Hip-hop is the last true folk art.
Jazz is not a 'form' but a collection of tags and tricks.
In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.
With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.
I strongly believe in the art form of the album.
I think country music is obviously a great form of music. I think it's cool and has mass appeal.
But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.
My guitar playing touches so many different areas of the form, but the important thing is what it represents across the form.
If you like someone's work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to. Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.
It's logical for us to sing, but not necessarily operatic pieces.
Hip-hop is as much an attitude and perspective as it is a music form.
Now, it's almost impossible to go out and do a film about a new form of music.
I just think it's good to have a big, living, breathing piece of music that's not just songs.
With rapping, that's just another form of expressing your music. Whether you're going to rap, you're going to sing, it's whatever you want.
There's all this talk of music needing a monetary value, this ownership of music, even that it needs a physical form. But intrinsically... it's music. It should be better than that.
Music is the crystallization of sound.
In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.
