dire, difficult time here, and there's so many people who've still not recovered. I have other friends who are still living in temporary housing. So it's been a very, very difficult time in western North Carolina. But you know what happened? People walked right into the street and checked on their neighbors, and people came out in the street and started cooking it up in their driveways on the grill and feeding their neighbors. And anybody who walked up, here's some food. Just two blocks away from my house, somebody had a starlink connection. And so if anybody had a way to charge anything up, they would come and sit in their lawn because they put a sign in the front of the yard saying, here's my WI FI name, here's my WI FI password, do what you want to do. And their yard was covered with people just sitting in the grass with a laptop or a phone letting their families know they were okay because we had no communication for several weeks here. And my neighbors showed up with chainsaws and they started pulling trees off of roofs, Right? And not once in that entire recovery effort did I hear anybody ask somebody else who they voted for. People saw Another human being in need. And I cannot tell you how many times I heard people say, andy, I have met neighbors I never knew I had, right? So I keep gently nudging folks these days, hey, go back and check on those neighbors again. Say, hey, it's been a year. How you doing now? Right. Let's maintain those connections, because those soft ties of relationship sociologists will tell you, have a massive impact on the health of a community. I lived in a little house on Cragmont Road in Black mountain for about 25 years, about a mile from where I live now. And I lived on the corner of Cragmont and Cragmont because there was a really sharp left hand turn right there, and my house sat right inside it. And it was a busy neighborhood and a busy road. It wasn't quiet in a physical sense, but it was a sweet space for me. I loved it very much. But I was afraid for my neighbors when I saw people walking on the street because there was no sidewalk. It was a very busy road. And I had this one couple in particular, and he was blind. And every time I saw them walk into town, I feared it would be the last time I saw them because I just really had a concern that they would be hit by a car. They lobbied the town for years, and many of us joined them in lobbying the town for a sidewalk. And one day I looked out, out the front of my house and I saw a bulldozer just plowing up my yard. Never been so happy to see somebody destroying my property because they were putting in that sidewalk. But when that sidewalk went in, people started walking their dogs. People started pushing their baby carriages, and they smiled and nodded and just kind of gently got to know each other a little bit. After the 2016 election, I felt like the town had come in and ripped out the sidewalk. My neighbors were afraid to talk to each other. People were looking down and not looking at each other because some people felt very, very vulnerable to shame or ridicule or maybe even unsafe. And so I was frustrated. I had loved watching my. This pile of houses become a community, Right. That had been such a beautiful thing to me. And suddenly that was torn away. And so I was expressing my frustration to my family. One night, my wife and my son at the dinner table, and I said, I just want to put a sign on the front of our house that says, look, no matter who you voted for, if your car battery dies, I will jump your battery.

[Andy Sternberg]

Yeah.

[David Lamotte]

So I said to my family, look, if we were actually to make a sign, what would it really Say, My son was 7 at the time. And the three of us sat and we came up with language. And the language was, you are our neighbors. No matter who you vote for, your skin color, who you love, or where you're from, we will try to be here for you. That's what community means. Let's be neighbors. So I made that sign 3ft wide and 8ft tall and I nailed it to the front of my house, really big on that corner where a lot of people come screaming around that corner and see it. And it was fascinating watching what happened from there. People started pulling in my driveway to take pictures. People stopped on the sidewalk to say, hey, I like your sign. Every once in a while somebody would say, hey, can we talk? And I'd be like, yes. That's the whole idea. So good. Things grew from that. And then people started asking where they could get one. There's actually a 20 foot tall one above the front door of the church where Abraham Lincoln worshiped in Springfield, Illinois. So they're hanging all over the country on businesses and houses and places of worship. And that makes me really happy. And let me be clear that the sign doesn't say, no matter all these things, everything's cool, because everything is not cool. We've got very serious issues that affect people's lives, that cost people's lives sometimes that we've got to work through. Those issues are very, very serious. And that's why we have to know each other well.

[Andy Sternberg]

Thank you, David.

[David Lamotte]

Really a pleasure, Andy. I'm really grateful for the conversation.

[Andy Sternberg]

We appreciate it. You can learn more about David Lamott at his website, davidlamott.com where you can find his books and music catalog. In our show Notes, we'll include links to his 2025 Rotary International Convention speech in Calgary and the let's Be Neighbors website.

[David Lamotte]

This episode of the Rotary Voices Podcast was produced by JP Swenson and edited by Wen Huan. Production by Joe Desault. Andy Sternberg was our host. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and share it with your friends. The Rotary Voices Podcast is produced by Rotary Magazine, the official monthly publication of Rotary International. Thanks for listening.