November 24, 2024 • 74 mins
Timothy Kimo Brien engages in a thought-provoking dialogue with Richard X. Bennett, a renowned pianist, composer, and filmmaker, who shares his artistic journey and insights into the world of music. Bennett's narrative begins with an exploration of his musical philosophy, which has evolved from a simplistic understanding of music to a richer, more nuanced approach influenced by personal experiences and societal changes. He articulates the role of significant life events in shaping his creative output, particularly how the loss of loved ones and health challenges have prompted him to infuse deeper meanings into his compositions. This reflection reveals the intricate relationship between life experiences and the artistic process, offering listeners a glimpse into the emotional depths that inform Bennett's music.
The conversation transitions into a discussion on raga music, where Bennett provides listeners with a foundational understanding of this complex genre. He likens ragas to the blues, emphasizing their emotional weight and the importance of melodic development. Through his insights, Bennett demystifies raga for a Western audience, highlighting the cultural significance and unique characteristics that set it apart from other musical styles. This exploration not only enriches the listener's appreciation of diverse musical traditions but also underscores the power of music as a tool for emotional expression and storytelling.
As the interview wraps up, the impact of technology on the music industry becomes a focal point. Bennett candidly shares his concerns about audience engagement in an era dominated by digital distractions, while also recognizing the opportunities technology affords independent artists. His reflections on the changing landscape of music creation and consumption resonate with many contemporary musicians navigating similar challenges. Ultimately, this episode serves as a celebration of resilience and creativity, inspiring listeners to embrace their artistic journeys and harness the power of music to convey their unique stories.
Takeaways:
- Richard X. Bennett discusses how personal experiences deeply influence his music creation process.
- He emphasizes the importance of being present and attentive while listening to live music.
- Bennett shares insights on the evolving landscape of jazz and raga music today.
- The challenges of health struggles can lead to profound artistic exploration and creativity.
- He highlights the significance of emotional connection in creating and performing music.
- Bennett reflects on how technology has changed both music production and audience engagement.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Rope a Dope Records
- Ubante Music
- Nick Records
Richard X Bennett Bio
Pianist/Composer/Filmmaker Richard X Bennett plays modernistic and soulful music with a wide ranging sound all his own. He has many jazz and electronica releases on Ropeadope Records, Ubuntu Music and Bynk Records as well as six critically acclaimed raga-based records on Indian labels. Beyond the sonic, lies the visual, an indispensable element of his creative process. rXb's art videos evoke a myriad of emotions through their abstract, whimsical, and esoteric nature. The music is all about groove and beauty, while the visuals are raw and ambient. These different elements are juxtaposed to create fresh art.
Links to Richard X Bennett's...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Create Art Podcast InterviewRichard X. Bennett hello friend,
this is Timothy Keem O'Brien,your head instigator for Create Art
Podcast where I use my over 30years in the arts and education world
to help you tame your innercritic and create more than you consume.
(00:28):
So recently I got an emailfrom a listener talking to me about
Richard X. Bennett and hesaid, hey, you gotta interview this
guy. So let me tell you alittle bit about Richard here for
a moment. He's a pianist,composer and filmmaker and he plays
modernistic and soulful musicwith a wide ranging sound all his
(00:54):
own. He has many jazz andelectronica releases on Rope a Dope
Records, Ubante Music by NickRecords, as well as six critically
acclaimed raga based recordson Indian labels. Beyond the music
lies the visual, indispensableelement of his creative process.
(01:17):
Richard X. Bennett's videosevoked a myriad of emotions through
their abstract, whimsical andesoteric nature. The music is all
about the groove and beauty,while the visuals are all raw and
ambient. These differentelements are juxtaposed to create
(01:37):
fresh art. It was so greattalking with Richard about jazz and
raga music as I'm a huge fanof jazz music and I learned a great
deal about raga music. So sitback, enjoy a cup of coffee and listen
in on this interview where welearn about Richard X. Bennett.
(02:00):
All right everybody, thank youfor joining us here on Create Art
Podcast. I have the privilegeof welcoming Richard X. Bennett to
the podcast. Richard, how areyou doing today?
I'm doing great. It's apleasure to be here.
Tim, excellent. As we weretalking before we hit record, I've
(02:21):
been doing podcasting for anumber of years and it dawned on
me you're my first jazzmusician on the podcast. So congratulations
to you. I'm going to geek out,I'm going to tell you that right
now, but it's honestly anhonor to have you on the show. I'd
(02:42):
like to jump off with a fewquestions here. First question is
your musical philosophy andhow you approach music. Do you have
a certain way that you'reapproaching the works that you're
doing?
What I would say is when Ifirst played and recorded, I thought
of things in very pure, invery pure standpoint that it was,
(03:08):
it was just sort of music andI'm interested in a lot of music
and whatever was interestingme would be the theme of the recording.
Over the last, I guess, six,seven years, I've been making a lot
more videos and I've been alot more interested in the Music
reflecting either the times welive in or personal things that happen
(03:31):
to me. And so it's completelychanged. So just about all the music
I do is probably programmaticin some way. Now, I wouldn't say
it's just abstract.
And with it being programmaticversus abstract. Can you elaborate
(03:52):
a little bit on that? Iunderstand what that means, but I
might have some audiencemembers that have not heard that
term before.
Well, to give an example forme, events of my life start to inspire
me. For instance, there was.And so the events can be bad. And
(04:14):
generally, I don't want to belike a messenger of doom. But, for
instance, like the bass playerwho had been in my band, Gaku Takanashi,
for a long time, he suddenlydied. And it was also at the same
time that my father died. Andso then it wasn't. At the time, I
(04:35):
wasn't like, oh, well, this isthe greatest thing that ever happened.
I'm going to get to make arecord. But it turned out to be a
memorial record. However, itdid lead to this sort of double consciousness
of everything that happens inmy life as being a possibility for
artistic exploration. So whenCovid came, I was like, well, there's
(04:59):
a story with COVID And Iexplored it in various ways. And
one of the things was, becauseeverybody was doing such depressing
work involved with COVID I wasthinking to myself, well, blues musicians
in the 20s, their lives werepretty grim, and the blues weren't
always sad. There could bevery exuberant music and different
(05:20):
sides of music. So I was like,well, let's look at it from a different
perspective. And. But it's alittle bizarre. You're a little bit.
I guess it's more like I'vebecome like a comedian. Because we
know that comedians, themoment anything comes to them, they
react to it. And then theythink, well, is there a joke in it?
(05:40):
Or a novelist? Well, is therea book in it? So for me, I'm the
same way. So I've had astrange year and a half, to put it
mildly, because I almost diedof bacterial pneumonia. And I was
in the ICU for five days. Andsix months later, as a result of
(06:03):
the various tests they weredoing on me, they discovered I had
pancreatic cancer. And so, ofcourse, my first reaction was like,
well, this is the worst newsever. And then my second reaction,
I hate to say was, well, Iguess there's a story. And I'm. Because
that's what I do. That's whatI do. So that's. And I know that
(06:24):
People look for those stories,but you don't really want to look
for those stories. And I wouldhave been happier not to have all
these health problems, butonce they were there, there was a
story in it, and I tried to doit, and I was. But I'm also looking
in terms of, I don't know,your experience, but often my experience
(06:46):
of people telling you theirhealth woes could be very tedious.
And I was like, well, I'm notgoing to tell it in this, like, straight
narrative fashion, and itmight be abstract or. And it'll mean
something to me, and thenlater on, we'll find out if it means
anything to anybody else.
No. I experienced a similarthing when I was diagnosed with Ms.
(07:12):
During the pandemic. Of alltimes, to, you know, be diagnosed
with something, you know, thisis. This is what you do, I guess,
during a pandemic. But I wasthinking, well, you know, at first
I was, like, very angry andvery upset, and then I was like,
well, what can I do to makethe best out of this situation? And
(07:35):
one of my ideas was, you know,to do a. Do a podcast or do a, you
know, a audio show. And thatnever came to fruition because there
was so much more to my life.You know, I have twins, you know,
that I deal with every day. Ihave a job. I have a wife. There
was so much more to go goingon in my life that I was like, well,
(07:58):
I don't want this to be mysolo focus. I don't want to be Tim,
the Ms. Guy on Pot in thepodcast world. You know, I'd rather
be Tim, who has Ms. And isdoing all these podcasts and interviewing
all these great people like Iam today. So that's. I kind of understand
where you're coming from withthat and making something positive
(08:20):
out of it. I think that isawesome. Let's talk about your evolution
as an artist. I'm a huge jazzfan, and I know my evolution in listening
to jazz. I'm not a jazzmusician, but I'm a connoisseur of
jazz, and that has changedover the years. How has your music
(08:41):
and your approach to itchanged from when you started to
right here in 2024?
Well, when I started, I grewup in Toronto, and it was a very
different time in terms ofwhat you were exposed to. So you
were exposed to sort of like alimited palette of music and different
(09:03):
things. And I used to go downto New York every year and I'd buy
all these records, but I waspretty much into jazz. But as I became
a professional musician. I hada certain amount of like blank slate
skills. Like I can play verywell in rhythm and I have a good
ear and I can learn thingsquickly. So I often got hired for
(09:27):
things I wasn't qualified todo. To give an example, I got hired
by this Swiss blues band andthe first gigs we played were for
like 2000 people and I had noidea what I was doing. And then I
became like really into theblues and got really good at the
blues. And the way it works isas you get really good at something,
you have fewer and fewerpeople you play for. So by the end
(09:49):
I was playing at a high levelfor seven people in a Brooklyn bar.
So very often the experienceis, that's one thing's improving,
another thing is going down.But I got much more interested in
the groove of things and Idon't listen to jazz as much as I
did. And I play ragas onpiano, which is a very long and weird
(10:14):
story. How I came that wassort of a negative thing. My wife
was performing in India and Icame over and I was playing some
jazz there, but I hated howthe people played who I was playing
with. So I was like, well, Igotta play with the good people.
And so in India the goodpeople are playing Indian classical
music. So first it was alittle bit of the same, but I worked
(10:36):
with this singer there and weimmediately became popular. It's
just one of those things thatyou don't really understand or, but
you just go on the ride. Sothen I was giving concerts there
and going back a lot andturning it back to like the theme
of this podcast.Unfortunately, my body does not tolerate
(11:00):
India well at all. So the lastthree times I went there, I got really,
really sick. So that sort ofended. And what I was keep on doing,
I kept asking for more moneythan I thought they would give me
and then they would say yesand I would go and I would get sick
again. So I don't even knowwhat the amount of money is now,
but I'm just not going to ask.That's my, that, that's, that's my
(11:23):
goal with that. But as aresult, with all the music in the
world, I, I listen to a lot ofthings and they come out of with
in my piano playing. So Iwould say my piano playing still
has a jazz base, but, but themusic I listen to is not so much
jazz. In the pandemic, I foundthat lots of people were very, getting
(11:48):
very nostalgic and it'ssomething that I dealt with too so
all of a sudden, I'm listeningto Thelonious Monk. I haven't listened
to him in 35 years, but thereI am, I'm listening to him. And some
of the things, if we're goingto nerd out, were interesting. Like,
all of a sudden, therecordings from the late 40s, which,
(12:09):
when I was a kid, I didn'tlike, I thought they sounded hokey
and corny and old fashioned. Iwas like, wow, these are the best
recordings. They're way betterthan the recordings that he did as
he became famous. Like, it's.It's like my mind turned on. But
having said that, after amonth, I was like, okay, enough of
this. Let's just. Let's getinto the here and now and move forward.
(12:33):
No, that makes absolute sense.I went through that same journey
through the Pandemic. I waslistening to a lot of late Coltrane,
and I was kind of letting goof the early Cold Train while I was
really into the late ColdTrain, Namely, Interstellar Spaces
(12:55):
is my favorite album of hisbecause it's just him and his drummer,
and that's it. And it's abeautiful album. But I was missing
out on all the early stuff,the one that got me into jazz initially
way back in 1991. And yes,folks, there was time before the
(13:19):
year 2000, trust me, therewas. Was my favorite things John
Coltrane. And I heard thatwhen I walked into a cafe in Abilene,
Texas, of all places. I said,I get this, I understand this, I
like this. And that's whatthat. That got me on my jazz journey.
Then, you know, as thepandemic wore on, I was like, well,
(13:41):
there's got to be other thingsout there to listen to. And I really
got into a lot of the stuffcoming out of London. Robert Glasper
and the Common is coming, andmore. Even more experimental stuff,
right. John Coltrane wasdoing. So I get it, having the nostalgia
(14:06):
and then kind of going, okay,we got to move on. We got to explore
new worlds, which is fantastic.
Having said that, I would saythere's something about the late
Coltrane that really speaks tosomebody who's going through physical
difficulties tremendously. SoI have a friend, and she just died
(14:30):
a couple weeks ago, namedClaire Daly, who's a baritone saxophone
player. And we had this verystrange conversation last November
because we used. We used tohave lunch around once a month. And
I texted her, I said, sorry, Ihaven't been out, but I had lunch
with you, but let's talk. Ihave something to tell you. And she
(14:52):
texted me back, and she says,I have something to tell you. So
we talked, and it turned outwe both had cancer. And this was
a discussion. But at a certainpoint, I said, what are you listening
to? She goes, coltrane live inJapan. And I put it on one night
on a very difficult night. Andit felt like I was, like, between
(15:16):
Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders.And now it's much easier. And I'm
skipping through the basssolos and all of that. It was like
this completely spoke to mymood and cheered me up to no end.
That's awesome. My heart isjust going, yes, yes. There are other
people out there like me thatare weird. Yes. You had mentioned
(15:39):
that you had, you know, workedin India Bragas. Am I pronouncing
that correctly?
Yes.
I had never heard of thatuntil, you know, we met virtually,
you know, through email andwhatnot. Can you explain that to
an American audience, youknow, as easy as you can?
(16:03):
Oh, yes, this is my expertise.I'll try to do it at 200 words or
less. And if I don't do itwell, you can put the audio into
AI and say, hey, pleasecondense this to shorter form. Araga
is a little bit like a scale,but it's not a scale because. And
there's many. You can chooseany arrangement of notes almost.
(16:26):
But it's not a scale becauseit's often in a series of phrases
within the scales that you'redoing variations of. And the thing
that I would say that isclosest in American music is blues.
Because blues, you can't justreally just play any note if you're
(16:48):
going to sound like a Chicagoblues musician. At the same time,
you can't just play a scalegoing up and down. So that also is
not the blues. However, thereare classic phrases. There are phrases
you can use as your own. Theother thing I would say about the
raga, that appealed to mebecause it wasn't the rhythmic stuff,
which is a totally differentballgame, that every note has its
(17:12):
importance. So often in Araga,you might start with the one note.
And you do a lot of variationsaround that note before you get to
the next note. So it hassomething a little in common with
minimalism. It has a littlesomething in common with the blues.
But it doesn't sound likeeither, obviously. But those are
(17:35):
my best analogies for what ishappening and what appealed to me
about it. And the other thingthat I would say is that if somebody
hasn't listened to ragas andthey want to listen, they should
start with the vocalists.Because the vocalists show this much
more clearly than theinstrumentalists. Because sitar players,
(17:56):
they're like guitar players.They can't control themselves. They
have to play a lot of notes.But vocalists, you can very much
hear, like, a development ofone note and then a little bit of
the next note. And you'll hearit goes slowly. And eventually. Generally,
you're in a middle range. Yougo to a bottom range, then you go
up to a higher range, and thenthe tempo gets faster, and you do
(18:20):
a little bit of the samething. But there's also, like, more
virtualistic stuff. And thenit gets faster again, and then it
gets really virtualistic andgoing on. And back in the old days,
I guess it took it threehours. Now, a general concert will
take one hour per each raga.And to hear that sort of form, you're
(18:45):
fine. If you listen tosomething that's recorded that's
around 20 minutes long, I'dsay anything less. Usually they're
only doing one section of theform. But anything that's like 20
minutes, you're kind ofhearing that arc from very slow to
moving on.
It sounds to me like, ifyou're listening to it and I'm a
(19:09):
complete newbie to the. Tothis. I'm just getting into it now,
thanks to you and thanks to. Ihad Shibana Koiho on a few episodes
ago, and she does raga vocallyand she incorporates movement into
it as well in her poetry andher work. But it sounds to me like,
(19:34):
you know, the audience memberis needing to invest themselves into
this piece of music. It's notbackground stuff that you can do
while you're working on somespreadsheets here or there. It's
something that. It's likeputting a needle on a record and
listening to the whole albumand really entering that world. Is
(19:59):
that kind of more of a way ofthinking about it versus, like, bubblegum
rock, where you can shootbubblegum and have the same beat
and just kind of let it playin the background.
I'm going to say yes and no,because for the listener, it takes.
The deeper you can try toconcentrate into the ideas, the more
(20:20):
likely you're gonna get theflow. Or I used to always say, weave
the web. And then our past andfuture president started saying,
weave the web. I was like, oh,my God, I can't believe he sang it.
So weave. But that's what itis. It's like. Like you're knitting
something and you can see thefollow. You can see the pattern.
(20:41):
Having said that, the way thatI learned ragas was to play him for
background music. So they werelike become like a language for me
in my background life. So I.And this is not now, this is like
15 years ago. If I waslearning something, I'd be like watching
the baseball game with thesound off, with it on or I'd be in
the kitchen and I'd have iton. Because the many people come
(21:05):
from traditions of raga inIndia and coming from the tradition
means that you didn't reallyhave to learn a lot of the aspects
because you just knew themfrom being around it, you know, 24
7. Just like how I'm. I assumethat when Branford Marsalis first
picked up the horn he was likefour years ahead of me who came from
(21:30):
a non musical family. Youknow, how hard was it? It's just
what your family does. So butfor the listener it can work as background
music. But it's also if it's.It is a. It can be a test of concentration
and it has its possibilitiesof being tremendously boring. And
(21:54):
who can tell if the person'sgood or not when you're first listening?
So there's all those aspectsto it. What I do is I always said
my music was just sort of ragainfluenced. The Indian companies
that I was on, they would justsay was raga straight? And then people
would come to me and say,well, what makes your music raga?
And I'd say, well, I'm on thiscompany and they say it's raga and
(22:16):
was a big time company. So.And in India it's very status conscious.
So they were like, fairenough. Like the musicians were a
little bit like, well, you'regetting paid to do it. You must be
a raga musician. They weren'tlike, you really know nothing. But
now they might say to me, youreally know nothing. I don't know.
(22:37):
I don't know. I'm not trying.I'm using elements of it. Especially
valuing the note and tryingnot to overplay as I develop what
is going on. Not showing everyidea at the beginning.
I like that because you're notgiving everything away. You're not
necessarily making it easier,but you're giving a payoff. You know,
(23:01):
whether it be towards the end,at the very end or at some point,
that listener, if they'repaying attention, they're going to
get that payoff. But they, youknow, you're obviously investing
your time, your energy, youknow, your, your, your hands, your
spirit into the piece. And ifa listener invests their time, they're
(23:26):
going to have that payoff atthe end of it. Speaking about India
versus America, you know,Western culture versus Indian culture.
How are the audiences overthere? I grew up in Chicago, where.
And at a certain bar calledGreen Mill. Who's not sponsoring
(23:48):
this? They should, but they'renot sponsoring this podcast yet.
And I would go and listen tomusic there and it was a thing of,
you know, you're very quiet,you don't have any outside conversations
with anybody. You wouldapplaud solos very quickly, and then,
you know, they would get onwith it. And that was kind of the
(24:08):
atmosphere and the vibe. Howis it if, say, Tim was to go over
to India, over to New Delhiand listen to the. What are the audiences
like there? How responsive orreceptive are they to it?
Well, first of all, the showsare mostly free because they're sponsored
(24:30):
by corporations orfoundations. The audience is the
first thing you would notice.You'd say, wow, I'm really young.
Because there's a lot of oldpeople at those shows. My goodness,
they are. They are. When I wasdoing most of my playing was before,
people were really as muchinto the cell phone as they are now.
(24:51):
So they weren't. I remembergoing to a concert and it was like
a couple of real famouspeople, Zakir Hussain and Shiv Kumar
Sharma. And I saw a womantexting through it. I was like, whoa,
I've never seen that before.Now, of course, I wouldn't react
at all at the beginning.There's generally a commotion while
(25:13):
people are doing their firstpart, which is called the alop, the
slow part. And it's. Ifthere's kids, the kids are coming
in, people are coming in late.It's just. It's a very Indian thing.
If there's anybody famouswho's coming to see you has a reserve
seat, it's de rigueur thatthey come at least 20, 25 minutes
late so they can make a star'sentrance as they come. Sit down.
(25:36):
These things are wild. They'rejust. They're just sort of wild and
a lot of fun. Then as you goand you get a little louder, the
people are very. They're.They're very concentrated. They also
seem very expressionless tome. So I'm never really sure whether
people are liking or not. I'veplayed for very expressionless audience.
(25:58):
And then people come up andthey say, that was the nicest concert
I've ever seen. Or they'vesaid some really good thing. The
other thing for a performerthat's really weird is that. So if
you play like One piece, andthen you take a break and you play
another piece in theintermission. Everybody comes to
talk to you, even if you're inyour dressing room. And I was not
(26:21):
prepared for this because Iwas like, I need a little break before
I play it. After that happenedthe first couple times, then I was
prepared for it and I waslike, okay, this is. This is fine.
This is how they do it here.I'm not going to get, like, this
Keith Jarrett sort of, likepeace of mind where nobody, like,
talks to you, you know? Well,the whole time. The artist cannot
(26:42):
be disturbed. No, the artistcan be disturbed, will be disturbed,
and just accept it. So there'sthings that are the same and things
that are different. I don'tplay pieces like that in bars, so.
So I don't have a issue with,like, people talking because it's
a concert. It's. It's. Itstill has a spiritual background
(27:05):
to it. And also, I just thinkthere's. Well, I'll. Occasionally
I'll play things that arerelated to that. How I would do it
in a concert and how I playit. If I'm. How I'm playing just
with my band or something,it's just. Either I'm not going to
play it or it's just going tobe different in nature.
So when you're going through apiece and you're really vibing with
(27:28):
it and you know where it'ssupposed to go, do you allow yourself
some freedom in this style togo and explore different avenues,
different notes that youweren't normally expected to explore
(27:51):
while you're in the piece?
That's an excellent question.And I would say it depends on how
you build the piece. If yousay that you're playing a certain
raga, you really can't juststart adding other notes that are
not in the raga. You justcan't. It's not. At that point, you're
(28:11):
playing something else. If Ihaven't said anything, it's like
everything I play, I'm veryopen to the moment and unpredictable.
And it's just like how when Italk, it's like the same stream of
consciousness I'm just pouringout now is pretty much what I do
when I play.
Okay, excellent. No, that'sgood to know, because I'm learning
(28:34):
so much about this, and it'smaking. It's whetting my appetite.
I'm just like, I need to getmore of this. So obviously, with
you being from Toronto andplaying this. This style of music,
what's your inspirationsource? If you're already playing,
(28:55):
you know, a raga, then you'replaying that one. But for you, what
do you draw on to create yourown versus playing somebody else's?
Well, you're not. They don'treally belong to anybody. I mean,
I play a lot of music and ragis usually at this point, it's a
smaller part of it. So. Sowhat I'm listening to at different
(29:18):
times really changes. I mean,these days I'm listening to a lot
of. I'm listening to a lot ofPagoda, which is like a Brazilian
popular music. And it's, It's.It's kind of like samba, but there's
a lot of modern pop people andstuff like that. But I don't know.
(29:40):
I'm very inner directed in alot of ways. I sort of. It's hard
for me to find music I like tolisten to. So then I'm like, okay,
well, let me play something.
I hear you on that. Becausethat's how I started writing poetry
way back in 1988, as I hatedwhat my English teacher was giving
us. So I was like, oh, thehell with this. I don't understand
(30:02):
this. I'll write my own. AndI've been doing it since 88. And
some of it's really good, someof it's really bad. But, you know,
it's all stuff that I'vecreated. So I. I definitely hear
you on that.
When I was much more of astudent, I got way more inspiration
from what I didn't like thanwhat I did like. And I'm still a
(30:24):
little like that. I. I don'treally listen to that much piano,
but when I do, I'm like, okay,I didn't like that. Do I do that?
And then a lot of times theanswer is yes. And then I have to.
I refine a little. It's like.It's like I. It's. It's almost like
I hate everybody, but I hatemyself a little less.
(30:45):
I like that. No, well. And youunderstand what you're doing. You
understand what you're goingfor. Whereas somebody else, you may
be like, well, I'm not goingto speak for you, but, you know,
when I'm writing a poem orwhen I'm doing. Because I don't play
jazz, but I do electronicdance music, and I do a lot of electronic
(31:11):
music. You know, I hear wherethey're going and I'm like, man,
if you just went this way,it'd be a much better piece. Oh,
why don't I just go that way?And there's my piece. And there we
go. And it makes me happy. Idon't know if the same method is
for you.
Actually, that, that, that isa good point to put up because that's
(31:34):
why the raga was inspirationalto me, because I did not like the
instruments. I did not likethe tabla drum. I did not like the
format of the concerts. Therewere so many things I didn't like.
But the things that I liked,which was just basically melodic
development and the idea of.Of being limited in the notes that
(31:55):
you played and making theworld out of it, I could take that
and drop the rest. If you takemusic that, for instance, used to
be a big James Brown fan, butI really liked it all, so I didn't
say so. I didn't. I wasn'tlike, oh, I can get inspiration and
(32:16):
do and add piano to this andit's going to sound better. Oh, now
I can do. Yeah. So it wasn'tlike. Or. So if I really like something,
I'm like, okay, what do I. Whydo I need to do it? It's good as
it is. But that's. That'swhere it was really hit the sweet
(32:38):
spot because things I reallyliked and things I really hated and
I was just like, take what Ilike, drop the rest, and it's going
to be original. And it seemedlike people thought it.
Was going to take a littletangent here with you from what we've
been talking about here. AndI'd like to talk about the impact
of technology because we seetechnology in podcasting with AI
(33:06):
and in music with AI. What'sbeen the impact either good or bad
for you with technology cominginto the music music arena?
Well, it's a mixed bag. I.It's harder to get your music heard.
(33:29):
It's harder to get work.However, there is no way I could
have created everything Icreated in the last year when with
my physical difficultieswithout technology. Both the movies
I made, the music I make, Ialready am using AI on certain movies
(33:52):
I make for certain things. Buteven before that, I think on a societal
level, it's a disaster. On apersonal level, it's kind of cool
with everything looking goodas a result. Things that cranks who
used to have things on reallylooking bad looking mimeograph paper,
(34:15):
all of a sudden their randomweird thoughts look very official.
And this is something I think.And I'm also not really into people
looking at their phones asthey walk down the street. And I
also created art that I'mhoping people will look at and concentrate
(34:36):
a little But I know thatpeople are flipping really fast through
their phones. It's hard. It'sharder for me to pay attention. So
I'm not saying it's likeeverybody, it's me. It's changed
how I used to be a solo pianoplayer, and so I'd be like playing
in a bar or something likethat, and couples would come in and
(34:59):
they were talking and having adate. And then like one go to the
bathroom and the other wouldlisten to the music. Now if I was
doing it, the couple, mostlikely, they're both on their phones.
But even if they're not ontheir phones, if one goes to the
bathroom, the other is goingto go on their phone. So people don't
really know what to do withlive music unless they're specifically
(35:21):
going to see live music. Ithink that the attention span of
people being shorter is not aterrible thing in some ways, because
as you, I'm sure as you'veheard as a jazz listener, they've
gotten rid of like the endlessintroductions again. Like, the music
that people put out and now ismuch more like how they were put
(35:43):
out in the 30s and the 40s.There's no longer, like, we're gonna
vamp for four minutes and thenget the song. And when I listen to
a piece like that, I'm like,wow, they're really taking a long
time because I don't have itin me. So as a result, everything
I've recorded in the last, Idon't know, 10 years, it's like,
it's four minutes long, it'sthree minutes long. There's maybe
(36:07):
a four bar introduction on. Soit's on this new record that's coming
out. I mean, there is a 20minute raga piece which is live,
but I didn't put that out on.You know, we're not putting that
out on Spotify. I can't seelike somebody that's like somebody.
I'm figuring somebody'slistening to the. Has bought the
(36:29):
band camp or listening to theband camp and the thing is running
and then they'll forget andit'll keep going. But I. I don't
expect anybody to like, sitdown and listen for. So the attention
spans have changed. And to me,it's all. All part of the thing,
as we know, because of COVIDLeaving aside your unique problems
(36:53):
during COVID and my uniqueproblems to now that everybody has
come out of COVIDpsychologically damaged in some way
or another. And between thatand the alienation of people being
on their phones a lot, I mean,I'm going to say phone was the worst
technology in. Ever. I'm. I'mkind of into AI, sure. Honestly,
(37:16):
I mean, I'm into AI and I'minto things that may be able to record
at home. We're. We're onaudio, but there's a piano behind
me, you know, and there'ssome. There's some mic set up. They.
They didn't work for thepodcast, but they work for. In theory,
they work for. For the piano.And I'm able to make. I'm able to
(37:37):
make movies on my own. I wasable to teach myself how to make
movies in a way that, like, soit's expanded my life in that way,
but socially, I think it'satrophied my life in a way. So that's
a really long, rambling answer.
No, but I like it because itmakes sense. If we use technology
(38:00):
as a tool for bettering thepieces of art that we're making,
just in that sense, fantastic.But if we're using technology to
get away from everybody, toisolate ourselves, to have our own
echo chambers, just to, youknow, keep our focus, you know, and
(38:27):
unfortunately, I'm not doing avideo of this at. And everybody knows
I move my hands around a wholelot, but if we're, you know, having
this narrow focus, like onefoot in front of us, we're going
to miss everything else that'saround us. And, you know, you have
your room decorated much likeI have mine. We commented on that
(38:48):
before. We've got a ton ofstuff around our room to look at,
to be inspired by, to. Toenjoy. Whereas I'm going to sound
like a old Gen X guy, youknow, these dang kids are just sitting
there looking at their phones,and it's, you know, about a foot
away from their eyes, andthat's all they're focused on. They're
missing everything else.
(39:09):
I don't think it's just thekids, though. I think it's everybody.
I think it's everybody. I livein a beautiful neighborhood in Brooklyn,
and I just see people walking,walking while looking on their phone,
which, first of all, I thinkshould be illegal. But. And there's.
So. There's just. There'salways so much to. And I even. I
(39:31):
take a ferry to one of myjobs, and I sit on top of the ferry,
and there'll be people withheadphones and a phone while they're
riding a ferry. They're ridinga ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan,
which is like, we're only like3 billion people in the world. Wish
that they could take a tripright now to be on this ferry and
they're ignoring it. And everyday it's a little different. So it's
(39:53):
not like you've done it fivetimes and you're like, oh well, it's
just water and a view. It'salways different and it's always
interesting. I'll give anexample of where technology has improved
music. So in around 1975, ifyou listen to the record, it's a
(40:13):
live drummer. You listen toRecords in 1985, it's a drum machine.
Right.
So that changed. If you listento how drummers play now. Like for
instance, you were saying thatyou like Robert Glasper. The drummers
are fantastic because they'vetaken all the stuff that they learned
(40:34):
from listening to what drummachines could do and they've incorporated
it into their own play. Sothere's a real difference between
drummers who are like underthe ages of 40 and the drummers are
older in terms of just certainthings that they do. Like I'm a big
fan of Domi and J.D. beck. AndJ.D. beck is like this 17 year old
kid. But what he does, he justtakes all that stuff and he moves
(40:58):
it into a live context. And Ithink AI it's very new and of course
it's been used, being used forcrap all the time. But that doesn't
mean it has to be or it willalways will be. I think that's been
probably the same way. I knowin societies where they didn't know
(41:20):
how to read, of course thefirst thing that happened once people,
they invented a readinglanguage is people lost their memory.
So there was some old guysaying, I can remember 18,000 lines
of this poem and these damnkids can only remember 100 lines.
Sure.
So there's always. Everytechnology has changed like that
(41:40):
sort of thing. People'smemory, people's attention span.
That's why those ragas werefour hours long. And back in the
day and even further beyondthat, before that they had this music
called Drupal. And I thinkragas are boring. This Drupal. It
was like when raga first camein. This is much more exciting than
(42:02):
what we've been listening to.It's a little bit like when you listen
to Gregorian chant and youwere like, was this people's idea
of entertainment or was itjust like. Although I think in that
case it was just the nuns andthe priests listening to it. I think
the people had something moreexciting to listen to.
It's funny that you mentionedthat. I remember When Enigma came
(42:27):
out in the 90s and there wasthis big, you know, everyone was
doing Gregorian chant, andthat lasted for a couple of years
and, you know, some, you know,different strains of music, different
genres of music, picked alittle bit off of it. But now here
in 2024, you hardly ever inpopular music, you hardly ever hear
(42:52):
it in, you know, differentgenres of music, pieces of it. But
it's really hard to get into.It's really hard to find anymore.
You know, who knows who thenext Enigma is? I certainly don't.
But I loved it when it was outthere. I was one of the weird people
that I was like, oh, yeah,this is really good. Who's the next
(43:14):
one that's coming out? And Ijust never happened. How do you define
success today as a musician?What makes you think that you have
made it or do you even need tomake it, per se?
Well, I'm on this label,robodope, which has people who sell
(43:36):
really well and people whodon't sell Wells, which would be
me. And the head of that labelalways says, if you've completed
a project, you're a success.And I could have kissed him for saying
that. Ought to be honest,because I would say it depends on
which year and what time. Youasked me when I was. When I was creating
(43:59):
and I was in the middle ofchemotherapy, it was certainly like
my whole goal was to finishwhat I was trying to do, and that
was going to be success. Andthen I was going to. I'm still at
a point where I'm like sixmonths out of that, where I'm not
really. I'm only starting tofocus on the. On the world part of
(44:22):
it a little more. I was givingmyself to the end of the year to
just to try to tell myself getoff that hamster wheel of trying
to get work and differentstuff like that. So everybody has
a different. Everyone has adifferent metric for it. So if you're,
you know, if you're Beyonce, Isuppose she has to sell as much as
(44:46):
her last album. And because Iread an interesting thing with this
piano player, Joey Calzerazzo.And in the 90s, he got dropped by
a record label because he onlysold 50,000 copies of his record.
If you sold 50,000 copies ofyour record now, you would be the
(45:06):
biggest jazz star by far. Sothere's no. I don't even. I kind
of don't know what to say. Iguess it's based on how many gigs
you're getting, because evenhaving plays on, like, Spotify or
something like that. In myexperience, most of them seem to
be background music wherenobody's listening to them. So it's
(45:27):
not. It's not really anartistic thing that your music is
being played. The only songthat I ever hear that people really
pick up to is I Want to Dancewith Somebody by Whitney Houston.
And for some reason, everytime it goes on, everybody in the
whole universe of Americaunites us. One no longer blue and
(45:48):
red and sings that damn song,and then they go off again.
So I hear you on that.
Yeah.
As soon as you said it, I waslike, oh, yeah, I got. You know,
I remember when the video cameout, and, you know, it makes me want
to jump out of my seat rightnow. I won't. I promise. I'm wearing
pants, but I'm not going to do that.
(46:09):
Well, it is an audio podcast,so you can do whatever you want.
I got dressed up just in case,because I wasn't really. Because
even though you said that, Iwas like, I got to be prepared.
I dressed up a little bit,too. I showered, everything. So we're
all good. I have a face forpodcasting as you.
Yeah, nonsense. The people aremissing a great pleasure that is
(46:33):
unique to me.
Do you have any advice? And wehad spoken about this before we even
started recording. I've got.I've got twin daughters, and they're
10 years old, and they'reemerging musicians. They can't be
helped. They're my kids. Youknow, they're going to be. They're
going to have some musicalbackground or appreciation. But do
(46:56):
you have any advice foranybody that's just coming out now
that they. They want to flipthat switch? They want to become
a musician, an artist, maybe afilmmaker. Anything that you wish
you would have known when you.When that switch turned on for you.
(47:18):
I'm going to say no. I'll tellyou what I have advice for, because
this is something I've thoughtmore is. And certainly you've thought
about it, is creating whenyou're going through challenges.
And so I was like, well, I gotto write these down. There have to
be, like, principles that I'velearned from this. And so I'll go
(47:43):
with that, if you don't mindanswering a different question. Like,
I'm on the debate stage.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. And what I did wasI was very un. I was very much determined
whenever I felt okay to work.And I learned. And by that, very
(48:03):
early on, I told my wife, Isaid, if I'm feeling somewhat all
right, we're not going towatch a TV show. We're going to wait
until I feel semi lousy orreally lousy, which was most of the
time to do those things. And Isaid, I don't want to, you know,
I don't want to go have lunchwith people as much as possible if
(48:25):
I want to work. So having saidthat, I was very forgiving of myself
for the mistakes I was makingwhile I was working. So to me there
were two things that wereinvolved. One was just like being
really hard on myself, like,you got to work. And I guess I would
say that would be a little bitof what I would tell a kid. Although
(48:49):
kids, you know, they shouldn'tforgive themselves. That's part of
their process. You know, selfhate is like, you know, you start
doing this, you're in yourearly teens, you know, you have a
lot of hatred for yourparents, hatred for the world, all
that stuff. So I'm not goingto say like, be like me. I remember
what it was like to be like akid, you know, what I would say is
(49:11):
like, don't, don't be divorcedfrom your emotions.
Right.
Maybe that's the advice I givewith kids. Like sometimes they're
learning the technique ofstuff and I just like, always be
aware of how you're feelingand add it on to your process. If
you're disciplined, it's notgoing to be an issue. If you're not
disciplined, this is somethingyou have to fix a little bit and
(49:35):
hopefully you enjoy it so muchthat discipline is not the issue
that you don't have to startbeing disciplined till later on.
I know a lot of people whodon't play any better than they were
when they were 18 years oldand they might have been really great
then and by the standards ofnow are not really great. So you
(49:57):
do have to, you have todevelop discipline if you didn't
have it like when you don'tfeel like doing something, but in
terms of creating when you'renot, well, it's very much like you
just can't be like, oh, I. Ifyou feel okay, you gotta, you gotta
map out the time and you gottado it. But I made a lot of mistakes
(50:19):
on the road and then therewere. Sometimes you have to learn
how to back things up. BecauseI would first come home from chemo
and I would be feeling prettygood for like in, actually in some
ways because of the amount ofsteroids they were giving me.
Sure.
But I, but I was also jackedup and like a little insane. So I
was making, so I was makingediting mistakes and Different. Different
(50:43):
stuff like that. And sobecause I had gone through so many
health things also, eventhough for the first couple months
after my diagnosis and chemo,I very much felt like I was going
to die, even though no one wassaying you're going to die, like
this week or anything likethat, so it was later on I kind of
(51:04):
got over that feeling. But allI can say, that's a good impetus
for work because I was like,well, I want to get this done. Once
I started and I had acommitment from, like, the record
company, and I knew that themovies was starting to go well and
certain aspects of thecreation were. Were moving well.
I was like, I don't want torecord a note after I'm finished
(51:28):
with chemo because I don'twant this record to be about. I want
it to be all from the processof where I was. And also with the
movie that I made about it, Ialso wanted that to be finished.
And I kind of got there withthe movie. I mean, I did some editing
after, but the. There's noscenes or anything. There's no footage
(51:51):
or anything like that. It'sjust sort of like cleaning up the
edges of what I did. Becausepart of it was if people asked me
how was it, I wanted to justsay, well, listen to the music, watch
the movie, and if you.
Pay attention, you willunderstand. You'll get all your questions
(52:13):
answered. Because it sounds tome like you put it out there for
everybody to get. Sodefinitely watch, listen, and you
will learn. Fantastic. Well, Iknow we had talked a little bit about
some future projects that youhave coming up. You mentioned that
(52:34):
you have a. An album coming upsoon or you're working on an album.
Well, there actually now I'mtaking a little bit of a break, but
there's two albums, which bythe time this podcast is released,
I think they're both going tobe out. So the first one is called
Scavenger, and that's themusic I've been talking about making.
(52:56):
And part of that album is thesoundtrack for this lo fi ambient
movie I made, which is calledScavenger in six parts. So hopefully
everything is calledScavenger. Now the other one is.
Is like a boombop. Oh, boombop downtempo remix album made by
(53:16):
this guy named Hugh who livesin England. And he has made remix
albums based on my recordingsbefore. But this time I sent him
the first tracks because he.He masters my stuff and he was. Would
you. How would you like tosend me your stems? By stems, it
(53:40):
just means the individualTracks, the raw tracks, like the
piano by itself, the vibes byitself. The drum. Not the drums.
He puts its own drums, thesax. And I'll make a record while
we're doing. I said, be myguest. So he started. And I love
what he was doing and what hedid also on this album. I didn't
(54:03):
know these things. You're anelectronic musician, so you know
these things. I had never evenheard of Boo Bop until it showed
up. But he said, there's a lotof. He said, we're gonna. I want
you to do some talking. So onthe first one, I started talking
things that vaguely are aboutwhat happens with my. With. With
(54:25):
my life, but I did not do thetalking. And all of them, a couple
of them. My wife, who was asinger and a poet, she wrote. But
I also had other people recitethe words because I didn't want it
to be my voice. And so there'sone where a guy says in French, he
says all the things thatpeople said to me which were not
(54:48):
too helpful. For instance,like, you look good. That's the main
thing people told me, yeah,you look good, or you're a fighter.
I was like. I said this toClaire Daly while she was going through
this. She said, if this is afight, we're losing it. I hear you
(55:14):
on that. Yeah, yeah. Orsomething that you get from black
people. God doesn't give youmore than you can handle, you know?
Sure.
You know. So anyways, a. Ilove it.
Because it's in French.
Yeah.
Because I love the Frenchlanguage. I'm doing the duolingo
thing and I'm trying to learnit, but I love when people insert
(55:40):
a different language into themusic that I don't. I may get bits
and pieces of it, but I justreally enjoy that because then I
get to imagine a little bitmore about what it's about. What
is the person saying? Sodefinitely I want to hear that one.
There's another track on thatrecord, which is also in the movie
(56:04):
that I'd like to talk about.So one night I'm talking with my
wife, and I said something,and I was feeling pretty terrible
at this point, and. And I sayto her. And I said something, and
she laughed. And I said toher, all I have left is my language,
(56:25):
because I felt like I didn'treally have a physical presence and
all of that. And I shouldn'tsay I felt terrible, because I did
so. Because a couple dayslater I go to work and it's this.
This really creepy. It's thisreally Overcast day and a really
(56:46):
beautiful light of New YorkCity from the ferry. So I have the
phone going in its thing andof course I gave this whole rap about
don't be on the phone. But allof a sudden I get a message from
this guy in England. He says,could you please talk about your
experience? Just riff aboutwhat this album is about. So I'm
(57:10):
leaving the ferry and it'slike a five minute walk to work.
And I'm saying, I say, well,you know, this album is about having
cancer and all I have left ismy words. Which ended up being the
name of the song. And I dothis whole thing. I said, now I'm
(57:31):
going to get a latte. And it'sLuke who's giving me the latte. And
my voice is really terrible,but sounds good. It's like Miles
Davis or something like that.
Sure.
Which. The video was justperfect. And then he edited out the
obvious stuff out of the. AndI also said something like, I really
(57:53):
love Boom Bop in the morningbecause I didn't know what Boom Bop
was. Which is weird because Ieven auditioned for KRS1 back in
the 90s. I didn't get the gig,but obviously I didn't know enough
when I was. When I was. He wasvery nice, by the way. And so. So
this ended up being a movieand also the. The music. So. So the
(58:18):
remix in some ways has more.It's. It all alluded, like there's
another one. And then I. Iwon't tell you any of the other ones,
but this one I like because Ilike the story because, you know,
people. People send you stuffwhen you have cancer. And so. So
(58:41):
this friend of my wife, shesent me an amaryllis plant. So we
got the plant, we got theinstructions. The plant started to
die. The next day it juststarted to die. It looked absolutely
terrible. So my wife, PaulaG.D. bennett, is a poet and she says
(59:02):
how to kill a plant. And I goand I get a pencil and she just starts
free writing right there. Andshe says the lines, this whole poem,
it's like straight out, fourlines, we're done. I said record
it into the. Into the phone. Isend it to him, he puts it on a track.
(59:26):
But I mean, it was like themost. It was like. It was like the
best analogy of like what washappening with me. And so it's never,
never am I gonna do a storywhere it's just like. So it should
relate to people.
Exactly.
Not just me.
Ladies and gentlemen, we havehad the privilege of talking to Richard
(59:49):
X. Bennett here today. Isthere anything else that we can put
in this interview that wehaven't touched on that you'd like
to hear?
No, I'd just like to thankyou, Tim, and I really enjoyed it.
Well, thank you so very much.
So that was my interview withRichard X. Bennett, jazz musician,
(01:00:11):
raga musician and filmmaker aswell. I hope you got a lot out of
this. I know I had a crashcourse in raga music throughout this
interview and I reallyappreciate his time that he took
with me to, to teach me and totalk with me about everything that
(01:00:31):
he's doing. And I also want tosend a special shout out to Ron who
introduced us virtually. Ifyou got something out of this interview,
naturally go ahead and sharethat with a friend of yours on whatever
podcast app that you're using.And just a few things before we close
out here. I want to thank youfor listening in on this interview
(01:00:53):
and being open and exposingyourself to something new that you
may not have heard of before.Sometimes it can be challenging,
but once you do open yourselfup in this way and learn something
new like we did in thisinterview, you're just going to be
that much better of an artistand a citizen of the world. So thank
(01:01:15):
you for doing that. If you gotsomething out of it, please reach
back to me on that. Timothyatcreateartpodcast.com. as you can
tell, I answer emails. Yes Ido. When you have ideas like Ron
had to interview Richard, Iam, I am game for it. I really want
to expose other people to thisgreat music that he is creating and
(01:01:40):
I want to expose all thepeople that listen to the show to
what you're creating. So reachout to me, let me know what you're
doing. The next thing I wantto talk to you about is I do run
another podcast called Find aPodcast About. You can find it at
Find a Podcast about xyz andthere I help you outsmart the algorithm
and find your next bingeworthy podcast. So check that out.
(01:02:03):
Lastly, this has been aproduction of TKB Podcast Studio.
You can find it at TKB PodcastStudio Calm. And that's where I help
people like yourself createpodcasts that touch other individuals.
And we treat every, everyperson that works with me as if they
(01:02:28):
were the only client that Ihad. So check out tkb podcast studio.com
to see all the works that I amdoing. We lead through the noise
as quiet professionals.Alright, I'm going to let you get
back on with your day. I needto go ahead and get on with my day.
But do yourself a favor. Checkout Richard's website. Links are
(01:02:51):
in the show notes. Do yourselfa favor for that. And go out there,
tame that inner critic andcreate more than you consume. Go
out there and make some artfor somebody you love. Yourself.
I'll talk to you again next time.
Create Art Podcast InterviewRichard X. Bennett hello friend,
this is Timothy Keem O'Brien,your head instigator for Create Art
Podcast where I use my over 30years in the arts and education world
to help you tame your innercritic and create more than you consume.
(00:28):
So recently I got an emailfrom a listener talking to me about
Richard X. Bennett and hesaid, hey, you gotta interview this
guy. So let me tell you alittle bit about Richard here for
a moment. He's a pianist,composer and filmmaker and he plays
modernistic and soulful musicwith a wide ranging sound all his
(00:54):
own. He has many jazz andelectronica releases on Rope a Dope
Records, Ubante Music by NickRecords, as well as six critically
acclaimed raga based recordson Indian labels. Beyond the music
lies the visual, indispensableelement of his creative process.
(01:17):
Richard X. Bennett's videosevoked a myriad of emotions through
their abstract, whimsical andesoteric nature. The music is all
about the groove and beauty,while the visuals are all raw and
ambient. These differentelements are juxtaposed to create
(01:37):
fresh art. It was so greattalking with Richard about jazz and
raga music as I'm a huge fanof jazz music and I learned a great
deal about raga music. So sitback, enjoy a cup of coffee and listen
in on this interview where welearn about Richard X. Bennett.
(02:00):
All right everybody, thank youfor joining us here on Create Art
Podcast. I have the privilegeof welcoming Richard X. Bennett to
the podcast. Richard, how areyou doing today?
I'm doing great. It's apleasure to be here.
Tim, excellent. As we weretalking before we hit record, I've
(02:21):
been doing podcasting for anumber of years and it dawned on
me you're my first jazzmusician on the podcast. So congratulations
to you. I'm going to geek out,I'm going to tell you that right
now, but it's honestly anhonor to have you on the show. I'd
(02:42):
like to jump off with a fewquestions here. First question is
your musical philosophy andhow you approach music. Do you have
a certain way that you'reapproaching the works that you're
doing?
What I would say is when Ifirst played and recorded, I thought
of things in very pure, invery pure standpoint that it was,
(03:08):
it was just sort of music andI'm interested in a lot of music
and whatever was interestingme would be the theme of the recording.
Over the last, I guess, six,seven years, I've been making a lot
more videos and I've been alot more interested in the Music
reflecting either the times welive in or personal things that happen
(03:31):
to me. And so it's completelychanged. So just about all the music
I do is probably programmaticin some way. Now, I wouldn't say
it's just abstract.
And with it being programmaticversus abstract. Can you elaborate
(03:52):
a little bit on that? Iunderstand what that means, but I
might have some audiencemembers that have not heard that
term before.
Well, to give an example forme, events of my life start to inspire
me. For instance, there was.And so the events can be bad. And
(04:14):
generally, I don't want to belike a messenger of doom. But, for
instance, like the bass playerwho had been in my band, Gaku Takanashi,
for a long time, he suddenlydied. And it was also at the same
time that my father died. Andso then it wasn't. At the time, I
(04:35):
wasn't like, oh, well, this isthe greatest thing that ever happened.
I'm going to get to make arecord. But it turned out to be a
memorial record. However, itdid lead to this sort of double consciousness
of everything that happens inmy life as being a possibility for
artistic exploration. So whenCovid came, I was like, well, there's
(04:59):
a story with COVID And Iexplored it in various ways. And
one of the things was, becauseeverybody was doing such depressing
work involved with COVID I wasthinking to myself, well, blues musicians
in the 20s, their lives werepretty grim, and the blues weren't
always sad. There could bevery exuberant music and different
(05:20):
sides of music. So I was like,well, let's look at it from a different
perspective. And. But it's alittle bizarre. You're a little bit.
I guess it's more like I'vebecome like a comedian. Because we
know that comedians, themoment anything comes to them, they
react to it. And then theythink, well, is there a joke in it?
(05:40):
Or a novelist? Well, is therea book in it? So for me, I'm the
same way. So I've had astrange year and a half, to put it
mildly, because I almost diedof bacterial pneumonia. And I was
in the ICU for five days. Andsix months later, as a result of
(06:03):
the various tests they weredoing on me, they discovered I had
pancreatic cancer. And so, ofcourse, my first reaction was like,
well, this is the worst newsever. And then my second reaction,
I hate to say was, well, Iguess there's a story. And I'm. Because
that's what I do. That's whatI do. So that's. And I know that
(06:24):
People look for those stories,but you don't really want to look
for those stories. And I wouldhave been happier not to have all
these health problems, butonce they were there, there was a
story in it, and I tried to doit, and I was. But I'm also looking
in terms of, I don't know,your experience, but often my experience
(06:46):
of people telling you theirhealth woes could be very tedious.
And I was like, well, I'm notgoing to tell it in this, like, straight
narrative fashion, and itmight be abstract or. And it'll mean
something to me, and thenlater on, we'll find out if it means
anything to anybody else.
No. I experienced a similarthing when I was diagnosed with Ms.
(07:12):
During the pandemic. Of alltimes, to, you know, be diagnosed
with something, you know, thisis. This is what you do, I guess,
during a pandemic. But I wasthinking, well, you know, at first
I was, like, very angry andvery upset, and then I was like,
well, what can I do to makethe best out of this situation? And
(07:35):
one of my ideas was, you know,to do a. Do a podcast or do a, you
know, a audio show. And thatnever came to fruition because there
was so much more to my life.You know, I have twins, you know,
that I deal with every day. Ihave a job. I have a wife. There
was so much more to go goingon in my life that I was like, well,
(07:58):
I don't want this to be mysolo focus. I don't want to be Tim,
the Ms. Guy on Pot in thepodcast world. You know, I'd rather
be Tim, who has Ms. And isdoing all these podcasts and interviewing
all these great people like Iam today. So that's. I kind of understand
where you're coming from withthat and making something positive
(08:20):
out of it. I think that isawesome. Let's talk about your evolution
as an artist. I'm a huge jazzfan, and I know my evolution in listening
to jazz. I'm not a jazzmusician, but I'm a connoisseur of
jazz, and that has changedover the years. How has your music
(08:41):
and your approach to itchanged from when you started to
right here in 2024?
Well, when I started, I grewup in Toronto, and it was a very
different time in terms ofwhat you were exposed to. So you
were exposed to sort of like alimited palette of music and different
(09:03):
things. And I used to go downto New York every year and I'd buy
all these records, but I waspretty much into jazz. But as I became
a professional musician. I hada certain amount of like blank slate
skills. Like I can play verywell in rhythm and I have a good
ear and I can learn thingsquickly. So I often got hired for
(09:27):
things I wasn't qualified todo. To give an example, I got hired
by this Swiss blues band andthe first gigs we played were for
like 2000 people and I had noidea what I was doing. And then I
became like really into theblues and got really good at the
blues. And the way it works isas you get really good at something,
you have fewer and fewerpeople you play for. So by the end
(09:49):
I was playing at a high levelfor seven people in a Brooklyn bar.
So very often the experienceis, that's one thing's improving,
another thing is going down.But I got much more interested in
the groove of things and Idon't listen to jazz as much as I
did. And I play ragas onpiano, which is a very long and weird
(10:14):
story. How I came that wassort of a negative thing. My wife
was performing in India and Icame over and I was playing some
jazz there, but I hated howthe people played who I was playing
with. So I was like, well, Igotta play with the good people.
And so in India the goodpeople are playing Indian classical
music. So first it was alittle bit of the same, but I worked
(10:36):
with this singer there and weimmediately became popular. It's
just one of those things thatyou don't really understand or, but
you just go on the ride. Sothen I was giving concerts there
and going back a lot andturning it back to like the theme
of this podcast.Unfortunately, my body does not tolerate
(11:00):
India well at all. So the lastthree times I went there, I got really,
really sick. So that sort ofended. And what I was keep on doing,
I kept asking for more moneythan I thought they would give me
and then they would say yesand I would go and I would get sick
again. So I don't even knowwhat the amount of money is now,
but I'm just not going to ask.That's my, that, that's, that's my
(11:23):
goal with that. But as aresult, with all the music in the
world, I, I listen to a lot ofthings and they come out of with
in my piano playing. So Iwould say my piano playing still
has a jazz base, but, but themusic I listen to is not so much
jazz. In the pandemic, I foundthat lots of people were very, getting
(11:48):
very nostalgic and it'ssomething that I dealt with too so
all of a sudden, I'm listeningto Thelonious Monk. I haven't listened
to him in 35 years, but thereI am, I'm listening to him. And some
of the things, if we're goingto nerd out, were interesting. Like,
all of a sudden, therecordings from the late 40s, which,
(12:09):
when I was a kid, I didn'tlike, I thought they sounded hokey
and corny and old fashioned. Iwas like, wow, these are the best
recordings. They're way betterthan the recordings that he did as
he became famous. Like, it's.It's like my mind turned on. But
having said that, after amonth, I was like, okay, enough of
this. Let's just. Let's getinto the here and now and move forward.
(12:33):
No, that makes absolute sense.I went through that same journey
through the Pandemic. I waslistening to a lot of late Coltrane,
and I was kind of letting goof the early Cold Train while I was
really into the late ColdTrain, Namely, Interstellar Spaces
(12:55):
is my favorite album of hisbecause it's just him and his drummer,
and that's it. And it's abeautiful album. But I was missing
out on all the early stuff,the one that got me into jazz initially
way back in 1991. And yes,folks, there was time before the
(13:19):
year 2000, trust me, therewas. Was my favorite things John
Coltrane. And I heard thatwhen I walked into a cafe in Abilene,
Texas, of all places. I said,I get this, I understand this, I
like this. And that's whatthat. That got me on my jazz journey.
Then, you know, as thepandemic wore on, I was like, well,
(13:41):
there's got to be other thingsout there to listen to. And I really
got into a lot of the stuffcoming out of London. Robert Glasper
and the Common is coming, andmore. Even more experimental stuff,
right. John Coltrane wasdoing. So I get it, having the nostalgia
(14:06):
and then kind of going, okay,we got to move on. We got to explore
new worlds, which is fantastic.
Having said that, I would saythere's something about the late
Coltrane that really speaks tosomebody who's going through physical
difficulties tremendously. SoI have a friend, and she just died
(14:30):
a couple weeks ago, namedClaire Daly, who's a baritone saxophone
player. And we had this verystrange conversation last November
because we used. We used tohave lunch around once a month. And
I texted her, I said, sorry, Ihaven't been out, but I had lunch
with you, but let's talk. Ihave something to tell you. And she
(14:52):
texted me back, and she says,I have something to tell you. So
we talked, and it turned outwe both had cancer. And this was
a discussion. But at a certainpoint, I said, what are you listening
to? She goes, coltrane live inJapan. And I put it on one night
on a very difficult night. Andit felt like I was, like, between
(15:16):
Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders.And now it's much easier. And I'm
skipping through the basssolos and all of that. It was like
this completely spoke to mymood and cheered me up to no end.
That's awesome. My heart isjust going, yes, yes. There are other
people out there like me thatare weird. Yes. You had mentioned
(15:39):
that you had, you know, workedin India Bragas. Am I pronouncing
that correctly?
Yes.
I had never heard of thatuntil, you know, we met virtually,
you know, through email andwhatnot. Can you explain that to
an American audience, youknow, as easy as you can?
(16:03):
Oh, yes, this is my expertise.I'll try to do it at 200 words or
less. And if I don't do itwell, you can put the audio into
AI and say, hey, pleasecondense this to shorter form. Araga
is a little bit like a scale,but it's not a scale because. And
there's many. You can chooseany arrangement of notes almost.
(16:26):
But it's not a scale becauseit's often in a series of phrases
within the scales that you'redoing variations of. And the thing
that I would say that isclosest in American music is blues.
Because blues, you can't justreally just play any note if you're
(16:48):
going to sound like a Chicagoblues musician. At the same time,
you can't just play a scalegoing up and down. So that also is
not the blues. However, thereare classic phrases. There are phrases
you can use as your own. Theother thing I would say about the
raga, that appealed to mebecause it wasn't the rhythmic stuff,
which is a totally differentballgame, that every note has its
(17:12):
importance. So often in Araga,you might start with the one note.
And you do a lot of variationsaround that note before you get to
the next note. So it hassomething a little in common with
minimalism. It has a littlesomething in common with the blues.
But it doesn't sound likeeither, obviously. But those are
(17:35):
my best analogies for what ishappening and what appealed to me
about it. And the other thingthat I would say is that if somebody
hasn't listened to ragas andthey want to listen, they should
start with the vocalists.Because the vocalists show this much
more clearly than theinstrumentalists. Because sitar players,
(17:56):
they're like guitar players.They can't control themselves. They
have to play a lot of notes.But vocalists, you can very much
hear, like, a development ofone note and then a little bit of
the next note. And you'll hearit goes slowly. And eventually. Generally,
you're in a middle range. Yougo to a bottom range, then you go
up to a higher range, and thenthe tempo gets faster, and you do
(18:20):
a little bit of the samething. But there's also, like, more
virtualistic stuff. And thenit gets faster again, and then it
gets really virtualistic andgoing on. And back in the old days,
I guess it took it threehours. Now, a general concert will
take one hour per each raga.And to hear that sort of form, you're
(18:45):
fine. If you listen tosomething that's recorded that's
around 20 minutes long, I'dsay anything less. Usually they're
only doing one section of theform. But anything that's like 20
minutes, you're kind ofhearing that arc from very slow to
moving on.
It sounds to me like, ifyou're listening to it and I'm a
(19:09):
complete newbie to the. Tothis. I'm just getting into it now,
thanks to you and thanks to. Ihad Shibana Koiho on a few episodes
ago, and she does raga vocallyand she incorporates movement into
it as well in her poetry andher work. But it sounds to me like,
(19:34):
you know, the audience memberis needing to invest themselves into
this piece of music. It's notbackground stuff that you can do
while you're working on somespreadsheets here or there. It's
something that. It's likeputting a needle on a record and
listening to the whole albumand really entering that world. Is
(19:59):
that kind of more of a way ofthinking about it versus, like, bubblegum
rock, where you can shootbubblegum and have the same beat
and just kind of let it playin the background.
I'm going to say yes and no,because for the listener, it takes.
The deeper you can try toconcentrate into the ideas, the more
(20:20):
likely you're gonna get theflow. Or I used to always say, weave
the web. And then our past andfuture president started saying,
weave the web. I was like, oh,my God, I can't believe he sang it.
So weave. But that's what itis. It's like. Like you're knitting
something and you can see thefollow. You can see the pattern.
(20:41):
Having said that, the way thatI learned ragas was to play him for
background music. So they werelike become like a language for me
in my background life. So I.And this is not now, this is like
15 years ago. If I waslearning something, I'd be like watching
the baseball game with thesound off, with it on or I'd be in
the kitchen and I'd have iton. Because the many people come
(21:05):
from traditions of raga inIndia and coming from the tradition
means that you didn't reallyhave to learn a lot of the aspects
because you just knew themfrom being around it, you know, 24
7. Just like how I'm. I assumethat when Branford Marsalis first
picked up the horn he was likefour years ahead of me who came from
(21:30):
a non musical family. Youknow, how hard was it? It's just
what your family does. So butfor the listener it can work as background
music. But it's also if it's.It is a. It can be a test of concentration
and it has its possibilitiesof being tremendously boring. And
(21:54):
who can tell if the person'sgood or not when you're first listening?
So there's all those aspectsto it. What I do is I always said
my music was just sort of ragainfluenced. The Indian companies
that I was on, they would justsay was raga straight? And then people
would come to me and say,well, what makes your music raga?
And I'd say, well, I'm on thiscompany and they say it's raga and
(22:16):
was a big time company. So.And in India it's very status conscious.
So they were like, fairenough. Like the musicians were a
little bit like, well, you'regetting paid to do it. You must be
a raga musician. They weren'tlike, you really know nothing. But
now they might say to me, youreally know nothing. I don't know.
(22:37):
I don't know. I'm not trying.I'm using elements of it. Especially
valuing the note and tryingnot to overplay as I develop what
is going on. Not showing everyidea at the beginning.
I like that because you're notgiving everything away. You're not
necessarily making it easier,but you're giving a payoff. You know,
(23:01):
whether it be towards the end,at the very end or at some point,
that listener, if they'repaying attention, they're going to
get that payoff. But they, youknow, you're obviously investing
your time, your energy, youknow, your, your, your hands, your
spirit into the piece. And ifa listener invests their time, they're
(23:26):
going to have that payoff atthe end of it. Speaking about India
versus America, you know,Western culture versus Indian culture.
How are the audiences overthere? I grew up in Chicago, where.
And at a certain bar calledGreen Mill. Who's not sponsoring
(23:48):
this? They should, but they'renot sponsoring this podcast yet.
And I would go and listen tomusic there and it was a thing of,
you know, you're very quiet,you don't have any outside conversations
with anybody. You wouldapplaud solos very quickly, and then,
you know, they would get onwith it. And that was kind of the
(24:08):
atmosphere and the vibe. Howis it if, say, Tim was to go over
to India, over to New Delhiand listen to the. What are the audiences
like there? How responsive orreceptive are they to it?
Well, first of all, the showsare mostly free because they're sponsored
(24:30):
by corporations orfoundations. The audience is the
first thing you would notice.You'd say, wow, I'm really young.
Because there's a lot of oldpeople at those shows. My goodness,
they are. They are. When I wasdoing most of my playing was before,
people were really as muchinto the cell phone as they are now.
(24:51):
So they weren't. I remembergoing to a concert and it was like
a couple of real famouspeople, Zakir Hussain and Shiv Kumar
Sharma. And I saw a womantexting through it. I was like, whoa,
I've never seen that before.Now, of course, I wouldn't react
at all at the beginning.There's generally a commotion while
(25:13):
people are doing their firstpart, which is called the alop, the
slow part. And it's. Ifthere's kids, the kids are coming
in, people are coming in late.It's just. It's a very Indian thing.
If there's anybody famouswho's coming to see you has a reserve
seat, it's de rigueur thatthey come at least 20, 25 minutes
late so they can make a star'sentrance as they come. Sit down.
(25:36):
These things are wild. They'rejust. They're just sort of wild and
a lot of fun. Then as you goand you get a little louder, the
people are very. They're.They're very concentrated. They also
seem very expressionless tome. So I'm never really sure whether
people are liking or not. I'veplayed for very expressionless audience.
(25:58):
And then people come up andthey say, that was the nicest concert
I've ever seen. Or they'vesaid some really good thing. The
other thing for a performerthat's really weird is that. So if
you play like One piece, andthen you take a break and you play
another piece in theintermission. Everybody comes to
talk to you, even if you're inyour dressing room. And I was not
(26:21):
prepared for this because Iwas like, I need a little break before
I play it. After that happenedthe first couple times, then I was
prepared for it and I waslike, okay, this is. This is fine.
This is how they do it here.I'm not going to get, like, this
Keith Jarrett sort of, likepeace of mind where nobody, like,
talks to you, you know? Well,the whole time. The artist cannot
(26:42):
be disturbed. No, the artistcan be disturbed, will be disturbed,
and just accept it. So there'sthings that are the same and things
that are different. I don'tplay pieces like that in bars, so.
So I don't have a issue with,like, people talking because it's
a concert. It's. It's. Itstill has a spiritual background
(27:05):
to it. And also, I just thinkthere's. Well, I'll. Occasionally
I'll play things that arerelated to that. How I would do it
in a concert and how I playit. If I'm. How I'm playing just
with my band or something,it's just. Either I'm not going to
play it or it's just going tobe different in nature.
So when you're going through apiece and you're really vibing with
(27:28):
it and you know where it'ssupposed to go, do you allow yourself
some freedom in this style togo and explore different avenues,
different notes that youweren't normally expected to explore
(27:51):
while you're in the piece?
That's an excellent question.And I would say it depends on how
you build the piece. If yousay that you're playing a certain
raga, you really can't juststart adding other notes that are
not in the raga. You justcan't. It's not. At that point, you're
(28:11):
playing something else. If Ihaven't said anything, it's like
everything I play, I'm veryopen to the moment and unpredictable.
And it's just like how when Italk, it's like the same stream of
consciousness I'm just pouringout now is pretty much what I do
when I play.
Okay, excellent. No, that'sgood to know, because I'm learning
(28:34):
so much about this, and it'smaking. It's whetting my appetite.
I'm just like, I need to getmore of this. So obviously, with
you being from Toronto andplaying this. This style of music,
what's your inspirationsource? If you're already playing,
(28:55):
you know, a raga, then you'replaying that one. But for you, what
do you draw on to create yourown versus playing somebody else's?
Well, you're not. They don'treally belong to anybody. I mean,
I play a lot of music and ragis usually at this point, it's a
smaller part of it. So. Sowhat I'm listening to at different
(29:18):
times really changes. I mean,these days I'm listening to a lot
of. I'm listening to a lot ofPagoda, which is like a Brazilian
popular music. And it's, It's.It's kind of like samba, but there's
a lot of modern pop people andstuff like that. But I don't know.
(29:40):
I'm very inner directed in alot of ways. I sort of. It's hard
for me to find music I like tolisten to. So then I'm like, okay,
well, let me play something.
I hear you on that. Becausethat's how I started writing poetry
way back in 1988, as I hatedwhat my English teacher was giving
us. So I was like, oh, thehell with this. I don't understand
(30:02):
this. I'll write my own. AndI've been doing it since 88. And
some of it's really good, someof it's really bad. But, you know,
it's all stuff that I'vecreated. So I. I definitely hear
you on that.
When I was much more of astudent, I got way more inspiration
from what I didn't like thanwhat I did like. And I'm still a
(30:24):
little like that. I. I don'treally listen to that much piano,
but when I do, I'm like, okay,I didn't like that. Do I do that?
And then a lot of times theanswer is yes. And then I have to.
I refine a little. It's like.It's like I. It's. It's almost like
I hate everybody, but I hatemyself a little less.
(30:45):
I like that. No, well. And youunderstand what you're doing. You
understand what you're goingfor. Whereas somebody else, you may
be like, well, I'm not goingto speak for you, but, you know,
when I'm writing a poem orwhen I'm doing. Because I don't play
jazz, but I do electronicdance music, and I do a lot of electronic
(31:11):
music. You know, I hear wherethey're going and I'm like, man,
if you just went this way,it'd be a much better piece. Oh,
why don't I just go that way?And there's my piece. And there we
go. And it makes me happy. Idon't know if the same method is
for you.
Actually, that, that, that isa good point to put up because that's
(31:34):
why the raga was inspirationalto me, because I did not like the
instruments. I did not likethe tabla drum. I did not like the
format of the concerts. Therewere so many things I didn't like.
But the things that I liked,which was just basically melodic
development and the idea of.Of being limited in the notes that
(31:55):
you played and making theworld out of it, I could take that
and drop the rest. If you takemusic that, for instance, used to
be a big James Brown fan, butI really liked it all, so I didn't
say so. I didn't. I wasn'tlike, oh, I can get inspiration and
(32:16):
do and add piano to this andit's going to sound better. Oh, now
I can do. Yeah. So it wasn'tlike. Or. So if I really like something,
I'm like, okay, what do I. Whydo I need to do it? It's good as
it is. But that's. That'swhere it was really hit the sweet
(32:38):
spot because things I reallyliked and things I really hated and
I was just like, take what Ilike, drop the rest, and it's going
to be original. And it seemedlike people thought it.
Was going to take a littletangent here with you from what we've
been talking about here. AndI'd like to talk about the impact
of technology because we seetechnology in podcasting with AI
(33:06):
and in music with AI. What'sbeen the impact either good or bad
for you with technology cominginto the music music arena?
Well, it's a mixed bag. I.It's harder to get your music heard.
(33:29):
It's harder to get work.However, there is no way I could
have created everything Icreated in the last year when with
my physical difficultieswithout technology. Both the movies
I made, the music I make, Ialready am using AI on certain movies
(33:52):
I make for certain things. Buteven before that, I think on a societal
level, it's a disaster. On apersonal level, it's kind of cool
with everything looking goodas a result. Things that cranks who
used to have things on reallylooking bad looking mimeograph paper,
(34:15):
all of a sudden their randomweird thoughts look very official.
And this is something I think.And I'm also not really into people
looking at their phones asthey walk down the street. And I
also created art that I'mhoping people will look at and concentrate
(34:36):
a little But I know thatpeople are flipping really fast through
their phones. It's hard. It'sharder for me to pay attention. So
I'm not saying it's likeeverybody, it's me. It's changed
how I used to be a solo pianoplayer, and so I'd be like playing
in a bar or something likethat, and couples would come in and
(34:59):
they were talking and having adate. And then like one go to the
bathroom and the other wouldlisten to the music. Now if I was
doing it, the couple, mostlikely, they're both on their phones.
But even if they're not ontheir phones, if one goes to the
bathroom, the other is goingto go on their phone. So people don't
really know what to do withlive music unless they're specifically
(35:21):
going to see live music. Ithink that the attention span of
people being shorter is not aterrible thing in some ways, because
as you, I'm sure as you'veheard as a jazz listener, they've
gotten rid of like the endlessintroductions again. Like, the music
that people put out and now ismuch more like how they were put
(35:43):
out in the 30s and the 40s.There's no longer, like, we're gonna
vamp for four minutes and thenget the song. And when I listen to
a piece like that, I'm like,wow, they're really taking a long
time because I don't have itin me. So as a result, everything
I've recorded in the last, Idon't know, 10 years, it's like,
it's four minutes long, it'sthree minutes long. There's maybe
(36:07):
a four bar introduction on. Soit's on this new record that's coming
out. I mean, there is a 20minute raga piece which is live,
but I didn't put that out on.You know, we're not putting that
out on Spotify. I can't seelike somebody that's like somebody.
I'm figuring somebody'slistening to the. Has bought the
(36:29):
band camp or listening to theband camp and the thing is running
and then they'll forget andit'll keep going. But I. I don't
expect anybody to like, sitdown and listen for. So the attention
spans have changed. And to me,it's all. All part of the thing,
as we know, because of COVIDLeaving aside your unique problems
(36:53):
during COVID and my uniqueproblems to now that everybody has
come out of COVIDpsychologically damaged in some way
or another. And between thatand the alienation of people being
on their phones a lot, I mean,I'm going to say phone was the worst
technology in. Ever. I'm. I'mkind of into AI, sure. Honestly,
(37:16):
I mean, I'm into AI and I'minto things that may be able to record
at home. We're. We're onaudio, but there's a piano behind
me, you know, and there'ssome. There's some mic set up. They.
They didn't work for thepodcast, but they work for. In theory,
they work for. For the piano.And I'm able to make. I'm able to
(37:37):
make movies on my own. I wasable to teach myself how to make
movies in a way that, like, soit's expanded my life in that way,
but socially, I think it'satrophied my life in a way. So that's
a really long, rambling answer.
No, but I like it because itmakes sense. If we use technology
(38:00):
as a tool for bettering thepieces of art that we're making,
just in that sense, fantastic.But if we're using technology to
get away from everybody, toisolate ourselves, to have our own
echo chambers, just to, youknow, keep our focus, you know, and
(38:27):
unfortunately, I'm not doing avideo of this at. And everybody knows
I move my hands around a wholelot, but if we're, you know, having
this narrow focus, like onefoot in front of us, we're going
to miss everything else that'saround us. And, you know, you have
your room decorated much likeI have mine. We commented on that
(38:48):
before. We've got a ton ofstuff around our room to look at,
to be inspired by, to. Toenjoy. Whereas I'm going to sound
like a old Gen X guy, youknow, these dang kids are just sitting
there looking at their phones,and it's, you know, about a foot
away from their eyes, andthat's all they're focused on. They're
missing everything else.
(39:09):
I don't think it's just thekids, though. I think it's everybody.
I think it's everybody. I livein a beautiful neighborhood in Brooklyn,
and I just see people walking,walking while looking on their phone,
which, first of all, I thinkshould be illegal. But. And there's.
So. There's just. There'salways so much to. And I even. I
(39:31):
take a ferry to one of myjobs, and I sit on top of the ferry,
and there'll be people withheadphones and a phone while they're
riding a ferry. They're ridinga ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan,
which is like, we're only like3 billion people in the world. Wish
that they could take a tripright now to be on this ferry and
they're ignoring it. And everyday it's a little different. So it's
(39:53):
not like you've done it fivetimes and you're like, oh well, it's
just water and a view. It'salways different and it's always
interesting. I'll give anexample of where technology has improved
music. So in around 1975, ifyou listen to the record, it's a
(40:13):
live drummer. You listen toRecords in 1985, it's a drum machine.
Right.
So that changed. If you listento how drummers play now. Like for
instance, you were saying thatyou like Robert Glasper. The drummers
are fantastic because they'vetaken all the stuff that they learned
(40:34):
from listening to what drummachines could do and they've incorporated
it into their own play. Sothere's a real difference between
drummers who are like underthe ages of 40 and the drummers are
older in terms of just certainthings that they do. Like I'm a big
fan of Domi and J.D. beck. AndJ.D. beck is like this 17 year old
kid. But what he does, he justtakes all that stuff and he moves
(40:58):
it into a live context. And Ithink AI it's very new and of course
it's been used, being used forcrap all the time. But that doesn't
mean it has to be or it willalways will be. I think that's been
probably the same way. I knowin societies where they didn't know
(41:20):
how to read, of course thefirst thing that happened once people,
they invented a readinglanguage is people lost their memory.
So there was some old guysaying, I can remember 18,000 lines
of this poem and these damnkids can only remember 100 lines.
Sure.
So there's always. Everytechnology has changed like that
(41:40):
sort of thing. People'smemory, people's attention span.
That's why those ragas werefour hours long. And back in the
day and even further beyondthat, before that they had this music
called Drupal. And I thinkragas are boring. This Drupal. It
was like when raga first camein. This is much more exciting than
(42:02):
what we've been listening to.It's a little bit like when you listen
to Gregorian chant and youwere like, was this people's idea
of entertainment or was itjust like. Although I think in that
case it was just the nuns andthe priests listening to it. I think
the people had something moreexciting to listen to.
It's funny that you mentionedthat. I remember When Enigma came
(42:27):
out in the 90s and there wasthis big, you know, everyone was
doing Gregorian chant, andthat lasted for a couple of years
and, you know, some, you know,different strains of music, different
genres of music, picked alittle bit off of it. But now here
in 2024, you hardly ever inpopular music, you hardly ever hear
(42:52):
it in, you know, differentgenres of music, pieces of it. But
it's really hard to get into.It's really hard to find anymore.
You know, who knows who thenext Enigma is? I certainly don't.
But I loved it when it was outthere. I was one of the weird people
that I was like, oh, yeah,this is really good. Who's the next
(43:14):
one that's coming out? And Ijust never happened. How do you define
success today as a musician?What makes you think that you have
made it or do you even need tomake it, per se?
Well, I'm on this label,robodope, which has people who sell
(43:36):
really well and people whodon't sell Wells, which would be
me. And the head of that labelalways says, if you've completed
a project, you're a success.And I could have kissed him for saying
that. Ought to be honest,because I would say it depends on
which year and what time. Youasked me when I was. When I was creating
(43:59):
and I was in the middle ofchemotherapy, it was certainly like
my whole goal was to finishwhat I was trying to do, and that
was going to be success. Andthen I was going to. I'm still at
a point where I'm like sixmonths out of that, where I'm not
really. I'm only starting tofocus on the. On the world part of
(44:22):
it a little more. I was givingmyself to the end of the year to
just to try to tell myself getoff that hamster wheel of trying
to get work and differentstuff like that. So everybody has
a different. Everyone has adifferent metric for it. So if you're,
you know, if you're Beyonce, Isuppose she has to sell as much as
(44:46):
her last album. And because Iread an interesting thing with this
piano player, Joey Calzerazzo.And in the 90s, he got dropped by
a record label because he onlysold 50,000 copies of his record.
If you sold 50,000 copies ofyour record now, you would be the
(45:06):
biggest jazz star by far. Sothere's no. I don't even. I kind
of don't know what to say. Iguess it's based on how many gigs
you're getting, because evenhaving plays on, like, Spotify or
something like that. In myexperience, most of them seem to
be background music wherenobody's listening to them. So it's
(45:27):
not. It's not really anartistic thing that your music is
being played. The only songthat I ever hear that people really
pick up to is I Want to Dancewith Somebody by Whitney Houston.
And for some reason, everytime it goes on, everybody in the
whole universe of Americaunites us. One no longer blue and
(45:48):
red and sings that damn song,and then they go off again.
So I hear you on that.
Yeah.
As soon as you said it, I waslike, oh, yeah, I got. You know,
I remember when the video cameout, and, you know, it makes me want
to jump out of my seat rightnow. I won't. I promise. I'm wearing
pants, but I'm not going to do that.
(46:09):
Well, it is an audio podcast,so you can do whatever you want.
I got dressed up just in case,because I wasn't really. Because
even though you said that, Iwas like, I got to be prepared.
I dressed up a little bit,too. I showered, everything. So we're
all good. I have a face forpodcasting as you.
Yeah, nonsense. The people aremissing a great pleasure that is
(46:33):
unique to me.
Do you have any advice? And wehad spoken about this before we even
started recording. I've got.I've got twin daughters, and they're
10 years old, and they'reemerging musicians. They can't be
helped. They're my kids. Youknow, they're going to be. They're
going to have some musicalbackground or appreciation. But do
(46:56):
you have any advice foranybody that's just coming out now
that they. They want to flipthat switch? They want to become
a musician, an artist, maybe afilmmaker. Anything that you wish
you would have known when you.When that switch turned on for you.
(47:18):
I'm going to say no. I'll tellyou what I have advice for, because
this is something I've thoughtmore is. And certainly you've thought
about it, is creating whenyou're going through challenges.
And so I was like, well, I gotto write these down. There have to
be, like, principles that I'velearned from this. And so I'll go
(47:43):
with that, if you don't mindanswering a different question. Like,
I'm on the debate stage.
Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. And what I did wasI was very un. I was very much determined
whenever I felt okay to work.And I learned. And by that, very
(48:03):
early on, I told my wife, Isaid, if I'm feeling somewhat all
right, we're not going towatch a TV show. We're going to wait
until I feel semi lousy orreally lousy, which was most of the
time to do those things. And Isaid, I don't want to, you know,
I don't want to go have lunchwith people as much as possible if
(48:25):
I want to work. So having saidthat, I was very forgiving of myself
for the mistakes I was makingwhile I was working. So to me there
were two things that wereinvolved. One was just like being
really hard on myself, like,you got to work. And I guess I would
say that would be a little bitof what I would tell a kid. Although
(48:49):
kids, you know, they shouldn'tforgive themselves. That's part of
their process. You know, selfhate is like, you know, you start
doing this, you're in yourearly teens, you know, you have a
lot of hatred for yourparents, hatred for the world, all
that stuff. So I'm not goingto say like, be like me. I remember
what it was like to be like akid, you know, what I would say is
(49:11):
like, don't, don't be divorcedfrom your emotions.
Right.
Maybe that's the advice I givewith kids. Like sometimes they're
learning the technique ofstuff and I just like, always be
aware of how you're feelingand add it on to your process. If
you're disciplined, it's notgoing to be an issue. If you're not
disciplined, this is somethingyou have to fix a little bit and
(49:35):
hopefully you enjoy it so muchthat discipline is not the issue
that you don't have to startbeing disciplined till later on.
I know a lot of people whodon't play any better than they were
when they were 18 years oldand they might have been really great
then and by the standards ofnow are not really great. So you
(49:57):
do have to, you have todevelop discipline if you didn't
have it like when you don'tfeel like doing something, but in
terms of creating when you'renot, well, it's very much like you
just can't be like, oh, I. Ifyou feel okay, you gotta, you gotta
map out the time and you gottado it. But I made a lot of mistakes
(50:19):
on the road and then therewere. Sometimes you have to learn
how to back things up. BecauseI would first come home from chemo
and I would be feeling prettygood for like in, actually in some
ways because of the amount ofsteroids they were giving me.
Sure.
But I, but I was also jackedup and like a little insane. So I
was making, so I was makingediting mistakes and Different. Different
(50:43):
stuff like that. And sobecause I had gone through so many
health things also, eventhough for the first couple months
after my diagnosis and chemo,I very much felt like I was going
to die, even though no one wassaying you're going to die, like
this week or anything likethat, so it was later on I kind of
(51:04):
got over that feeling. But allI can say, that's a good impetus
for work because I was like,well, I want to get this done. Once
I started and I had acommitment from, like, the record
company, and I knew that themovies was starting to go well and
certain aspects of thecreation were. Were moving well.
I was like, I don't want torecord a note after I'm finished
(51:28):
with chemo because I don'twant this record to be about. I want
it to be all from the processof where I was. And also with the
movie that I made about it, Ialso wanted that to be finished.
And I kind of got there withthe movie. I mean, I did some editing
after, but the. There's noscenes or anything. There's no footage
(51:51):
or anything like that. It'sjust sort of like cleaning up the
edges of what I did. Becausepart of it was if people asked me
how was it, I wanted to justsay, well, listen to the music, watch
the movie, and if you.
Pay attention, you willunderstand. You'll get all your questions
(52:13):
answered. Because it sounds tome like you put it out there for
everybody to get. Sodefinitely watch, listen, and you
will learn. Fantastic. Well, Iknow we had talked a little bit about
some future projects that youhave coming up. You mentioned that
(52:34):
you have a. An album coming upsoon or you're working on an album.
Well, there actually now I'mtaking a little bit of a break, but
there's two albums, which bythe time this podcast is released,
I think they're both going tobe out. So the first one is called
Scavenger, and that's themusic I've been talking about making.
(52:56):
And part of that album is thesoundtrack for this lo fi ambient
movie I made, which is calledScavenger in six parts. So hopefully
everything is calledScavenger. Now the other one is.
Is like a boombop. Oh, boombop downtempo remix album made by
(53:16):
this guy named Hugh who livesin England. And he has made remix
albums based on my recordingsbefore. But this time I sent him
the first tracks because he.He masters my stuff and he was. Would
you. How would you like tosend me your stems? By stems, it
(53:40):
just means the individualTracks, the raw tracks, like the
piano by itself, the vibes byitself. The drum. Not the drums.
He puts its own drums, thesax. And I'll make a record while
we're doing. I said, be myguest. So he started. And I love
what he was doing and what hedid also on this album. I didn't
(54:03):
know these things. You're anelectronic musician, so you know
these things. I had never evenheard of Boo Bop until it showed
up. But he said, there's a lotof. He said, we're gonna. I want
you to do some talking. So onthe first one, I started talking
things that vaguely are aboutwhat happens with my. With. With
(54:25):
my life, but I did not do thetalking. And all of them, a couple
of them. My wife, who was asinger and a poet, she wrote. But
I also had other people recitethe words because I didn't want it
to be my voice. And so there'sone where a guy says in French, he
says all the things thatpeople said to me which were not
(54:48):
too helpful. For instance,like, you look good. That's the main
thing people told me, yeah,you look good, or you're a fighter.
I was like. I said this toClaire Daly while she was going through
this. She said, if this is afight, we're losing it. I hear you
(55:14):
on that. Yeah, yeah. Orsomething that you get from black
people. God doesn't give youmore than you can handle, you know?
Sure.
You know. So anyways, a. Ilove it.
Because it's in French.
Yeah.
Because I love the Frenchlanguage. I'm doing the duolingo
thing and I'm trying to learnit, but I love when people insert
(55:40):
a different language into themusic that I don't. I may get bits
and pieces of it, but I justreally enjoy that because then I
get to imagine a little bitmore about what it's about. What
is the person saying? Sodefinitely I want to hear that one.
There's another track on thatrecord, which is also in the movie
(56:04):
that I'd like to talk about.So one night I'm talking with my
wife, and I said something,and I was feeling pretty terrible
at this point, and. And I sayto her. And I said something, and
she laughed. And I said toher, all I have left is my language,
(56:25):
because I felt like I didn'treally have a physical presence and
all of that. And I shouldn'tsay I felt terrible, because I did
so. Because a couple dayslater I go to work and it's this.
This really creepy. It's thisreally Overcast day and a really
(56:46):
beautiful light of New YorkCity from the ferry. So I have the
phone going in its thing andof course I gave this whole rap about
don't be on the phone. But allof a sudden I get a message from
this guy in England. He says,could you please talk about your
experience? Just riff aboutwhat this album is about. So I'm
(57:10):
leaving the ferry and it'slike a five minute walk to work.
And I'm saying, I say, well,you know, this album is about having
cancer and all I have left ismy words. Which ended up being the
name of the song. And I dothis whole thing. I said, now I'm
(57:31):
going to get a latte. And it'sLuke who's giving me the latte. And
my voice is really terrible,but sounds good. It's like Miles
Davis or something like that.
Sure.
Which. The video was justperfect. And then he edited out the
obvious stuff out of the. AndI also said something like, I really
(57:53):
love Boom Bop in the morningbecause I didn't know what Boom Bop
was. Which is weird because Ieven auditioned for KRS1 back in
the 90s. I didn't get the gig,but obviously I didn't know enough
when I was. When I was. He wasvery nice, by the way. And so. So
this ended up being a movieand also the. The music. So. So the
(58:18):
remix in some ways has more.It's. It all alluded, like there's
another one. And then I. Iwon't tell you any of the other ones,
but this one I like because Ilike the story because, you know,
people. People send you stuffwhen you have cancer. And so. So
(58:41):
this friend of my wife, shesent me an amaryllis plant. So we
got the plant, we got theinstructions. The plant started to
die. The next day it juststarted to die. It looked absolutely
terrible. So my wife, PaulaG.D. bennett, is a poet and she says
(59:02):
how to kill a plant. And I goand I get a pencil and she just starts
free writing right there. Andshe says the lines, this whole poem,
it's like straight out, fourlines, we're done. I said record
it into the. Into the phone. Isend it to him, he puts it on a track.
(59:26):
But I mean, it was like themost. It was like. It was like the
best analogy of like what washappening with me. And so it's never,
never am I gonna do a storywhere it's just like. So it should
relate to people.
Exactly.
Not just me.
Ladies and gentlemen, we havehad the privilege of talking to Richard
(59:49):
X. Bennett here today. Isthere anything else that we can put
in this interview that wehaven't touched on that you'd like
to hear?
No, I'd just like to thankyou, Tim, and I really enjoyed it.
Well, thank you so very much.
So that was my interview withRichard X. Bennett, jazz musician,
(01:00:11):
raga musician and filmmaker aswell. I hope you got a lot out of
this. I know I had a crashcourse in raga music throughout this
interview and I reallyappreciate his time that he took
with me to, to teach me and totalk with me about everything that
(01:00:31):
he's doing. And I also want tosend a special shout out to Ron who
introduced us virtually. Ifyou got something out of this interview,
naturally go ahead and sharethat with a friend of yours on whatever
podcast app that you're using.And just a few things before we close
out here. I want to thank youfor listening in on this interview
(01:00:53):
and being open and exposingyourself to something new that you
may not have heard of before.Sometimes it can be challenging,
but once you do open yourselfup in this way and learn something
new like we did in thisinterview, you're just going to be
that much better of an artistand a citizen of the world. So thank
(01:01:15):
you for doing that. If you gotsomething out of it, please reach
back to me on that. Timothyatcreateartpodcast.com. as you can
tell, I answer emails. Yes Ido. When you have ideas like Ron
had to interview Richard, Iam, I am game for it. I really want
to expose other people to thisgreat music that he is creating and
(01:01:40):
I want to expose all thepeople that listen to the show to
what you're creating. So reachout to me, let me know what you're
doing. The next thing I wantto talk to you about is I do run
another podcast called Find aPodcast About. You can find it at
Find a Podcast about xyz andthere I help you outsmart the algorithm
and find your next bingeworthy podcast. So check that out.
(01:02:03):
Lastly, this has been aproduction of TKB Podcast Studio.
You can find it at TKB PodcastStudio Calm. And that's where I help
people like yourself createpodcasts that touch other individuals.
And we treat every, everyperson that works with me as if they
(01:02:28):
were the only client that Ihad. So check out tkb podcast studio.com
to see all the works that I amdoing. We lead through the noise
as quiet professionals.Alright, I'm going to let you get
back on with your day. I needto go ahead and get on with my day.
But do yourself a favor. Checkout Richard's website. Links are
(01:02:51):
in the show notes. Do yourselfa favor for that. And go out there,
tame that inner critic andcreate more than you consume. Go
out there and make some artfor somebody you love. Yourself.
I'll talk to you again next time.
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