To those who know him from albums and CDs, Herbie Hancock is just a musician in the sense that a 767 is just a plane. He is a man who has been transforming musical sounds and producing innovations in jazz for half a century.

Renowned throughout the 1960s for his improvisational, disciplined jazz, he carved a niche for himself during a period of wild changes in American musical tastes. A decade later, he would create the sound of fusion, when he plied his musical genius to the electronic synthesizer and came out with the album "Headhunters," in 1974.

He didn't evolve into an innovator, it was simply who he was.

Enduring Interest

A wiz in math and science as a child, Hancock had wanted, at one point, to become an engineer. He shifted his studies from engineering to music composition in college, but he kept an abiding interest in electronic innovation, both in music and in life. His professional career evolved as capabilities were enhanced and opportunities created by technological developments. 

And he watched as technology transformed American and world society, building an entirely new economy over the last quarter of the 20th century and creating a new racial divide separating those with from those without access to technology. The question was what to do about it.

Hancock teamed up with Joseph Mouzon, then an ad executive with NetNoir, the Black-oriented online center, and created the Rhythm of Life Foundation.

Two Americas

"I wanted to support the use of technology not as a business machine, designed solely to make money, but to address the issues that human beings have to deal with day to day that create problems for them," Hancock says. "I wanted to use technology in a humanistic way. Unfortunately, a lot of people didn't understand what I was talking about."

The nation, he says, consists of two types of Americans: the older generation he belongs to, who evolved in a pre-technology era, and the younger generation, who are growing up in this technological era. The older generation, whose images of war were forged in bloody ground-fighting from Normandy to Korea to Vietnam, view conflict through different lenses than the young, to whom the Gulf War was just another video game.

"But the issues of adults are really the same as the issues of kids these days," he asserts. "There is peer pressure, concerns about sexuality, concerns about the generation gap, concerns about social issues. There has to be a way to look at technology to address those real issues.

Wide Vision

"My idea is that it would take the generation that is born into technology, that hasn't been jaded by the use of technology, to create this new vision for the use of technology. I wanted to give the young people the high-end tools, teach them programming, and then ask them to figure out the ways to address some of the issues they have to address day to day. There's violence and abuse and pollution: There are tons of things that need looking at."
Hancock was fascinated by technology. When he wasn't engrossed in music, he was attending technology conferences.

"I don't have tunnel vision about music. I see that music has a function: that is to serve humanity as a source of stimulating inspiration in people's lives. I would never have gotten into thinking about the uses of technology if I only thought of music," he says.

Inspired by Genius

Enter Bill Strickland, a driven Pittsburgh innovator and the founder of the city's Manchester Craftsmen Guild and Bidwell Training Center. Development of that project won Strickland a 1996 "genius award" from the MacArthur Foundation.
"He had built this beautiful building," recalls Hancock, "and was giving classes in the arts, music, and visual arts. 

"He had a performance area on the premises where they could record CDs and tape concerts. They had a training center where he trained poor people in trades, including how to be a travel agent, since one of his sponsors was American Express. They had a culinary center with a beautiful cafeteria, where people sit down and are served by uniformed waiters and treated like kings and queens.

"When I saw that, I knew I wanted to create a similar kind of thing but with an emphasis on technology."

With Strickland's help, he created a second nonprofit agency, the Rhythm of Life Organization (ROLO), which would raise money to develop centers to train youth in the uses of technology for a variety of humane purposes (http://www.rolo.org).

"Without that kind of program, not only will people continue to fall further and further behind, but those of us who are technologically able can't afford to lose the unique perspective and input those currently without technology can provide," Hancock says.

Hidden Talents

Hancock and Mouzon joined with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to develop ROLO's first project, in the low-income neighborhood around the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. BAYCAT, the Bayview-Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology, is being developed in an 80,000-square-foot facility on a five-acre tract overlooking San Francisco Bay. Plans, unveiled at a City Hall ceremony by Mayor Brown, call for classrooms, laboratories, a 500-seat theater, and a reception hall holding up to 350 people.

Hancock and the group are trying to raise up to $50 million to develop the project, finance its operations, and endow its programs and facilities. They have secured some corporate backing already -- from Wells Fargo Bank, eBay, and Hewlett-Packard, the computer powerhouse that has pioneered technology education programs, particularly those involving math and the sciences.

HP provided digital cameras to several neighborhood children, says Hancock, and then took them to an exhibit of Ansel Adams, the nature photographer. It was a new experience for them: holding a camera and seeing a professional exhibit.

"After they saw what Adams did and his vision," says Hancock, "Hewlett-Packard asked the kids to go around their neighborhoods and find meaningful things to shoot, things they have feelings about. Then they were to write down what they felt about what they saw and how and why they shot it.

"We gave them computers with Photoshop, and they did their own cropping. The results were astounding! The pictures were gorgeous, and the statements contained some of the heaviest, deepest sentiments I ever heard. It is what we were hoping for."

Expanding Franchise

Other cities have expressed interest in working with ROLO to develop similar centers for their residents.

"There is interest from St. Louis and New York and New Orleans and Los Angeles," he says. "And the governor of Alaska wants to build a center for the Alaskan Indians. BAYCAT can be a model for building centers of arts and technology around the world. That's our real vision."

ROLO is working with members of the entertainment community on a Teen Tech project in the Los Angeles area, where youth are working in multimedia creations with media professionals and film celebrities. 

"It's exciting stuff," says Hancock. "And there's no end to it."

Roger Witherspoon can be reached at RWitherspoon@ccgmag.com.