During the holidays. I have so much to be grateful for, my family, my friends, friends that have lasted a lifetime, the sunrise that greets me each day. Not that life doesn't dish out its fair share of challenges and oftentimes
bone numbing grief. But I find that if I return to gratitude, if I go back to gratitude every day, if I go back to God, thank you, thank you for my health, thank You for my kids, thank You for my life, I am able to make it through the worst of times and find moments of joy every day everywhere. I hope that you are able to do this too. If not today because you're currently weathering a storm, than tomorrow or tomorrow after that. I hope you find a little when you listen to my radio show at
night or this podcast. Besides being entertaining, as I'll get out, I have ulterior motives for this platform, for this podcast, with Love Someone with Delilah. I want to inspire you. I want to spark your interest, in ignite your imagination. I want you to leave each episode thinking, hey, if they can do that, if they can do what they're doing, I could do something I love and maybe that would make a difference in someone's life. Maybe it would make
a difference in my own life. Maybe it would make a difference in the world if I put some time and energy into fostering an interest, or a hobby or a child. Today's guest is a singer, a songwriter, an activist, and a great role model. He was born Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins, the third in southern California. He grew up in Laguna Hills,
and he began playing trumpet in the third grade. Music became such a huge part of his life, but he would go on to major in linguistics and psychology at the University of California and for a time worked for Ernst and Young before launching his solo music career as Alo Black in two thousand and three. That year, Alo released two EPs and signed to a record label. The
rest is history, though not two ancient history. Alo Black is now an acclaimed Grammy nominated performer, known for major hits like I Need a Dollar, the Man and his mega hit wake Me Up with Avichi, which has received over four billion streams. Alo has also recorded his own version of wake Me Up, which is absolutely beautiful. What makes Alo different, or should I say One of the things that makes him so unique, so special is that he pledged early in his career to use his music
for positive social transformation. With his new single Shine Aurora's Anthem, Alo is using his music to shine a light on critical humanitarian issues and to inspire others to simply do good. With role models such as Nelson Mandela, Martin, Luther King Junior, and with mentoring from Harry Belafonte, Alo has shaped his musical journey by following their legacies of courage and compassion.
Through Shine Aurora's Anthem in honor of the Humanitarian supported by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, a foundation that seeks to address on the ground challenges around the world, Alo aspires to ignite a movement among artists, encouraging them to embrace themes of hope and unity in their art. By promoting messages of resilience and empathy, He's reinforcing his belief that every individual has the power to make a difference and
that music can be a catalyst for social progress. I can't wait to talk with Alo shining a light on his music and on his heart. But first I'm going to put a spotlight on one of today's podcast sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by my friends at Sherry's Hazel Cream. Have you had to give up on some of your traditional holiday recipes because you or your daughter are lactose intolerant? My daughter is and non dairy
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RV camping. Just handshake for two minutes and you have milk this holiday season and all throughout out the year. Don't miss out on your favorite recipes. Visit Cherrieshazelcream dot com, C H E R I S Hazelcream dot com. All of the move, none of the cow with me. I love someone today is a extremely talented young man, Alo Black.
Hello, Delilah, thank you so much for having me.
What was the name that your family gave you at birth? Can I ask that?
Oh?
Yeah, my name is Nathaniel. So the family called Nathaniel.
It wasn't just Nathaniel though. It's like three pages long.
Oh right, it's a vestige of slavery. It's a colonial name. You know, the Europeans had ways of naming Africans. So Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins the third Wow.
So this this, that's very colonial. You don't get much more colonial than Egbert for somebody who's got African descent, right, wow. So I have I have six children that are from Africa, and a lot of their names were characteristics, character traits. That's very common in Liberia to name children like patients or Justice or Mercy. So one of my daughters was Mercy and one is Blessing.
That is beautiful. I think that's really special. You know, naming is a very important right of passage for parents, I think, and then renaming for an individual as they come of age.
I think it's really important.
I don't think it happens quite enough in our system, just because you know, the Western world very particular about categorizing and slotting everybody into their place, and they have to keep that place from birth till death. But we change, we transform, we grow, and we become butterflies from the caterpillars that we were before. And I think renaming is a beautiful tradition that I believe exists in multiple, you know, indigenous ethnicities around the world.
Well, I like alo alo black. It sounds healthy. When I think of alo, I think of how good it is for you when you drink it or ingest it or put it on your skin.
Yeah, that's sort of where I got the name. You know.
I was a young budding artist coming up with new music and new concepts, and I felt like the music that I was making was was smooth and soothing like Alo, And so I've made a choice to give myself that stage name that Moniker.
Is it a stage name because it kind of seems like it's you. That's I think of stage names as something that you transform into on stage right. But from everything I've read about you and everything I underst stand about your core mission to share goodness and truth and mercy and love with humanity, there you don't get more healing than that.
Maybe I maybe I spoke it into the universe and it became more true as I grew into the name.
I think there's sometimes things find us, the truth finds us, and there's nothing more healing for your soul. I mean, Alo is healing for your body and for your skin, but the love you're putting out there in your music that heals the soul.
Thank you. I appreciate that. It's part of the mission. You know.
When I had the tremendous grace and opportunity to be a major recording artist with budgets and marketing and visibility, I made a promise to myself that I would use my voice for positive social change. And that's really how I've been dedicating the songs that I write and the way I show up in community.
How much pushback have you gotten from the industry, from the machine, the music machine that wants to make hits. How much pushback have you got for standing your ground and saying, eh, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it this way, I'm gonna this is what the song is about, this is what I'm about. Like, have they been supportive mostly or has it been an updild battle.
I wouldn't say that it's been supportive mostly, But I have a feeling that my engagement with the industry is somewhat like judo, where any force that is used against me becomes my weapon against the opponent.
Oh that's good, And so.
I still find ways for my messages to be heard. And I feel like I've had a lot of luck.
That ain't luck. That is not luck. Luck as when you find a quarter on the ground.
I guess, But you know, you just did a statistical analysis on the messages that we receive that are being shoved into our faces, into our ears from media across the board, from television, news, from film, and streaming content, from radio and.
Music.
The vast majority of it is not soothing, supportive psychologically. You know, we're dealing with a lot of distress, trauma, anxiety, depression, misogyny, violence, drug glorification, and I feel like there has to be some sort of balance to that. Someone somewhere has to be supporting it. Some entity has to be creating it, and other entities have to be sponsoring it, you know.
And it's complicated and it's difficult.
How many murders do kids witness by the age of ten.
Yeah, in ways that would never happen in reality. And this is the issue, this confluence of art and commerce, where artists are saying, I'm just I'm just being an artist. I'm writing these stories, I'm reflecting reality. But then commerce comes and magnifies your reflection of reality in ways that are extremely biased and oversaturated. So it's at a certain point you may have been reflecting a reality, but now it's well distributed and completely overstated.
And disgusting, destructive and breaks hearts and breaks minds and breaks children.
I think so.
And so my thought is, you know, you mentioned the machine before, and I feel like.
At a certain.
Age I would have and did want to rage against the machine, but I realized that the machine understands rage, but the machine doesn't understand love, so we have to break.
It with love.
I'm very proud of you. It's not easy, and it's so easy to sell out, to get comfortable, and to sell out. I read this story when I was much, much younger, called the Great Seduction, and it's about how when you're young and you're talented, they give you the world. You know, first class tickets or private jets. They give you parties and access to all sorts of pleasures. Yeah, and they get you hooked, and then you're asked to compromise.
And I love the fact that it appears you haven't been seduced.
You know. I think what was my.
Insulation, or what saved me, was the fact that I went to university, I worked in corporate America. I had an opportunity to grow, experience the world, develop a perspective, become an adult, become a man, an individual, to exist in the world, to have a place and a voice, and then to be given the megaphone without adulteration. So there were no other adults who could tell me what
to do and how to be. If I had come into the music business as a major recording artist, at sixteen or below, any age of my brain being fully developed, the story may be different, but I was afforded the opportunity to develops as a citizen, a conscious citizen, and was able to make choices that I graduated into the major music recording industry with.
I would love to have been a fly in a while when you were in corporate America.
It was it was not the same as my life now, kind of boring, but it was good work. I was working in the health sector as a business consultant, helping children's hospitals improve care, whether we were developing their technology or helping them collect from insurance companies.
So that's very noble and doesn't surprise me given what a caring person and how that seems to be the core of who you are, is caring for others that you work with children's hospitals, who have, by the way, saved my children's lives multiple times. So I love love the work that children's hospitals do, and I love the fact that they treat everybody, doesn't matter you know, your economic status. If you walk through the door in your child's in crisis, they're going to save their life. I love that.
That's a big deal, and I'm glad that that our heroes, you know, operate from that perspective with the oath they take.
There are so.
Many other ways that the health system is broken, but the fact that they will receive and help the children is beautiful.
Le's get back to talking about music, since that's what you're here for, and we're going to be celebrating this holiday season with new music from Alo Black. Tell me about your new project.
Yes, the music is songs inspired by nonprofit organizations. The album is called Stand Together. It is an album that is supported by a wonderful organization that supports community change makers and some of the most amazing heroes in our communities. And I thought, why not do what Stand Together does as an organization through music? How can I use my voice to amplify these wonderful heroes.
Within the communities.
So a few of the organizations inspired these songs and some of the social missions and perspectives of the Stand Together group. One of the songs is called Breakthrough. The title comes from the name of the organization. It's an anti recidivism organization that works helping returning citizens find work, find education, opportunities, find housing, and offers them dignity in
their return to society. Oftentimes, you know, when I visit prisons and juvenile halls, I recognize that the people behind bars, who at some point may get out, we consider them being released as a second chance at life.
And I've always, after having multiple conversations and hearing stories, realize these folks never had a first chance. They come from the most broken circumstances you could imagine.
Do you want to hear a scary statistic, Tell me eighty percent of boys who go through our foster care system, eighty percent of boys who are in foster care for eighteen months or longer will end up incarcerated by the age of twenty five. So, our foster care system, which currently has almost half a million children in its custody, doesn't create fully functioning adults. It creates prisoners. For an economic I believe in economic system.
It's an economic system. It's a pipeline.
It's a pipeline.
Statistic I heard about children who don't learn to read by third grade have a higher chance of going into prison as well.
Yep.
And so when you look at the machinations of how lobbying and legislation work and funding education. You learn that sometimes certain unions like prison guards unions and sheriffs unions who control prisons are lobbying against education developed meant in order to build out this pipeline to conditioning system.
How are you going to have a job if you're actually nurturing and loving and encouraging and educating children and giving them stability. Yeah, less than five percent of kids who are in foster care will ever have a forever family.
Yeah, there are and systems and cycles of generational trauma that continue these and I think we have to look at what is the responsibility of government with regard to these cycles. Do we let them continue to play out or do we try to repair them? And you know whose responsibility is the repair? Is it our responsibility to taxpayers to continue to pay for prisons or should we be paying for the repair?
Is it our response one's ability as taxpayers to continue to fund foster care that doesn't work?
Understood? Why do these inadequacies persist.
Because they're self governed, because there's no oversight, there is no holding accountable, there are no checks and balances, There is no one that holds that system or holds the prison system accountable. They're not accountable to anyone but themselves.
My thought is, how do we develop a world, and certainly this country, a country that supports families such that the foster care system is dramatically reduced.
What a beautiful idea. How do we support families? How do we support dads so that they know that they are vital and a necessary part of the equation. How do we break addictions? How do we heedal souls so that people aren't running to the pipe or the bottle to numb themselves. Do we do these things? I don't know.
I don't know either. I just know that love is part of the equation.
It is the equation. It is the equation.
Yeah, yeah, social justice shine is part of that. It was a special meeting that I had. A friend of mine invited me to the most amazing retreat in the Caribbean. It was Necker Island. This is Richard Branson's private island. And the attendees were executives from huge companies and scientists from the biggest and brightest research universities and some investors who you know have paved the way for lots of companies. And I had the opportunity to meet Nubar Afayen, who
is the CEO of Flagship Pioneerings Health Solutions. I would say biotech company. They were the ones that created Maderna. And in conversation with him, he shared with me that he was a co founder of an organization called the
Aurora Prize for Humanity. And as he was explaining to me the amazing work that they do to award humanitarians who are engaged in the most impossible mission to save lives and transform their countries or their communities, I was inspired to write a song to amplify that work, the work of the Aurora Prize, and I wrote Shine after learning of several of the recipients of the Aurora Prize.
So tell me about some of the recipients that stand out in your heart.
Oh wow, there are folks who in the Congo doctor Dennis mcquiga, who stood up a hospital to rescue victims of violence. There is constant war at the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. And this constant war is over land. And the land that is being fought for isn't necessarily the war that's happening is not necessarily a war between the citizens of the Congo or Rwanda.
It is a war between the US, Russia and China for minerals that exist in this land, so our systems higher mercenary militaries to fight over land to keep the land in a vague question of ownership, so that mining can happen while there is no rightful owner to the land.
If that makes any sense.
Oh, I know all about it, okay.
So and as we you know, I mean, we're here talking to one another on technology that requires the minerals that being mined. But the violence and the death and the destruction doesn't have to happen. But doctor Dennis mcquagey is helping to heal the people who are harmed during these conflicts, and in particular repairing women who have been damaged by sexual violence in these wars, in these conflicts.
And in order for him to continue doing his work, you know, there's got to be some source of support. And Aurora Prize has awarded him. It's a significant purse in order to continue this work.
Have you ever heard of the book God Sleeps in Rwanda?
No, but I will finally read it.
Read it. Two things I will I will ask you to explore. One is a movie called Sometimes in April, mm hmm. And one is a book that's called God Sleeps in Rwanda.
Yeah, I'll find it.
Thank you when you when you hear of the struggle that people are going through in so many other parts of the world, and not for any other reason than the read of the Western world, it just it tears me apart. It breaks my heart, and it makes me feel more compelled to be as vocal as and and loud and as much of an ally and a stand for them as possible. Had the opportunity to sing at the Legal Defense Fund gala recently, and in the audience
was Tim Cook. And as we started dinner after some of the discussions that happened on stage, many people were walking up to Tim Cook to take a picture and.
Get a moment with him.
And I noticed the crowd and I thought, hmm, I should go stand in that crowd. I'm going to get close to Tim, but I'm not going to take a photo. I am going to ask for his help in pushing for a conversation with his competitors and colleagues in the technology world to be more vigilant about conflict minerals.
I mean, who else can do it.
It has to come down to either we as the consumers, deciding that we don't want products with blood in them. And so my job is to make sure more people know. It has to start.
Somewhere, sing, sing, sing, right, because you have such a beautiful voice and such a clarity of understanding of how evil evil is. It doesn't care, Evil doesn't care, and it just breaks my heart.
But you know we have we can, we can love will conquer evil. I really truly believe it.
Is I do do.
It takes all of all of our attention and concerted effort, and right now we're very distracted. So my job with this megaphone is to say, hey, guys, look over this way.
I'm learning much about Alo Black, his music and his dreams of making a difference in inspiring others to do the same. We have much much more to talk about right after I share a little bit about it. Another sponsor that makes this podcast possible. 'tis the season for shopping and sipping, and there's nothing better than stealing a moment to put your feet up and enjoy a cup of Bigelow tea during the hustle and bustle of your busy life. Bigelow has the perfect blend for every me
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Hey, that was that?
Was My sole mission of getting up from my seat and my dinner was to go and make sure that he knew and I couldn't leave that room without doing it, it would not be from all of the things. So I was a mentee of Harry Belafonte, rest in peace, and from everything that I knew.
I was a crush on Harry Belafonte. Okay, what a beautiful man.
Everything that I knew about him and what he stands for and how he operated compelled me to make that statement. And should I have the opportunity to speak to Satya Nadella or to you know, anyone else in these lofty positions, I'm going to state the case so that when they leave, they are present to their complicit behavior.
And so that should they disregard it, that's on them.
That's on them.
But they are present to it.
Amen, A voice of one crying in the desert, that's what you are.
Well, I'm not just one. I just I might be in a unique position. I'm not the only one, though there are others. Hopefully we can all sing a chorus.
Yeah, well, keep shining and keep singing, and keep keep rattling, keep rattling the cage and speaking out and saying for me, it's kids. I mean, it breaks my heart what we're doing to the environment. It breaks my heart. What's happening to see mammals into sea creatures and to the bees. There's so much that breaks my heart. But my energy goes into the kids. My energy goes into the kids and letting them have a voice, and letting them have
dignity and letting them have access to life in its fullest. Yeah.
Yeah, they they deserve to have, you know, clean air, clean water, fresh organic produce.
Love, safety, security, Yeah.
Joy really, joy is a human right.
But I'm excited about your music. I'm excited about the album. Tell me the name of the album and the project again.
The name of the album is Stand Together, and one of the songs on the album is called Shine. It was written inspired by the Aurora Prize for Humanity, which is an organization that awards humanitarians who are facing mortal danger to transform their communities and their regions and their countries. A really noble organization helping really noble people.
Well, thank you, Thank you for using your megaphone, your beautiful voice.
Thank you for giving me the chance to share amplify.
The album. Good Things came out in twenty eleven. The single I Need a Dollar used as a theme song to HBO's How to Make It in America. Several more singles on the album charted in the UK. Wake Me Up with Swedish performer Ravici reached number one in one hundred and three countries. Thank you, Alo for spending time with us today. If you didn't know Alo Black's name before today, you certainly knew his music and now no his heart, his compassion. He is committed to making a
positive difference in the world. He just announced his new album Stand Together with a performance of the single Don't Go Alone on Good Morning America this past Friday, December thirteenth. The album comes out soon, so be watching and waiting for that happy news early in the coming year. By shining such a bright light and important social issues, Alo hopes to empower individuals and communities, reminding us all of our shared responsibility to uplift one another and contribute to
a brighter future. That sounds familiar. To put it another way, love someone, God bless you, and I'll see you next time. Un Love someone with the lailah