A Quote by Erykah Badu
Different periods, different cultures - it's just the way my mind works. My music is that way as well. There's a foundation but the inspiration comes from everywhere. I've been influenced by so many things.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
I travel a lot, and being in different countries and a part of cultures, that's just such a huge inspiration for music, and one way or another, you get influenced.
I'm definitely influenced by lots of different things - from music, from reading, from I don't know... I have a lot of different sources of inspiration that I tap into when I need to get something done.
I've been able to have broad kind of education and all sorts of different music and a lot of kind of films and also different styles and genres. And so, all of these things have influenced me along the way and I take a little bit from everything I do. I've been lucky to work with a lot of great people and learn from them.
I work on everything all at once, which is maybe the worst way to go about it. But I think that actually it works really well in terms of the serendipitous connections between all of these many different projects and these many different realms.
Jordan is many different things and there's many different parts of it. We don't ever really get to see a modern Arab city, a part of the Arab world where people are seemingly living their lives like everywhere else and also just a part of the Arab world that's surprisingly Americanized, with fast-food joints everywhere and shopping malls. Over the 30 years I've been traveling there, I really saw it grow and become modernized and much more Americanized in a way that surprised me as an Arab-American.
We've had so many lifetimes of different cultures and different religions and different points of view and different wars and different loves and different children.
I've got my advanced scuba diving license. I'm playing tennis and exercising. I ride my bike everywhere. I've been finding new things. I've been more creative in music and doing different videos. And just meeting different people and being around and present. I'm wonderful when I'm just on nothing.
Travelling, in general, opens your mind to so many different cultures and different ways of thinking and different ways of seeing stuff. I definitely feel like it has an influence on my music to be a bit more broader and a bit more open.
You got to look the part. You have to look like all the successful rock bands look. This is what they do. That's never been us. You know, it's a hard game to play: at the end of the day, we are just a rock band and have so many different cultures of music that we have grown up on, because we are fans of all different kinds of music.
I have a cultural map in my head, where I find similarities between different cultures. For example, domestic Japanese pop music sounds like Arabic music to me - the vocal intonations and vibrato - and, in my mind, Bali is next to New York. Maybe everyone has these geographies in their head. This is the way I've been working.
Sadly I don't sing. I missed it for a long time, but my daughter Emma said something wonderful when I was feeling blue one day: "Mom, you've just found a different way of using your voice, and that's with your books." In a way, she's right. It's just a different way of expressing what I feel about music, individuality, art and all the things I've always loved.
It's really interesting to just look at the career of a musician and a producer that went into many different genres and many different styles and many different places but always breaking the barriers between genres and at some point reinventing himself all along the way but also inventing things at the same time.
The ideal is a synthesis of the different cultures that have come to stay in India, that have influenced Indian life, and that, in their turn, have themselves been influenced by the spirit of the soil.
People can feel stuff in a different way when it's through music. If you can get some inspiration into a song, it might be received in a more impactful way than if you were just to have a conversation.
For just being a black artist in rock n' roll and be able to step outside and create, and make great music. And just be different. Just a different breed. And that's what I love about Jimi Hendrix's music - the way he plays the guitar is so different. He's just an icon all around.
I can create clothes for so many different time periods. I've always tried to avoid being pigeonholed. Plus, everything I learn about design and costume from one movie somehow works its way into something else.
Related Authors
Ani DiFranco Quotes
American
Musician
Bob Dylan Quotes
American
Musician
Brian Eno Quotes
British
Musician
Bruce Springsteen Quotes
American
Musician
David Bowie Quotes
English
Musician
Drake Quotes
Canadian
Musician
Elton John Quotes
English
Musician
George Harrison Quotes
British
Musician
Henry Rollins Quotes
American
Musician
John Lennon Quotes
English
Musician
Madonna Ciccone Quotes
American
Musician
Moby Quotes
American
Musician
Nicki Minaj Quotes
American
Musician
Patti Smith Quotes
American
Musician
Thom Yorke Quotes
English
Musician
Tori Amos Quotes
American
Musician