I try to stick with things that I can sing with honesty.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of authenticity in one's expression, particularly in music.
Kurt Elling's quote highlights the significance of sincerity in artistic endeavors. By stating that he tries to stick with things he can sing about honestly, he implies that genuine expression enhances the value and impact of art. It suggests that authenticity resonates more profoundly with audiences, creating a deeper connection between the artist and their work.
In practice
A musician might use this quote to inspire a songwriting workshop focused on personal experiences.
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.
One doesn't have to scat to be a jazz singer.
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.
It's so easy to call something a Jewish story or a gay story or a woman's story. Aesthetically, if a story is not universal, it has failed. Your obligation is to the story. One rule creatively, and emotionally, is its universality.
To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate.
The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.
I use poetry to help me work through what I donβt understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that Iβve been.
I don't play long parts. They must be short parts, but they've got to be parts that mean something, that matter, where people will notice when I'm on the screen, and people will remember the character after they've seen the film.
When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.
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