I would hope my legacy would be bringing smiles to faces. Happiness with my music.
One of the things I've heard musicians say that's true is, 'I would play for free. I would play music forever, but you have to pay me to travel.' I know we're always going to make music. The traveling part - that is the most wear and tear on any human.
I want Bappa to be amongst the best music composers. My father was a great singer and I also did quite well and now my son would take forward the legacy, as music is in our blood.
My parents were really into music. They would play the Funkadelics, Parliament, OutKast; they would just play that all around the house. They'd also play Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye, James Brown.
It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way?
People would ask me about my legacy, and I would tell them my legacy is what I did. You can't change it. It's just what you do or what you did.
I hope I would leave a legacy of joy -a legacy of real compassion.
My parents were opera singers. I didn't want to play opera because I wasn't good enough. I didn't want to play their music; I wanted to play the music that I wanted to play, and I'm so lucky that today I get to play that music, even though I don't like every song I write.
Mostly, whenever I'm booked to do instruction, I just play a little bit and get people to ask questions. We'll play some music for 'em, 'til somebody hollers out, 'Play 'Milk Cow Blues' or 'Play 'San Antonio Rose.' We play requests and demonstrate our music.
I guess my biggest influence was actually my Grandfather. He used to play old records on vinyl, and would play old jazz and soul music like Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and The Rat Pack and swing music.
I would play music every day from the time I was about 4 or 5 years old. Every time I would go from one end of the house to the other, I would pass the piano and play a few notes.
If I was a carpenter, and I was trying to maintain my father's musical legacy, then I guess it would be a burden because it wouldn't be natural to me to be dealing in music when my natural ability is in woodwork or whatever. But because my natural talent is also music, it kind of makes it much easier.
And we would play together, like fine musicians should, And it would sound like music, and the music would sound good. But in real life I'm stuck with that same old formula, me and my monophonic symphony, six string orchestra.
Music is a spiritual thing, you don't play with music. If you play with music you will die young. You see, because when the higher forces give you the gift of music...musicians hip, it must be well used for the gift of humanity.
Music is a universal language insofar as you don't need to know anything else about a musician that you are playing with other than that they can play music. It doesn't matter what their music is, you can find something that you can play together, with what their culture is. The dialect part of it comes into play, but nothing like the differentiation that language sets up, for example.