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Brian Cook is a musician and a person who cares…. His perspective of the world and his heart of compassion compels him to use his music and resources to make a difference.

The Music:
Cook’s approach to song writing and creating music is not according to the current musical trend; its authenticity….. Instead of trying to cultivate a sound, Cook explained, that when he’s writing, he allows the music to have its way; he’s open to letting it just come, to letting it write itself. “Every song has its own; like a child, it has its own personality--you have to kind of go with that. There’s no real formula, it’s just really about getting the best out of a piece of music as you can.” Whoever listens to "WHY‘s" music, will find that evident. Their latest album is titled “RED”, which features the songs: “Freedom In Surrender”, “Can't Stand Falling", “Big Thunder No Rain”, “To Be Human”, “Red”, and others.

Cook continued to share, “that poverty and fighting poverty is like fighting crime, and fighting crime is fighting the source. The source is lack of education and lack of hope. You instill hope, you feed a child, you give them a future, then you give your country-you’re apart of that future. If you are in a certain parts of Africa, where there’s great struggle; the children wake up everyday and their job is to go out and find food or do hard labor. Why are our children or why are we more valuable than they are? We aren’t more valuable than they are; we have a gift, and we need to know how to share it. If we’re having financial or economic problems and we just hang on; you’ll lose everything you try to hang on to. If you give it away, it’s going to come back to you. I’ve seen it even when I went through a time when I was struggling financially--I decided, I’m not going to stop child sponsorship because of that….. When you’re putting it out there, there are forces that are going to take care of you. If we get to the place where we are so self-preserving, we’re no longer human beings."

When asked, why does it seem that people care less and less in this time that we are living in? Cook’s response was, “I don’t think people in Canada or people America don’t care. It’s just that we’ve become more self centered. We’re distracted by our own need, and we’ve built our need into something grand. Even our poorest people are a lot better off than ninety percent of the planet. We’re kind of like children complaining about what we don’t have, and we still have more than most. If you really hit rock bottom, there is still a place to go, there are still people who can help--where as in some countries people don’t have that. If we honestly believe that we are all equal as human beings and that we are all connected, then we can’t sit back and let a family member die; whether we know them are not. If we do that, then we can’t sit back and expect war to go away; we can’t expect [peace] if we aren’t willing to use the word [peace] as a verb. [Peace] is a verb. If we don’t make it an action word, it just becomes a really great idea that does nothing…. We need to do that, and invest in the future of our world.”

Recently, The World From Here magazine got the opportunity to engage in a most interesting conversation with Brian Cook, lead singer of the Canadian rock band "WHY", an Indie band formed in 1994, with the sole purpose of creating authentic music and advocating for victims of poverty around the world.......

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Making Music, Making
a Difference

Why He Cares:
Cook is involved with World Vision (child sponsorship) and has been since he was a kid, because of the influence of his parents. He’s had the opportunity to meet people from different countries, who have expressed some of the things that are happening in their lives. Cook said, “for me, it was always this idea-that I feel really blessed and fortunate to be born in a country where our poorest people are still the upper middle class compared to most developing countries. But that doesn’t diminish the need in America or here in Canada. There are people in need to the point where you hear of people dying every three seconds. And while we are talking, there are people who will pass away. That kind of just struck me--it’s wrong. We’re blessed to live in these countries that are well off and yet we get self focused, and we forget….. There are people who are right now digging in garbage, trying to find food to feed their kids. In 2009, that’s not acceptable.”

“When people who are suffering from depression, and people who just want to be happy start working with people in need, and reaching out to other people: happiness comes, it will find you. We can find happiness if we invest in happiness. If we can invest in each other as people; we’ll see less injustice."

One Person at a Time:
Every great movement starts with one person. “One person doing something for someone else is a movement; it’s like a fire, and it will catch…. Just like apathy is a fire and it can catch on. Fear is also a fire. But I think the bigger thing is, are we going to be caught up in fear and self-preservation, or are going to be caught up in something that’s going to change the planet and right it; kind of reboot things and put them back in their proper place again-put things in perspective. And once we get things back in perspective, I honestly believe things will start to line up. The economy will line up, and people’s lives will open up. We have to start loving our neighbors as ourselves and we also have to right that, in ourselves. If individuals come to terms with that, then the world starts changing and it becomes a wave, and with multiple people doing it, it can become like a tidal wave of change. There is power in action. [Love] is a verb, [peace] is a verb and [hope] is a verb. If you invest in people, it will come back to you.”

And Now….Back to the Music:
When Cook writes a song, he writes with the understanding that people receive on an individual level. For instance, a women from Germany who visits the band’s Myspace page everyday contacted him to let him know that she’s been listing to his song “The Surface”, and when she listens to the song, she doesn’t cut herself. To cook, that’s a successful song, which he measures, not by how well the song charts, but by how it affects a life. The song, “We Started Out (Somebody’s Baby)”, is also having an affect on people. It expresses the fact that, “we all started out in the same place as somebody’s baby, and we all have the same value. Even though we didn’t all end up in the same place, the question is: Are we all still that valuable? I believe yes…. We are all on an equal level of value.”

For Brian Cook and "WHY", making a difference through the power of music, the power of art and expression-stamping out poverty and making it history, is what it’s all about. Fighting for equality and education, giving people clean drinking water, which Cook states, “should be a human right”, is the goal and the measure of the band’s true success. “One person can make a difference. Every great movement in history started with one act; one person standing up.”