I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.
I actually admire the Indian artiste 'Lost Stories.' He made a remix of my song 'Faded.' That is really good and cool because it actually represented Indian music. I just loved the song; it so unique.
As a musician, I know that it'll take time for me to get to the ranks of an established artiste. Nevertheless, I'm very happy that people are appreciating my music.
Playing my music to fans and people enjoying it is what matters; that makes me happy as an artiste. If you start worrying about awards, you will lose your creativity.
The performance of Carnatic music is multi-dimensional and layered. A performance is at once an artiste's cathartic process of personal exploration and an open energy exchange with the audience: a release and a conversation.
First of all, I'm not a singer or rapper. I'm an artiste. Besides singing, I produce music, dance, write poetry, and sometimes I paint as well.
Music is an intrinsic part of life; therefore, it is important to transport different forms of artistic expression, science, and mathematics into compositions.
Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.
It's not like since I make comics I only read comics and since I make movies I will only go out and watch movies. Any kind of artistic expression interests me; it goes from literature to music to sculpture, painting; whatever is extremely inspiring for me becomes a reference also for me.
A lot of people probably get the idea that I'm this extremely calculated kind of guy, and in a lot of ways, I am. But when it comes to music or artistic expression, I'm very uncalculated and do things very spontaneous. If I didn't do that, I wouldn't want to do this anymore. I can't just play the same thing over and over; it would drive me crazy.
The virtual choir would never replace live music or a real choir, but the same sort of focus and intent and esprit de corps is evident in both, and at the end of the day it seems to me a genuine artistic expression.
Even with G.O.O.D. Music, we have artists that have done very well, and we've had artists that haven't. Being attached to Kanye is only going to get you so far. You've still got to have the records and the talent and the artistry on your own to carry it.
I feel like a celebrity is someone who sits and takes pictures with people 'cause they love themselves and how they look and how people look at them. But I just want to be regular and respected for my artistry because music doesn't necessarily have a face.
I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.
I've benefited enormously from an arts education and a music education in New York. When they cut the programs for funding, I was devastated.
I always believed that my work should be unfinished in the sense that I encourage people to add their creativity to it, either conceptually or physically. Back in the 1960s, I was calling for 'Unfinished Music,' number one, and number two, with my artwork - I was taking unfinished work into the gallery. And that's how I was looking at it.
If you look at an old piece of sheet music, there's all kinds of text on it, there are ads, there are proclamations of the greatest songs' success, there's artwork. So there is a tactile, physical experience of learning the song and the way it's notated.
Despite erasure by the media and other patriarchal institutions, there was, by 1975, a substantial body of feminist writings as well as artwork, music, films, and organization of all kinds.
I'm quite arty. I didn't know whether to become an artist or musician but I realised I could paint with music. All my songs have colours.
I think I managed to trick people a little bit into thinking I'm more arty by making creative, artistic, visual work and applying it to commercial music. Maybe. I don't know.
