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What recommendations or advice would you give to
the musicians today that play
our genre of music? Well
I've often said you need to crawl before you walk
and you need to walk before you run.
I would go back and listen to every darn
old record that I can find from ArcaƱo
to Roberto Faz
to...all of those...Arsenio
all of that stuff. All the people that came,
which is seems very amazingly
long long time to say but we're talking about
60 or 70 years now. And so
I would track all that down and listen and learn your, the roots of all the music because
see, one of the biggest problems with
writing today is that.. they have all these wonderful books that have taught people to
write
but they don't know anything, the nuances and the particulars of
this genre of music so consequently most of the stuff sounds the same.
There's no variety. You know?
So I think the way to open oneself up is to
listen to all that music and put on a Tony Bennett record and put on a
Frank Sinatra record and listen to Neal Hefti and listen to
Billy Strayhorn write the stuff for Ellington and listen to the Basie stuff and all that and
open your mind to all these possibilities of
chord changes and modes and everything so that you can
have something to fall back on
instead of writing....tantatantantantantahtah
pahpahpahpahpa you know? which is what everything sounds like to me today
The reason why Machito sounded the way they sounded
the reason why Tito Puente sounded that way
is a reason Tito Rodriguez sounded that way. The three bands playing the same
music.. but they sounded different. That's what's missing today.