I'm one of the culprits who keeps turning stuff around, shaking up original tunes and trying to stand the canon on its ear. But sometimes, you just need to sing the song.
Interpretation
Creativity involves both experimentation and tradition; sometimes it's necessary to embrace the original.
In this quote, Kurt Elling reflects on the dual nature of artistic expression, where one often feels compelled to innovate and rework existing pieces to create something new. However, he acknowledges that there are moments when it is equally important to honor and simply perform the original creation, highlighting the balance between creativity and respect for tradition in art.
In practice
A musician might use this quote when discussing their approach to covers and remixes at a concert.
It helps me to learn things in different languages, even if it's just phonetically, and to make myself vulnerable to other audiences by trying to reflect back to them the genius of their own cultures, and to do that, oftentimes, in new jazz settings, new arrangements. It's a way to show respect.
That's the thing: There are so many art songs in jazz. It's a much more rich experience for the singer than people think.
I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.
One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.
[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.
You hear about the Duke Ellingtons, the Jimmie Luncefords, and the Fletcher Hendersons, but people sometimes forget that jazz was not only built in the minds of the great ones, but on the backs of the ordinary ones.
Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
Sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.
At 6 years old, the ice became a place for me to express myself. Because I was so shy off the ice, it became my safe haven, with music and freedom and self-expression. That was my emotional outlet.
The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.
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