Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancockis an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. Starting his career with Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth12 April 1940
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
A jazz musician is not a jazz musician when he or she is eating dinner or when he or she is with his parents or spouse or neighbors. He's above all a human being . . . the true artform is being a human being.
I don't go around, the way many musicians do, with earbuds in my ear listening to my iPod all day and just sticking my head in the music all the time.
We are eternally linked not just to each other but our environment.
I hope that I can make good music out of whatever genre I go into. Just to prove to myself that I can.
We need to put into practice the idea of embracing other cultures. We need to be shaping the kind of world we want to live in instead of waiting for someone else or some other entities to do it for us.
I'm one of the people who was a pioneer in encouraging musicians, early in the game, to get interested in technology, and now all the musicians are getting into it.
So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.
Buddhism has turned me on to my humanness, and is challenging my humanness so that I can become more human.
Technology has developed to a whole other level and theres the scientist part of me that loves that stuff.
One thing that attracted me to Buddhism was the support for this larger vision of values.
The Internet opens up a whole new range of possibilities in a wide range of areas.
When I did Future 2 Future, it occurred to me, that I hadn't really done anything in electric music in a while.
What establishes value is something that is going to move humanity forward. If humanity is not in the equation, it's like the planet without any human beings on it.
What I always wonder is, why is it that whenever I make a record they think that whatever that thing is on that record, that's the only thing I do?