Ronnie Notch is moving from an active support role in the protest movement in Ferguson to working with youth on music and technology. He is putting the finishing touches on a new music curriculum called Notes for Life that will debut at the Microsoft Store in the Galleria on October 7.
Notes for Life, designed for 12- to 18-year-olds, “combines music and technology to show how important advancements in technology were over time to the evolution of music,” Notch said. “From the creative process to the business side, technology always has something to do with music.”
Notch, 30, uses a phone and laptop developed by Microsoft’s competitor, Apple. But he also is working with Microsoft to develop new software and hardware to help them better compete in the digital media space.
“What I love is they told me they consider themselves ‘the old new kids on block,’” Notch said. “They realize they need to rebrand. They need to step up and do something different.”
Notch is working on future projects with William Fink, Microsoft’s so-called “tech evangelist,” whom Notch met earlier this year while arranging an event for his record label at the Microsoft store via Trina Claggett.
“Microsoft is like that,” Notch said. “If they like you, they will introduce you to the next person you need to know. You don’t meet a lot of people like that.”
The company he launched at the Microsoft store on July 12 is King of 12 Recordings. Notch currently is producing Colin Drew, an R&B artist from Arlington, Virginia who lives in Lebanon, Illinois. Drew’s album “All Makes Sense,” two years in the making, is set for a Fall 2014 release. Notch recorded the record at Suburban Pro Studios in Florissant, a studio owned by Carter McKee, who also supported the Ferguson protest movement in its crucial early days.
Notches traces his musical development back to listening to Luther Vandross riding in the car as a city kid with his mother, Patricia Turner. After taking piano and trumpet lessons, he found an old turntable that had been left in storage at a home his family moved into in Normandy. He took out some of his mom’s old records and, imitating a scene from a hip-hop movie, practiced scratching. “I was horrible,” he said.
But after his mom gave him a Yamaha keyboard and a pair of Gemini turntables for Christmas in 1998, he developed some chops. Soon, as DJ Diz-Z, he was working Wednesday though Saturday nights, from his sophomore year at Lutheran North High School to his sophomore year in college.
“I didn’t have a life,” he said. “All I did was beg people for rides to jobs.”
In his sophomore year of college he transferred to Wilberforce University in Ohio, where he eventually graduated with a master’s degree in mass communications, with an emphasis in public relations. He decided he did not want to do PR for a living, but his time in Ohio proved influential in an unexpected way.
While a student, he shopped for necessities at a Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, where John Crawford would later be killed by police on August 5 while holding an air rifle in the store . Notch and his friends in St. Louis discussed this incident after it happened. That memory was fresh when a friend of Notch’s who works for Hot 104 FM texted him on August 9 that a young man had been shot and killed by a police officer at Canfield Green Apartments in Ferguson and his body was still lying in the street. The family and young friends of the slain teen, Michael Brown, stood grief-stricken and enraged outside the police line.
“I knew we needed to do something, like a teen summit, to talk to them about what’s going on, what things up they’re up against,” Notch said. “But truthfully, we got zero help.”
The youth didn’t want to be talked to, they wanted to be heard. They wanted to protest the local authorities who weren’t giving them any answers. So Notch became a supporter who gathered and delivered water, ice and snacks. “That grew,” he said. His close friend Keith Griffin had the idea of meeting at pump 6 of the QuikTrip between Canfield Green and Northwinds Apartments, pump 6. That grew, too.
“It all came together collectively,” Notch said.
Because he was so consistent, Notch became associated with leading the protest group at the Ferguson Police Department, but he insists he was never a leader.
“The people who were out there at night put it all on the line,” he said. “Those were the athletes. But for every sports team, you have a water boy. He doesn’t get a lot credit, nor deserve a lot of credit. But he makes sure the other people are okay. I had no problem taking that role.”
As a family man on the cusp of a major business development, Notch finally had to pull back from the protests. Like many of the movement’s first-wave leaders and supporters, he is now adjusting to taking a longer view of the problems in Ferguson, North County and the St. Louis region.
“The reason you protest is to get attention,” Notch said. “I believe we got their attention – and then some. By day three or four, literally the world was watching. So what do we do now that the world is watching?”
The answer, he decided, is not just to keep protesting.
“To me, the work that needs to be done is to put different people in office,” Notch said. “You can’t have someone removed from office by holding a sign up as they drive to work every day. That doesn’t work.”
Notch is not a political professional, though he once wrote speeches for the president of his alma mater. He is, however, a father and plans to help develop a new fatherhood group that gathers father with their children for community playdates that police officers also attend.
“When I was a kid, the cops knew my name,” Notch said. “Never as a kid did I feel like my life was threatened by a police officer. I want to make sure my son feels that way.”
For more information on Notes for Life or King of 12 Recordings, email ronnienotch@kingoftwelve.com or visit www.kingoftwelve.com. Twitter: @kingoftwelve.
