PDF Jake: I know you consider yourself kind of a storyteller. With that in mind, what might be your thoughts on telling a younger player why it’s important to keep up their enthusiasm as far as carving out a career in music with the industry being in the precarious state that it’s in right now?
Richard: The most important thing to consider is to remember that we play music to celebrate life…that’s the real meaning of music, nothing else. We play music to celebrate. Music is joy—music has fun. Always try to keep it in that realm, because that’s what it’s supposed to be. This is what I tell young people all the time. When music is devoid of joy and fun, then it’s not music anymore. I know things have gotten to be tough, but sometimes I feel like I hear people playing and think, are they angry—it sounds like they’re mad at someone. Just try to play music and enjoy yourself. I hear people playing certain things and they go, that’s music, and I go bullshit—this is not music, this is anger. I feel so lucky being a musician. I never felt like I was doing a “job”. In my whole life, I’ve never felt that way. What do you do to a musician that complains—you give him a gig. I repeat, when I’m talking to young people, I just tell them to enjoy themselves, and remind them that they’re lucky to be able to be a musician. For me, I could play music all day and all night—anytime, anywhere, and I’d be happy. I feel like I’ve learned so much through music that I would have never learned in real life. My grandfather, my mentor, told me one day, if the life of a human being had the reflection of music, then we would be living in a perfect world. Music is like a perfect place. I’ve done a lot of traveling, and many times I’m in countries where we don’t even speak the same language, but when we start to play music, we would become like, brothers. The music always connects us. We both get to learn so much, and if more people had that experience, which is hard to get in real life, they would see the beauty of being involved in music. We just accept and love others, irrelevant of their race, or their religion, or their color, and we embrace the difference. This is one of the biggest problems in the world today…people don’t embrace the difference. People fear the difference, and that’s why people become racist—not because they’re bad people, but because there simply ignorant. They just see another race, or another color. And in music, we learn to embrace that difference. And that goes back to what I said, we only have one language, the language of the heart.
Visit online at www.bonatology.com
Jake Kot has written 150 articles in BMM.
Jake Kot is the owner and designer for his custom bassline Kot Basses, partner in "Mitchell & Kot Productions", and performing on over 100 CD's, Jake has also written, arranged, and produced two solo Cd's featuring such world class players as Dave Weckl, Eric Marienthall and Dave Derge.
In addition musically to being a performer and composer, Jake is also a clinician for Accugroove Cabinets, Hevos amps, and D'Addario strings, and has been featured at such bass events as Bassquake and Bassbash.
He is currently working on his 3rd solo CD for release in 2008, the completion of his first instructional book called "The Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns by Slonimsky--Applications", and will be a regular fixture on upcoming bass events.Related posts:
- Bass Musician Magazine: Jun/Jul 2009 Issue Featuring Jeff Berlin
- Bass Musician Magazine: Apr/May 2009 Issue Featuring Anthony Jackson
- Bass Musician Magazine: Dec/Jan 2009-2010 Issue Featuring Christian McBride
- Bass Musician Magazine: Aug/Sep 2009 Anniversary Issue Featuring Michael Manring
- Bass Musician Magazine: Feb/Mar 2009 Issue Featuring Adam Nitti
