They sign a bunch of women, and they call it a movement. I don't like the way women in music have been identified as women first and musicians second.
I think the word soul has gotta come into it. Music that's created just for consuming lacks that soul, that swing, that feeling.
Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.
I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world.
I sometimes listen to music to get into some place that I need to get. I don't think it's because I have a musician as a father that I do this - most actors do.
We learned pretty early on in this band that you can't have snobbery in music.
I've been really excited about some new cutting edge electronic music and technology.
I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would ...
The thing is, there are so many different ways to make music these days with virtual instruments, software applications, physical instruments, and computer programs.
As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices.
Well, I think the first piece of music I ever heard that I really loved was 'Salome's Dances' by Richard Strauss. I played that 12-inch, 78 record, and I stood up on an ottoman to play it on a big Victrola and I'd just keep playing it and playing it.
When we moved back to the US, folk music was all the rage. So I traded in my banjo for a guitar.
I approach music and acting the same way, through spontaneous improvisation. I never really try to rehearse anything, do it over and over, except when we're inside a take.
My mother's sister married a man from Barbados, and my cousins were raised in Barbados. So we traveled down there, they came up every summer for camp, and I started paying attention to their music. And that was the first place I ever remember hearing...
I think that listening to music or creating music is a spiritual undertaking, so the process of creating music, you know, involves listening. It involves sensitivity, it involves humility, you know, and then also it's something which is higher than w...
One of the first places where I started to respond to song lyrics was in reggae music. A lot of what I was responding to were references to the Old Testament. It was not that I had to adapt the lyrics to the sound. Reggae and the Old Testament are bo...
The kind of music I'm trying to make is conscious, to make people think and feel and get inspired.
With music, you're working with a producer, and you walk out of the studio six hours later with a track that's almost completely finished. There's an almost immediate payoff.
When I was 17, I listened to reggae music. I loved Bob Marley. I started growing dreadlocks. It's always been my way, that the outside matches what's going on with me inside.
Some artists are bound to an image: Bob Marley has dreadlocks, Matisyahu has a beard. But that's a reminder that the whole thing is not about style. It's about music.
I think when you're a fan of music - at least the way I've been a fan to artists that have really touched me - you're with them for the long haul. They might do things that you don't understand or agree with, but I think I've always tried to hold my ...
