A Quote by Jose James
I think comparisons are very on the surface. If I sing, like, 'Park Bench People,' and there's kind of a social undertone, people will say I sound like Gil Scott-Heron. But for me, the more insightful comparison would be a Roberta Flack or Nina Simone - people who really mix different genres of music.
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I've always been a poet. My dad went to Lincoln University with Gil-Scott Heron, so I came out of the womb listening to Gil-Scott Heron.
We always get back to old soul singers like Nina Simone, and how her recordings sound. Also new music like Tobacco, or people that use a mixture of analog and electronic music.
People on YouTube say they don't think people should mix genres. Those are the same people who don't think they should mix races. It's gonna always be that, but you can only pray that music can bring everybody together as one.
I think it's possible to a certain extent to make those comparisons. The problem is the detail with which the comparison can be made. Of course, the first place to make such a comparison would be to ask for a testimony from different people and have people report on what they experience.
A lot of people say I got my own sound. I ain't never really got no comparisons. When people hear my music, they be like, 'He got his own lil sound.'
I am not really thinking, I am just, working with the music. And people have asked me, why don't you say more, or why do you not have singers, or why don't you sing? I think it's because, if I would have words for what I am doing, I I could write. But I really don't. It's a whole different thing. And I think it's one of the beauty of instrumental music is that it can be background. It can be what people call "easy listening." But it's really one of those things where it's as much as you are willing to give it.
If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.
America has not produced a more salient political musician than Gil Scott-Heron.
He shook his head. "Some people think that they like music, but they have no idea what it's really about. They're kindding themselves. Then there are people who feel strongly about music, but just aren't listening to the right stuff. They're misguided. And then there are people like me."
"People like you," I said. "What kind of people are those?"
"The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can't imagine a life without it. They're enlightened."
Biggest musical influences would be people like Nina Simone and Tom Waits. A huge amount of writers like Leslie Feist and Paul Simon.
Luther Vandross and I met in Roberta Flack's band. He was singing background, I was playing bass, and Roberta was beautiful. She's like the mom to all these young musicians in New York. At that time that I met Luther, I was a musician snob. For me, the singers were just the people out in the front to keep the audience entertained. While the musicians did the real work.
Girls are taught to sing high and pretty, like Antony, not low and from the guts like Nina Simone. But we're slowly trying to change that. There are so many things we're not told growing up, and it's our true feminist responsibility to take the truth to the people who need to hear it.
As far as influences, I listen to a lot of people like Nina Simone and other androgynous voices, almost to make me feel like I'm not alone.
I've been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager, where I'd sing in a way that I ... I just didn't think other people would like it, so I didn't play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I'm happy that I did, because it's kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music that you don't really like as much as another kind.
When other people look at K-pop with a more traditional Western lens, or when people listen to it, it may sound like a combination of all different genres.
I do experiment with lots of different genres. In making music, I don't think of genre like, "I want to do this, because I'm going use that country music sound; I'm going use that hip-hop sound; I'm going use that acoustic [sound]." It's just making music. So now that I've traveled a lot more since I did Acoustic Soul, I'm sure that different sounds will come into place, because I have been exposed to it and I like it. But it's not so much of a conscience effort. It's mind and spirited. You know, we're humans.
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