An Intimate Evening with Musician and Conservationist Samuel J

Samuel J is a singer-songwriter, producer, and conservationist who has shared stages with the likes of Jack Johnson, Xavier Rudd, Ben Harper, Michael Franti, RY X, Donovan Frankenreiter, Zero 7, G Love, and so many others of renown, along with an impressive list of leading musicians in Brazil and around the globe. Yet, as marketable as this beautiful prodigy is, he is motivated by something more lasting than fame or monetary success. Samuel J carries a potent and infectious responsibility for the earth without being didactic. He knows firsthand the power of the collective to make a difference through music. 

One song at a time, from house concerts to transformational festivals as mediums of change, Samuel is a gentle reminder of the opportunity to be better earth stewards and live in our joyous potential. “Words are limited–that’s why we have music,” he shared. And what music: Samuel weaves finely honed guitar skills, powerful lyrics, and a mellifluous voice with soul-tugging, hip-swishing, danceable beats. 

All this convenes with the hopeful, loving presence he is, taking his audiences on the kind of journeys that invoked this by the BBC: Pure goosebumps when you hear him sing live. Lucky for the Hudson Valley, Samuel is playing a pop-up concert at Crescent, an intimate new venue in Gardiner, on August 8th! Be lifted, feel his infectious light, and be sure that you will want to dance. Indeed, this is a rare opportunity to see this love-fueled inspiration up close and personal. 

“Pure goosebumps when you hear him sing live.” – BBC Radio 1

Additionally, local writer and award winning documentary filmmaker, Jon Bowermaster, will open the evening with a Q+A with Samuel, including a short talk about the health of our local waterways and ways we can become more aware and involved in important local conservation efforts.

Samuel has performed for his holiness the Dalai Lama as part of the Dalai Lama’s 70th birthday celebration. He also sang at the Olympic and Paralympic games in London and raises funds and awareness for Sea Shepherd and Ocean Care. He has been on numerous expeditions with both organizations, reporting from areas most affected by exploitation and harmful environmental degradation, among many other philanthropic efforts with other organizations and his own initiatives. From starting a school in Brazil to lift children out of a cycle of drugs and violence to ocean clean-up initiatives, supporting a fleet of women anti-poachers in Zimbabwe, and so much more, this is a man who is living proof of the alchemy that creativity wields. “Music is the truest thing I know,” Samuel shared. 

INSIDE+OUT caught up with this busy human, making waves far and near while perpetually swimming in a creative river. He spoke openly and articulately about his creative process, what motivates him to support and illuminate the initiatives he does, and the powerful alchemy music offers to transform, connect and uplift.

INSIDE+OUT: You are incredibly prolific and charged creatively. Are there ever times when you find it hard to source that? Do you have a daily practice, and how do you “get back to it”?

Samuel J: I don’t play music all the time, but whenever I pick up a guitar, there are always 2 or 3 songs that come through. I’ve found that there has to be a balance. Every time I write a song, I appreciate that it’s a gift, as in, the song was gifted. I used to think of that word when speaking about someone as an egoic thing: “I’m gifted; they’re gifted.” But now I realize it’s about being gifted or given the song…a song that is obviously through my lens, for it is experience that gives way to inspiration, ideas, and emotion that finds its way into songs. And no, it doesn’t dry up for me. I never had writer’s block. We all have our different struggles. It’s about finishing and moving forward because there are so many songs. My challenge is focusing on which songs I should develop and putting time and energy into marketing. There are so many songs; so much of it just has to be shelved. Or forget the shelf. It just happened; you can’t hold onto everything. The albums are just collections of songs that made it through, but there were a thousand others behind them at the same time.

Carl Jung said, “If you are a gifted person, it doesn’t mean you gained something. It means you have something to give back.” 

Do you have a daily practice that is beyond music? Meditation or something like that?

I do, but I try to carry it through the whole day; embody life as a practice rather than segregating little sections of your life to be in practice. I exercise in the mornings, so that’s a practice. And I go to the ocean if I am near it. I like moving, which takes various forms. For years, I did lots of surfing. Then lots of pilates and yoga. These days, it’s a cocktail of different exercise fruits. I also pray, set intentions, and get clear on what I’m about to create.

Greatest inspirations or teachers?

Nature and children, including animals.

When did you start playing guitar?

My earliest memory of playing guitar was around twelve, when I found a couple of notes and played them over and over again, and also doing that in nature. I would sit on a bench playing one chord. I was fascinated by the feeling it gave me when I played notes. The very first riff I made was entrancing to me to make this melancholy sound. That was a significant moment because it wasn’t like watching a YouTube video of Jimmy Hendrix and thinking, I want to play that riff. It was a feeling when I played that melody. And I thought, what is that? It brought me closer to feeling the magic of life, I guess. 

Who gave you the guitar?

Neil, my sister’s partner…my brother-in-law.

Do you have other people in your family who are musical?

Not really… though I was thinking about parents when you asked the question. I have a cousin who plays in a blues band. And my sister Jody is very vocal; she’s a singer and was probably the most significant catalyst. My mom is very creative. She’s always interpreting her experiences into art; she’s a painter. And Jody is gifted in that way, too. She was significant because she was this human in my life who loved me and was overseeing my journey. She would ask, “What are you eating? What clothes are you wearing; where do they come from?” It was my first experience with social responsibility, which you can easily overlook. She was supportive by helping me be aware of my life’s choices and making a positive impact. 

Part of it also comes through exposure to nature, even beyond our parents. How do you connect with yourself? Especially when growing up in the city, which can be a lot harder. Nature is still free. Well, not always. National parks are kind of an early sign to me of what’s coming: oxygen-rich areas that will be expensive to go to because there’s more oxygen. 

Is it hard to balance your personal life with your life on the road and your conservation work?

I had a big personal year. It’s not like our lives are just about making things happen with our careers. I had to put energy towards my sister and my mom. I went through a separation and a whole load of other things this year. It has to be a balance of all the things in one’s life. And I want nothing more than to make an impact. It’s that simple. I’m inspired to make an impact through projects founded in music. For example, I made a song with women from Africa protecting elephants. When that song goes viral, it’s a win-win-win. You support the work of the women, raise funds for elephant protection, and make great art with a song that’s timely and can be enjoyed. 

Can you speak to the motivation behind what you’re doing?

The motivation to get famous is to make a real impact in terms of conservation. For example, Jack Johnson created a song to support the school I founded in Brazil. He did just one post about it, and hundreds of thousands of people supported the project.

And yet, how incredible is it that there are so many people in positions of popularity who have no clue? It’s not my place that everyone should be working in conservation. Everyone has their own calling. It’s tragic that there are so many companies and individuals through which so much greatness could be created, though, just from having that sense of responsibility. In terms of meaning and purpose, there’s nothing greater than that. With all the things one can buy, you can’t buy that sense of fulfillment. It’s a bucket with a hole in it if you’re pouring water into it, and that’s not fulfilling.

Can you speak about the school you have been helping to support in the heart of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil? 

União, or Union in English, is the school I helped get on its feet. People ask, “What are you teaching the children?” What you learn in places like this is in the hierarchy of needs. Getting to teach them is a total bonus. Just getting them to be somewhere safe, where they’re not on the streets selling drugs, is the first focus of the project. Of course, the kids are learning, but getting them safe was and is the priority. A school in those places is a refuge. It’s so powerful. If you’re a coach and you’re training athletes to take a half second off their time, they may win the championships with that subtle difference you’ve made, and that’s great. But the impact is much bigger if you’re supporting someone to run for the first time. So, a small step–just learning how to write–is a revelation for those children and people. I found that every win in a place so dark was so massive that when there’s a spark of light, it can shine out so much further. And those kids are not dwelling or complaining. They value what they have. About fifty to sixty children will come through the school in a day, while the younger children have essentially been adopted by the teachers who are there all the time. The kids live there with a group of magic women and a couple of amazing men who refuse to get into drug trafficking. 

One in a million would have that kind of courage. Imagine: you’re broke, your children are suffering, they’re hungry, and you can fix it all by selling drugs. To choose not to do that, to actually decide to make an honest living when you can’t get an ID so you can be employed, and the police even make it difficult to do honest things like selling coconuts. But you can’t sell coconuts because you can’t get an ID in that system. It was a big eye-opener. All my ideas about just dropping some money in a school…it’s way deeper than that. I was the spark for this project. 

You also created an award-winning album with some of the most notable names in the Brazilian music world, inspired by the courageous lives of some of the youth you worked with in the favelas. The album was to help support the school program. Music Connect wrote this about that project: “More than an album, the Brasil Live Project reflects the unifying power of music and its ability to break down barriers in an ever more segregated world.’’ Impressive.

I got celebrities behind it and got it off the ground in 2014. I co-founded it with a man named Lukey, and I did my part, but I am not so involved with it at the moment. I will help 10-fold in the future with even greater success in my career. It’sone of my passion projects. The current active mechanisms for it fall under the umbrella of the Young Elders Project, which is part of Samuel J Music. That’s a super simple concept: I invite children in the country where I am touring to come on the stage, and then we talk about their desires about what they want to see in the world. You ask a child, “What changes do you want to see in the world?” Then they speak that out on stage like a declaration, and we sing a song together. Usually, 5 or 6 people in the audience want to get involved in the project in terms of funding. That’s the Young Elders Project. It’s a great model.

What goals are you holding for the future?

I’m 41. I have to focus on what songs will move the needle so I can move beyond 100,000 people a month and get to a couple of million to make a real impact. The system that is in place is a real system. Spotify and AI are all a blessing, but they are also very limiting platforms for creativity because creativity and meaning are not being measured. Your numbers are being measured regardless of what’s being shared. It’s like McDonald’s, which is incredibly successful in terms of a business model. It started with twenty employees, and now it is what it is. It’s a dream in terms of capitalism to get as expansive as you can, have the least cost you can, get the cheapest materials, and make as much money as possible. Putting music into a capitalistic model becomes the same thing: make whatever music; it doesn’t matter as long as it sells. 

Now we’re having this awesome reorientation in the economy from brands, even the oil companies, even the big brands producing plastic like Evian. They all say, “Well, we know how to do that. Now, how do we do something that’s actually going to be sustainable long-term for our world and our planet in terms of living more in harmony? When you start moving along those lines, you recognize a powerful movement happening, a regenerative wave breaking on the planet of consciousness. And that is a reprioritization of why we’re doing something. It’s interesting, too, that even Spotify is being held accountable right now for overlooking that entirely in their model. Musicians feel burned out as creatives making these companies billions of dollars while making no money themselves. The whole system is backward, so artists are now stepping up on their social platforms and speaking about all this, and they have raised interest from Supreme Courts. It’s the same as everything. Eventually, it all gets taken into accountability.

An example: a guy gets cancer from overexposure to pollutants in the soil, in the food, from the ground up. So Monsanto is getting sued, finally getting held accountable because they caused a fatality because of their product, and it goes on and on. Finally, these companies have to reengineer from the inside out to be more in harmony with the earth, along with the shift that reprioritizes why we’re doing anything. It started with colonialism and not understanding nature. The earth was seen as this endless, infinite reservoir you can take from, and it will never deplete itself, which is true if you work with reciprocity and the natural order of things. If you don’t, it’s finite. But if you keep planting enough seeds in the ground and take a certain amount of crops each year…same with fishing. And the same with music. 

The actual economy that’s set up with music is not sustainable; it’s not a sustainable model. It’s awesome to see that shifting with so many new platforms that are getting huge and doing the opposite, and everyone wins. You do an event, sponsorships are involved, and everyone gets paid. That’s a more sustainable model. 

”Some of the most heart-warming beautiful compositions I have heard from this era, and with it the birth of a much needed bright star.” – Limiha

What would you say to the hopeless ones?

The most difficult things we go through in our lives become the catalyst of the greatest positive changes. The greatest challenges are carving into you to create more understanding and resilience. In the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, he grasped that universal truth. Rather than life punishing you with the hard things, the loss, pain, and trauma, it’s strengthening you to have a deeper understanding of yourself and a deeper connection to your real truth. That’s the lesson we all go through in our ways. And that’s the interception point of where I want to be in communication, creating songs that can bring people to a more hopeful place.

I was once on stage, opening for Ziggy Marley. There were a lot of people, like 12,000 people, and there was a guy who I could feel was really listening intently the whole time. He was right up front, came up to me afterward, and said, “I felt my heart healing during your set. I was getting all this clarity about what I want to say to my wife.” 

I said to him, “Most of those songs I wrote, my heart had to get smashed to write them. The songs we write through all our experiences give us understanding that can be medicine for someone else.

Can you speak about the Akashinga Project you are involved with?

The Akashinga are military-trained elephant protectors in Zimbabwe, Africa, and I lived with them for three weeks. Many of them are survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault. They are the first women in Africa trained as rangers. We made a song with the village women and the rangers called “My Sister.” I got access to filming the elephants, and the song is set to be a campaign to raise funds for and awareness about women’s empowerment and protection of the elephants. I’ve become close friends with the owners, and I completely trust that the money will go directly to the work they’re doing in the field and to the women. I’m trying to find the right partnerships now. 

At this stage of my life, I can drop in anywhere in the world with the knowledge, equipment, songwriting, record, and make something that reflects all that. So I drove, set up my cameras, wrote the song, recorded the audio in a church, produced and mastered it. Now, it needs to be marketed, and I want some partnerships to help that happen. I’m 20,000 of my own money into this non-profit, meaning I don’t stand to profit from anything because I just want to support these elephants and women’s work. Maybe there’s an individual who can also stand behind this project and put in something even as small as $10k up front so I can put on an incredible launch night in New York, and amazing launch night in LA, essentially to fund my efforts. I will dedicate every day for a few weeks to bringing this whole thing to life, including an interview and passing on the behind-the-scenes footage. The music video is great: look at these courageous women, the beautiful video and song…but the journey behind that, the experiences I had every day, just wow. I filmed everything. But it all needs to be edited and would probably take sixty hours, which I don’t have. We need someone to help with social media and promote it in other ways. So, I am calling in people to cover the costs of some amazing editors I know. I will put it on my social media, and maybe it will get 20,000 people to see it, but it deserves a proper launch, not just the video but the film about it all behind the scenes.

If someone were going to set about doing this, they would have to get permits from Africa, permission from the Akashinga, and state permission from the government to even go, then get permission to drone elephants. It was about a $100,000 expedition. But I went out there and had lunch with the founder, and she said, “Ok, you’ve come all this way. I think you’re the right guy to do this. So I did it. And it’s to the finish line; it just needs some help getting to the other side.

How did you learn about this initiative?

I saw a documentary on National Geographic and thought, “This is the coolest thing ever: women protecting elephants.”

You are very tapped into the idea of manifestation. When did that start?

It’s ongoing work. It started with trying other mental approaches that didn’t work. For me, manifestation, the awareness of the power of positive thinking, has come from negative thinking getting me nowhere. This experience I will share with you was one of my most significant transformative experiences. 

I was driving and I broke down in my RV. We all have that tendency to think, “Shit, this is a disaster.” But what really is it? What actually creates that disaster is your response. So I was with one of my best friends, Tim Powers, an ex-Marine who now dedicates his life to manifesting as much goodness as possible from any situation he’s involved in. And that came out of all of the awful things he has experienced. So, we were in this RV, and we hit a wall. I had just spent $30,000 buying that thing; it was my life’s investment. It felt like a total disaster; I was a mess. No one could talk to me; I was just so pissed off. And Tim just said, “Thank you for this opportunity.” 

I said, “Tim, shut up! Don’t start thanking me. We just crashed this vehicle!” 

Then he said, “Do you have any CDs here?” I was like: what is he talking about? CDs, now? He said again, “Just tell me, where are your CDs.” This happened years ago when CDs were still a thing. He grabbed my CDs and then disappeared. I was so angry! He left me in the RV. It’s broken down. The traffic behind us was getting insane. Everyone was beeping. I couldn’t move. I was feeling lost and stressed. 

Meanwhile, Tim had taken my CDs to all the cars stacked up behind us and started saying, “This guy is an amazing musician. He just broke down and wanted to gift you a CD.” So all these people started listening to my music in this traffic jam, and one of these guys happened to be a world-class auto body worker. We got this guy’s contact information, got the car there, and he fixed my RV for free. 

That story exemplifies the power of manifestation. The subtlety is so simple. There is always an infinite possibility, and your choice to create the highest and best outcome depends on your ability to stay open. If you just decide you are fucked, you are fucked, excuse my French, but you are. And if you decide there’s a silver lining, even if you can’t see it, just be open to the possibility that there is something, believe it or not, even greater. Imagine: you lose a job, disaster. Or is it? Is the universe saying you need to lose this job because you will be way better at something else? Manifestation doesn’texist without trust. Trust is the foundation of being able to manifest anything. I work with it a lot. And I get so disappointed with the music world at times. I think, Man, what more do I have to do? But you have to keep trusting.

Join Samuel J. on August 8th, 2024, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Crescent @ Full Circle, 293 Bruynswick Rd. New Paltz, NY. Seating is limited and tickets will sell out. Be part of an intimate and unexpected journey that will weave a greater awareness of our relationship with the earth, the purity of acoustic guitar, violin, and voice followed by the hip-moving pulse of an electronic DJ set. This event is a co-production between Crescent Hudson Valley and Evolutionary Holistic Healing.

You can purchase tickets for this family friendly event, find out more about Crescent CLICK HERE.

For more about Samuel J and to hear his music CLICK HERE.