From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
There's something beautiful, open and present about using the human voice. We've lost the dynamics of audio over the last 30 years because of compressed music formats, radio and different genres of music.
Music is also incorruptible in many ways. I can hear when music isn't authentic, or when it isn't coming from the heart and soul. Music is a pure, universal, language that can transcend boundaries at a time. Particularly now, when politicians are using semantics to erect more boundaries, music continues to be more and more relevant.
When you're identifying talent in music or other industries- one of the most important things to identify is which of those individuals is able to marry talent with extraordinary drive.
He was playing it and people were dancing. They didn't need to know who the band was, they didn't know what Nile Rodgers… didn't mean anything. They were just going crazy.
Listen, I was so poor I couldn't even afford to get a copy of my own record. This is before cassette tapes, I couldn't even get an acetate made so I could go listen at home.
Without music, life would be hollow. Music is like food, we need it. It's essential. It's invisible, and doesn't require our attention, and so it gets threaded into our lives. Music becomes a strong part of our memories, our sense of self, and identity.
In improvisation on instruments, I feel creation is going a new path with every note, somewhere you haven't been before. You discover things, you're the adventurer in music. That leads to new songs and nice adventures.
In our low moments, music is our therapy, it helps us to cry, to breathe, or gives us the encouragement we need… it's our therapy. In our moments of happiness, music is our celebration… it's extraordinary.
The difference between rap, jazz, blues, rock & roll, pop, r&b and all that is that the hip-hop artists held on to it…. MTV didn't play any people of colour until hip-hop came along. They had Michael Jackson then they had Run D.M.C. Run D.M.C's 'Rock Box' and these records were honest and real reflections of what came from these people's communities- from a poetry and music standpoint.
Music allows us to express our soul and feelings in a way that's very difficult to replicate with words. I've spent more of my life playing music than I have speaking, and I find it a much more effective way of communicating my feelings and thoughts than words have ever been.
The brain, if nothing else, is a giant pattern detector. It looks for order in chaos. And those patterns matter: they can mean the difference between life and death. Music taps into that same machinery because it's so highly structured. When your brain says, I thought this path would lead here, but it actually took me somewhere new — you experience pleasure.
I know a lot of people who develop and improve by squeezing more and more out of a repertoire, but the journey of development for me is somewhat opposite to that. I'm trying to let go more and more, to be less controlled and more open… that's where I feel the most impactful storytelling comes from.