A Quote by Devendra Banhart
My interested in Brazilian music stemmed from wanting to find a musical identity other than the salsa and meringue that I was inundated with in Venezuela as a child.
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I'm Cuban and Puerto Rican and Miami is very Cuban oriented. Growing up around the music - all of the salsa and meringue influenced me as an artist. I find myself gravitating to latin influences, sounds.
Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.
It didn't even occur to me that I'm the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.
Every kid has a laptop; everyone can make music, so in order to stand out, I think it's important to find that sonic identity, I think my sonic identity - and mine is finding these weird sounds that may not necessarily sound that musical, and make them sound musical.
I was always interested in trying to find how different genres would affect the lyrics that I'd written. Salsa is where most of my songs have been recorded, the genre of salsa. It's very frenetic, fast-paced. And I felt that the lyrics sometimes were being lost.
The whole point is to take from our native culture and from contemporary culture without using one art form to mimic the other, so that our native identity remains the native identity, the contemporary identity remains the contemporary identity, and the mixing of these two musical identities creates a third musical identity.
The rise of salsa was such an important time in musical history, not just in Latin music but music in general, because these guys created a new sound.
I think I'm really part of a whole generational movement in a way. I think a lot of other people since and during this time have gotten interested in writing what we can still call experimental music. It's not commercial music. And it's really a concert music, but a concert music for our time. And wanting to find the audience, because we've discovered the audience is really there. Those became really clear with Einstein on the Beach.
I'd love to find a really good Brazilian project, an up and coming director or something. I wouldn't want to do the typical favela story, Brazilian cinema has a lot more to offer than just that.
A lot of singers find a musical genre people like and stick with it. That's being a conformist. I sing ballads, rock, salsa, rap.
I understand why some women/girls/ladies don't want to be women-identified 'cuz it totally complicates your band identity and no one seems to pay much attention to the music or what you're doing. We have chosen to be girl-identified (although Billy isn't a girl!), because we want to encourage other women/girls to play music. When I was growing up, I found it discouraging to have all these women in bands not wanting to address the issue of gender...we're interested in what women are doing.
De La Hoya doesn't know about salsa. He should keep on singing mariachis and leave the salsa to me. I'm good at salsa.
Chavez's oil is unimportant for Bolivia... We are not dependent on Venezuela. We complement each other. Venezuela shares its wealth with other countries, but that doesn't make us subordinate.
For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.
Brazilian music has been a part of almost every record I've done, and I'd eventually like to record an entire album of Brazilian music.
When I'm a little kid watching Chicago Bears games, hot salsa would be on the table and the first time I was like, 'Ah, this is hot Dad, get mild salsa,' and he was like: 'Not in my house. We have real salsa. And if you can't handle real salsa then you can just eat dry chips.'
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