Creating Art Through Adversity: Richard X. Bennett's Journey

Create Art Podcast Interview Richard X.

Bennett hello friend, this is Timothy Keem O'Brien, your head instigator for Create Art Podcast where I use my over 30 years in the arts and education world to help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. So recently I got an email from a listener talking to me about Richard X. Bennett and he said, hey, you gotta interview this guy.

So let me tell you a little bit about Richard here for a moment. He's a pianist, composer and filmmaker and he plays modernistic and soulful music with a wide ranging sound all his own.

He has many jazz and electronica releases on Rope a Dope Records, Ubante Music by Nick Records, as well as six critically acclaimed raga based records on Indian labels. Beyond the music lies the visual, indispensable element of his creative process. Richard X.

Bennett's videos evoked a myriad of emotions through their abstract, whimsical and esoteric nature. The music is all about the groove and beauty, while the visuals are all raw and ambient. These different elements are juxtaposed to create fresh art.

It was so great talking with Richard about jazz and raga music as I'm a huge fan of jazz music and I learned a great deal about raga music. So sit back, enjoy a cup of coffee and listen in on this interview where we learn about Richard X. Bennett.

All right everybody, thank you for joining us here on Create Art Podcast. I have the privilege of welcoming Richard X. Bennett to the podcast. Richard, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to be here.

Tim, excellent.

As we were talking before we hit record, I've been doing podcasting for a number of years and it dawned on me you're my first jazz musician on the podcast. So congratulations to you. I'm going to geek out, I'm going to tell you that right now, but it's honestly an honor to have you on the show.

I'd like to jump off with a few questions here. First question is your musical philosophy and how you approach music. Do you have a certain way that you're approaching the works that you're doing?

What I would say is when I first played and recorded, I thought of things in very pure, in very pure standpoint that it was, it was just sort of music and I'm interested in a lot of music and whatever was interesting me would be the theme of the recording.

Over the last, I guess, six, seven years, I've been making a lot more videos and I've been a lot more interested in the Music reflecting either the times we live in or personal things that happen to me. And so it's completely changed. So just about all the music I do is probably programmatic in some way. Now, I wouldn't say it's just abstract.

And with it being programmatic versus abstract. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? I understand what that means, but I might have some audience members that have not heard that term before.

Well, to give an example for me, events of my life start to inspire me. For instance, there was. And so the events can be bad. And generally, I don't want to be like a messenger of doom.

But, for instance, like the bass player who had been in my band, Gaku Takanashi, for a long time, he suddenly died. And it was also at the same time that my father died. And so then it wasn't.

At the time, I wasn't like, oh, well, this is the greatest thing that ever happened. I'm going to get to make a record. But it turned out to be a memorial record.

However, it did lead to this sort of double consciousness of everything that happens in my life as being a possibility for artistic exploration. So when Covid came, I was like, well, there's a story with COVID And I explored it in various ways.

And one of the things was, because everybody was doing such depressing work involved with COVID I was thinking to myself, well, blues musicians in the 20s, their lives were pretty grim, and the blues weren't always sad. There could be very exuberant music and different sides of music. So I was like, well, let's look at it from a different perspective. And.

But it's a little bizarre. You're a little bit. I guess it's more like I've become like a comedian.

Because we know that comedians, the moment anything comes to them, they react to it. And then they think, well, is there a joke in it? Or a novelist? Well, is there a book in it? So for me, I'm the same way.

So I've had a strange year and a half, to put it mildly, because I almost died of bacterial pneumonia. And I was in the ICU for five days.

And six months later, as a result of the various tests they were doing on me, they discovered I had pancreatic cancer. And so, of course, my first reaction was like, well, this is the worst news ever.

And then my second reaction, I hate to say was, well, I guess there's a story. And I'm. Because that's what I do. That's what I do. So that's.

And I know that People look for those stories, but you don't really want to look for those stories.

And I would have been happier not to have all these health problems, but once they were there, there was a story in it, and I tried to do it, and I was.

But I'm also looking in terms of, I don't know, your experience, but often my experience of people telling you their health woes could be very tedious. And I was like, well, I'm not going to tell it in this, like, straight narrative fashion, and it might be abstract or.

And it'll mean something to me, and then later on, we'll find out if it means anything to anybody else.

No. I experienced a similar thing when I was diagnosed with Ms. During the pandemic.

Of all times, to, you know, be diagnosed with something, you know, this is. This is what you do, I guess, during a pandemic.

But I was thinking, well, you know, at first I was, like, very angry and very upset, and then I was like, well, what can I do to make the best out of this situation? And one of my ideas was, you know, to do a. Do a podcast or do a, you know, a audio show.

And that never came to fruition because there was so much more to my life. You know, I have twins, you know, that I deal with every day. I have a job. I have a wife.

There was so much more to go going on in my life that I was like, well, I don't want this to be my solo focus. I don't want to be Tim, the Ms. Guy on Pot in the podcast world. You know, I'd rather be Tim, who has Ms.

And is doing all these podcasts and interviewing all these great people like I am today. So that's. I kind of understand where you're coming from with that and making something positive out of it. I think that is awesome.

Let's talk about your evolution as an artist. I'm a huge jazz fan, and I know my evolution in listening to jazz.

I'm not a jazz musician, but I'm a connoisseur of jazz, and that has changed over the years. How has your music and your approach to it changed from when you started to right here in 2024?

Well, when I started, I grew up in Toronto, and it was a very different time in terms of what you were exposed to. So you were exposed to sort of like a limited palette of music and different things.

And I used to go down to New York every year and I'd buy all these records, but I was pretty much into jazz. But as I became a professional musician. I had a certain amount of like blank slate skills.

Like I can play very well in rhythm and I have a good ear and I can learn things quickly. So I often got hired for things I wasn't qualified to do.

To give an example, I got hired by this Swiss blues band and the first gigs we played were for like 2000 people and I had no idea what I was doing. And then I became like really into the blues and got really good at the blues.

And the way it works is as you get really good at something, you have fewer and fewer people you play for. So by the end I was playing at a high level for seven people in a Brooklyn bar.

So very often the experience is, that's one thing's improving, another thing is going down. But I got much more interested in the groove of things and I don't listen to jazz as much as I did.

And I play ragas on piano, which is a very long and weird story. How I came that was sort of a negative thing.

My wife was performing in India and I came over and I was playing some jazz there, but I hated how the people played who I was playing with. So I was like, well, I gotta play with the good people. And so in India the good people are playing Indian classical music.

So first it was a little bit of the same, but I worked with this singer there and we immediately became popular. It's just one of those things that you don't really understand or, but you just go on the ride.

So then I was giving concerts there and going back a lot and turning it back to like the theme of this podcast. Unfortunately, my body does not tolerate India well at all. So the last three times I went there, I got really, really sick. So that sort of ended.

And what I was keep on doing, I kept asking for more money than I thought they would give me and then they would say yes and I would go and I would get sick again. So I don't even know what the amount of money is now, but I'm just not going to ask. That's my, that, that's, that's my goal with that.

But as a result, with all the music in the world, I, I listen to a lot of things and they come out of with in my piano playing. So I would say my piano playing still has a jazz base, but, but the music I listen to is not so much jazz.

In the pandemic, I found that lots of people were very, getting very nostalgic and it's something that I dealt with too so all of a sudden, I'm listening to Thelonious Monk. I haven't listened to him in 35 years, but there I am, I'm listening to him. And some of the things, if we're going to nerd out, were interesting.

Like, all of a sudden, the recordings from the late 40s, which, when I was a kid, I didn't like, I thought they sounded hokey and corny and old fashioned. I was like, wow, these are the best recordings. They're way better than the recordings that he did as he became famous. Like, it's.

It's like my mind turned on. But having said that, after a month, I was like, okay, enough of this. Let's just. Let's get into the here and now and move forward.

No, that makes absolute sense. I went through that same journey through the Pandemic.

I was listening to a lot of late Coltrane, and I was kind of letting go of the early Cold Train while I was really into the late Cold Train, Namely, Interstellar Spaces is my favorite album of his because it's just him and his drummer, and that's it. And it's a beautiful album. But I was missing out on all the early stuff, the one that got me into jazz initially way back in 1991.

And yes, folks, there was time before the year 2000, trust me, there was. Was my favorite things John Coltrane. And I heard that when I walked into a cafe in Abilene, Texas, of all places.

I said, I get this, I understand this, I like this. And that's what that. That got me on my jazz journey.

Then, you know, as the pandemic wore on, I was like, well, there's got to be other things out there to listen to. And I really got into a lot of the stuff coming out of London. Robert Glasper and the Common is coming, and more. Even more experimental stuff, right.

John Coltrane was doing. So I get it, having the nostalgia and then kind of going, okay, we got to move on. We got to explore new worlds, which is fantastic.

Having said that, I would say there's something about the late Coltrane that really speaks to somebody who's going through physical difficulties tremendously. So I have a friend, and she just died a couple weeks ago, named Claire Daly, who's a baritone saxophone player.

And we had this very strange conversation last November because we used. We used to have lunch around once a month. And I texted her, I said, sorry, I haven't been out, but I had lunch with you, but let's talk.

I have something to tell you. And she texted me back, and she says, I have something to tell you. So we talked, and it turned out we both had cancer. And this was a discussion.

But at a certain point, I said, what are you listening to? She goes, coltrane live in Japan. And I put it on one night on a very difficult night.

And it felt like I was, like, between Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders. And now it's much easier. And I'm skipping through the bass solos and all of that.

It was like this completely spoke to my mood and cheered me up to no end.

That's awesome. My heart is just going, yes, yes. There are other people out there like me that are weird. Yes.

You had mentioned that you had, you know, worked in India Bragas. Am I pronouncing that correctly?

Yes.

I had never heard of that until, you know, we met virtually, you know, through email and whatnot. Can you explain that to an American audience, you know, as easy as you can?

Oh, yes, this is my expertise. I'll try to do it at 200 words or less. And if I don't do it well, you can put the audio into AI and say, hey, please condense this to shorter form.

Araga is a little bit like a scale, but it's not a scale because. And there's many. You can choose any arrangement of notes almost.

But it's not a scale because it's often in a series of phrases within the scales that you're doing variations of. And the thing that I would say that is closest in American music is blues.

Because blues, you can't just really just play any note if you're going to sound like a Chicago blues musician. At the same time, you can't just play a scale going up and down. So that also is not the blues. However, there are classic phrases.

There are phrases you can use as your own.

The other thing I would say about the raga, that appealed to me because it wasn't the rhythmic stuff, which is a totally different ballgame, that every note has its importance. So often in Araga, you might start with the one note. And you do a lot of variations around that note before you get to the next note.

So it has something a little in common with minimalism. It has a little something in common with the blues. But it doesn't sound like either, obviously.

But those are my best analogies for what is happening and what appealed to me about it. And the other thing that I would say is that if somebody hasn't listened to ragas and they want to listen, they should start with the vocalists.

Because the vocalists show this much more clearly than the instrumentalists. Because sitar players, they're like guitar players. They can't control themselves. They have to play a lot of notes.

But vocalists, you can very much hear, like, a development of one note and then a little bit of the next note. And you'll hear it goes slowly. And eventually. Generally, you're in a middle range.

You go to a bottom range, then you go up to a higher range, and then the tempo gets faster, and you do a little bit of the same thing. But there's also, like, more virtualistic stuff. And then it gets faster again, and then it gets really virtualistic and going on.

And back in the old days, I guess it took it three hours. Now, a general concert will take one hour per each raga. And to hear that sort of form, you're fine.

If you listen to something that's recorded that's around 20 minutes long, I'd say anything less. Usually they're only doing one section of the form. But anything that's like 20 minutes, you're kind of hearing that arc from very slow to moving on.

It sounds to me like, if you're listening to it and I'm a complete newbie to the. To this. I'm just getting into it now, thanks to you and thanks to.

I had Shibana Koiho on a few episodes ago, and she does raga vocally and she incorporates movement into it as well in her poetry and her work. But it sounds to me like, you know, the audience member is needing to invest themselves into this piece of music.

It's not background stuff that you can do while you're working on some spreadsheets here or there. It's something that. It's like putting a needle on a record and listening to the whole album and really entering that world.

Is that kind of more of a way of thinking about it versus, like, bubblegum rock, where you can shoot bubblegum and have the same beat and just kind of let it play in the background.

I'm going to say yes and no, because for the listener, it takes. The deeper you can try to concentrate into the ideas, the more likely you're gonna get the flow. Or I used to always say, weave the web.

And then our past and future president started saying, weave the web. I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe he sang it. So weave. But that's what it is. It's like.

Like you're knitting something and you can see the follow. You can see the pattern. Having said that, the way that I learned ragas was to play him for background music.

So they were like become like a language for me in my background life. So I. And this is not now, this is like 15 years ago.

If I was learning something, I'd be like watching the baseball game with the sound off, with it on or I'd be in the kitchen and I'd have it on.

Because the many people come from traditions of raga in India and coming from the tradition means that you didn't really have to learn a lot of the aspects because you just knew them from being around it, you know, 24 7. Just like how I'm.

I assume that when Branford Marsalis first picked up the horn he was like four years ahead of me who came from a non musical family. You know, how hard was it? It's just what your family does. So but for the listener it can work as background music. But it's also if it's. It is a.

It can be a test of concentration and it has its possibilities of being tremendously boring. And who can tell if the person's good or not when you're first listening? So there's all those aspects to it.

What I do is I always said my music was just sort of raga influenced. The Indian companies that I was on, they would just say was raga straight? And then people would come to me and say, well, what makes your music raga?

And I'd say, well, I'm on this company and they say it's raga and was a big time company. So. And in India it's very status conscious. So they were like, fair enough.

Like the musicians were a little bit like, well, you're getting paid to do it. You must be a raga musician. They weren't like, you really know nothing. But now they might say to me, you really know nothing. I don't know.

I don't know. I'm not trying. I'm using elements of it. Especially valuing the note and trying not to overplay as I develop what is going on.

Not showing every idea at the beginning.

I like that because you're not giving everything away. You're not necessarily making it easier, but you're giving a payoff.

You know, whether it be towards the end, at the very end or at some point, that listener, if they're paying attention, they're going to get that payoff. But they, you know, you're obviously investing your time, your energy, you know, your, your, your hands, your spirit into the piece.

And if a listener invests their time, they're going to have that payoff at the end of it. Speaking about India versus America, you know, Western culture versus Indian culture. How are the audiences over there? I grew up in Chicago, where.

And at a certain bar called Green Mill. Who's not sponsoring this? They should, but they're not sponsoring this podcast yet.

And I would go and listen to music there and it was a thing of, you know, you're very quiet, you don't have any outside conversations with anybody. You would applaud solos very quickly, and then, you know, they would get on with it. And that was kind of the atmosphere and the vibe.

How is it if, say, Tim was to go over to India, over to New Delhi and listen to the. What are the audiences like there? How responsive or receptive are they to it?

Well, first of all, the shows are mostly free because they're sponsored by corporations or foundations. The audience is the first thing you would notice. You'd say, wow, I'm really young. Because there's a lot of old people at those shows.

My goodness, they are. They are. When I was doing most of my playing was before, people were really as much into the cell phone as they are now. So they weren't.

I remember going to a concert and it was like a couple of real famous people, Zakir Hussain and Shiv Kumar Sharma. And I saw a woman texting through it. I was like, whoa, I've never seen that before. Now, of course, I wouldn't react at all at the beginning.

There's generally a commotion while people are doing their first part, which is called the alop, the slow part. And it's. If there's kids, the kids are coming in, people are coming in late. It's just. It's a very Indian thing.

If there's anybody famous who's coming to see you has a reserve seat, it's de rigueur that they come at least 20, 25 minutes late so they can make a star's entrance as they come. Sit down. These things are wild. They're just. They're just sort of wild and a lot of fun.

Then as you go and you get a little louder, the people are very. They're. They're very concentrated. They also seem very expressionless to me. So I'm never really sure whether people are liking or not.

I've played for very expressionless audience. And then people come up and they say, that was the nicest concert I've ever seen. Or they've said some really good thing.

The other thing for a performer that's really weird is that. So if you play like One piece, and then you take a break and you play another piece in the intermission.

Everybody comes to talk to you, even if you're in your dressing room. And I was not prepared for this because I was like, I need a little break before I play it.

After that happened the first couple times, then I was prepared for it and I was like, okay, this is. This is fine. This is how they do it here.

I'm not going to get, like, this Keith Jarrett sort of, like peace of mind where nobody, like, talks to you, you know? Well, the whole time. The artist cannot be disturbed. No, the artist can be disturbed, will be disturbed, and just accept it.

So there's things that are the same and things that are different. I don't play pieces like that in bars, so. So I don't have a issue with, like, people talking because it's a concert. It's. It's.

It still has a spiritual background to it. And also, I just think there's. Well, I'll. Occasionally I'll play things that are related to that. How I would do it in a concert and how I play it.

If I'm. How I'm playing just with my band or something, it's just. Either I'm not going to play it or it's just going to be different in nature.

So when you're going through a piece and you're really vibing with it and you know where it's supposed to go, do you allow yourself some freedom in this style to go and explore different avenues, different notes that you weren't normally expected to explore while you're in the piece?

That's an excellent question. And I would say it depends on how you build the piece.

If you say that you're playing a certain raga, you really can't just start adding other notes that are not in the raga. You just can't. It's not. At that point, you're playing something else.

If I haven't said anything, it's like everything I play, I'm very open to the moment and unpredictable. And it's just like how when I talk, it's like the same stream of consciousness I'm just pouring out now is pretty much what I do when I play.

Okay, excellent. No, that's good to know, because I'm learning so much about this, and it's making. It's whetting my appetite.

I'm just like, I need to get more of this. So obviously, with you being from Toronto and playing this. This style of music, what's your inspiration source?

If you're already playing, you know, a raga, then you're playing that one. But for you, what do you draw on to create your own versus playing somebody else's?

Well, you're not. They don't really belong to anybody. I mean, I play a lot of music and rag is usually at this point, it's a smaller part of it. So.

So what I'm listening to at different times really changes. I mean, these days I'm listening to a lot of. I'm listening to a lot of Pagoda, which is like a Brazilian popular music. And it's, It's.

It's kind of like samba, but there's a lot of modern pop people and stuff like that. But I don't know. I'm very inner directed in a lot of ways. I sort of. It's hard for me to find music I like to listen to.

So then I'm like, okay, well, let me play something.

I hear you on that. Because that's how I started writing poetry way back in 1988, as I hated what my English teacher was giving us. So I was like, oh, the hell with this.

I don't understand this. I'll write my own. And I've been doing it since 88. And some of it's really good, some of it's really bad.

But, you know, it's all stuff that I've created. So I. I definitely hear you on that.

When I was much more of a student, I got way more inspiration from what I didn't like than what I did like. And I'm still a little like that. I. I don't really listen to that much piano, but when I do, I'm like, okay, I didn't like that. Do I do that?

And then a lot of times the answer is yes. And then I have to. I refine a little. It's like. It's like I. It's. It's almost like I hate everybody, but I hate myself a little less.

I like that. No, well. And you understand what you're doing. You understand what you're going for.

Whereas somebody else, you may be like, well, I'm not going to speak for you, but, you know, when I'm writing a poem or when I'm doing. Because I don't play jazz, but I do electronic dance music, and I do a lot of electronic music.

You know, I hear where they're going and I'm like, man, if you just went this way, it'd be a much better piece. Oh, why don't I just go that way? And there's my piece. And there we go. And it makes me happy. I don't know if the same method is for you.

Actually, that, that, that is a good point to put up because that's why the raga was inspirational to me, because I did not like the instruments. I did not like the tabla drum. I did not like the format of the concerts. There were so many things I didn't like.

But the things that I liked, which was just basically melodic development and the idea of. Of being limited in the notes that you played and making the world out of it, I could take that and drop the rest.

If you take music that, for instance, used to be a big James Brown fan, but I really liked it all, so I didn't say so. I didn't. I wasn't like, oh, I can get inspiration and do and add piano to this and it's going to sound better. Oh, now I can do. Yeah.

So it wasn't like. Or. So if I really like something, I'm like, okay, what do I. Why do I need to do it? It's good as it is. But that's.

That's where it was really hit the sweet spot because things I really liked and things I really hated and I was just like, take what I like, drop the rest, and it's going to be original. And it seemed like people thought it.

Was going to take a little tangent here with you from what we've been talking about here. And I'd like to talk about the impact of technology because we see technology in podcasting with AI and in music with AI.

What's been the impact either good or bad for you with technology coming into the music music arena?

Well, it's a mixed bag. I. It's harder to get your music heard. It's harder to get work.

However, there is no way I could have created everything I created in the last year when with my physical difficulties without technology. Both the movies I made, the music I make, I already am using AI on certain movies I make for certain things.

But even before that, I think on a societal level, it's a disaster. On a personal level, it's kind of cool with everything looking good as a result.

Things that cranks who used to have things on really looking bad looking mimeograph paper, all of a sudden their random weird thoughts look very official. And this is something I think. And I'm also not really into people looking at their phones as they walk down the street.

And I also created art that I'm hoping people will look at and concentrate a little But I know that people are flipping really fast through their phones. It's hard. It's harder for me to pay attention. So I'm not saying it's like everybody, it's me.

It's changed how I used to be a solo piano player, and so I'd be like playing in a bar or something like that, and couples would come in and they were talking and having a date. And then like one go to the bathroom and the other would listen to the music.

Now if I was doing it, the couple, most likely, they're both on their phones. But even if they're not on their phones, if one goes to the bathroom, the other is going to go on their phone.

So people don't really know what to do with live music unless they're specifically going to see live music.

I think that the attention span of people being shorter is not a terrible thing in some ways, because as you, I'm sure as you've heard as a jazz listener, they've gotten rid of like the endless introductions again. Like, the music that people put out and now is much more like how they were put out in the 30s and the 40s.

There's no longer, like, we're gonna vamp for four minutes and then get the song. And when I listen to a piece like that, I'm like, wow, they're really taking a long time because I don't have it in me.

So as a result, everything I've recorded in the last, I don't know, 10 years, it's like, it's four minutes long, it's three minutes long. There's maybe a four bar introduction on. So it's on this new record that's coming out.

I mean, there is a 20 minute raga piece which is live, but I didn't put that out on. You know, we're not putting that out on Spotify. I can't see like somebody that's like somebody. I'm figuring somebody's listening to the.

Has bought the band camp or listening to the band camp and the thing is running and then they'll forget and it'll keep going. But I. I don't expect anybody to like, sit down and listen for. So the attention spans have changed. And to me, it's all.

All part of the thing, as we know, because of COVID Leaving aside your unique problems during COVID and my unique problems to now that everybody has come out of COVID psychologically damaged in some way or another. And between that and the alienation of people being on their phones a lot, I mean, I'm going to say phone was the worst technology in. Ever. I'm.

I'm kind of into AI, sure. Honestly, I mean, I'm into AI and I'm into things that may be able to record at home. We're.

We're on audio, but there's a piano behind me, you know, and there's some. There's some mic set up. They. They didn't work for the podcast, but they work for. In theory, they work for. For the piano. And I'm able to make.

I'm able to make movies on my own.

I was able to teach myself how to make movies in a way that, like, so it's expanded my life in that way, but socially, I think it's atrophied my life in a way. So that's a really long, rambling answer.

No, but I like it because it makes sense. If we use technology as a tool for bettering the pieces of art that we're making, just in that sense, fantastic.

But if we're using technology to get away from everybody, to isolate ourselves, to have our own echo chambers, just to, you know, keep our focus, you know, and unfortunately, I'm not doing a video of this at.

And everybody knows I move my hands around a whole lot, but if we're, you know, having this narrow focus, like one foot in front of us, we're going to miss everything else that's around us. And, you know, you have your room decorated much like I have mine. We commented on that before.

We've got a ton of stuff around our room to look at, to be inspired by, to. To enjoy.

Whereas I'm going to sound like a old Gen X guy, you know, these dang kids are just sitting there looking at their phones, and it's, you know, about a foot away from their eyes, and that's all they're focused on. They're missing everything else.

I don't think it's just the kids, though. I think it's everybody. I think it's everybody.

I live in a beautiful neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I just see people walking, walking while looking on their phone, which, first of all, I think should be illegal. But. And there's. So. There's just. There's always so much to. And I even.

I take a ferry to one of my jobs, and I sit on top of the ferry, and there'll be people with headphones and a phone while they're riding a ferry. They're riding a ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan, which is like, we're only like 3 billion people in the world.

Wish that they could take a trip right now to be on this ferry and they're ignoring it. And every day it's a little different. So it's not like you've done it five times and you're like, oh well, it's just water and a view.

It's always different and it's always interesting. I'll give an example of where technology has improved music. So in around 1975, if you listen to the record, it's a live drummer.

You listen to Records in 1985, it's a drum machine.

Right.

So that changed. If you listen to how drummers play now. Like for instance, you were saying that you like Robert Glasper.

The drummers are fantastic because they've taken all the stuff that they learned from listening to what drum machines could do and they've incorporated it into their own play.

So there's a real difference between drummers who are like under the ages of 40 and the drummers are older in terms of just certain things that they do. Like I'm a big fan of Domi and J.D. beck. And J.D. beck is like this 17 year old kid.

But what he does, he just takes all that stuff and he moves it into a live context. And I think AI it's very new and of course it's been used, being used for crap all the time.

But that doesn't mean it has to be or it will always will be. I think that's been probably the same way.

I know in societies where they didn't know how to read, of course the first thing that happened once people, they invented a reading language is people lost their memory. So there was some old guy saying, I can remember 18,000 lines of this poem and these damn kids can only remember 100 lines.

Sure.

So there's always. Every technology has changed like that sort of thing. People's memory, people's attention span. That's why those ragas were four hours long.

And back in the day and even further beyond that, before that they had this music called Drupal. And I think ragas are boring. This Drupal. It was like when raga first came in. This is much more exciting than what we've been listening to.

It's a little bit like when you listen to Gregorian chant and you were like, was this people's idea of entertainment or was it just like. Although I think in that case it was just the nuns and the priests listening to it. I think the people had something more exciting to listen to.

It's funny that you mentioned that.

I remember When Enigma came out in the 90s and there was this big, you know, everyone was doing Gregorian chant, and that lasted for a couple of years and, you know, some, you know, different strains of music, different genres of music, picked a little bit off of it. But now here in 2024, you hardly ever in popular music, you hardly ever hear it in, you know, different genres of music, pieces of it.

But it's really hard to get into. It's really hard to find anymore. You know, who knows who the next Enigma is? I certainly don't. But I loved it when it was out there.

I was one of the weird people that I was like, oh, yeah, this is really good. Who's the next one that's coming out? And I just never happened. How do you define success today as a musician?

What makes you think that you have made it or do you even need to make it, per se?

Well, I'm on this label, robodope, which has people who sell really well and people who don't sell Wells, which would be me. And the head of that label always says, if you've completed a project, you're a success. And I could have kissed him for saying that.

Ought to be honest, because I would say it depends on which year and what time. You asked me when I was.

When I was creating and I was in the middle of chemotherapy, it was certainly like my whole goal was to finish what I was trying to do, and that was going to be success. And then I was going to. I'm still at a point where I'm like six months out of that, where I'm not really. I'm only starting to focus on the.

On the world part of it a little more.

I was giving myself to the end of the year to just to try to tell myself get off that hamster wheel of trying to get work and different stuff like that. So everybody has a different. Everyone has a different metric for it.

So if you're, you know, if you're Beyonce, I suppose she has to sell as much as her last album. And because I read an interesting thing with this piano player, Joey Calzerazzo.

And in the 90s, he got dropped by a record label because he only sold 50,000 copies of his record. If you sold 50,000 copies of your record now, you would be the biggest jazz star by far. So there's no. I don't even. I kind of don't know what to say.

I guess it's based on how many gigs you're getting, because even having plays on, like, Spotify or something like that. In my experience, most of them seem to be background music where nobody's listening to them. So it's not.

It's not really an artistic thing that your music is being played. The only song that I ever hear that people really pick up to is I Want to Dance with Somebody by Whitney Houston.

And for some reason, every time it goes on, everybody in the whole universe of America unites us. One no longer blue and red and sings that damn song, and then they go off again.

So I hear you on that.

Yeah.

As soon as you said it, I was like, oh, yeah, I got. You know, I remember when the video came out, and, you know, it makes me want to jump out of my seat right now. I won't. I promise.

I'm wearing pants, but I'm not going to do that.

Well, it is an audio podcast, so you can do whatever you want. I got dressed up just in case, because I wasn't really. Because even though you said that, I was like, I got to be prepared.

I dressed up a little bit, too. I showered, everything. So we're all good. I have a face for podcasting as you.

Yeah, nonsense. The people are missing a great pleasure that is unique to me.

Do you have any advice? And we had spoken about this before we even started recording. I've got.

I've got twin daughters, and they're 10 years old, and they're emerging musicians. They can't be helped. They're my kids. You know, they're going to be. They're going to have some musical background or appreciation.

But do you have any advice for anybody that's just coming out now that they. They want to flip that switch? They want to become a musician, an artist, maybe a filmmaker. Anything that you wish you would have known when you.

When that switch turned on for you.

I'm going to say no. I'll tell you what I have advice for, because this is something I've thought more is.

And certainly you've thought about it, is creating when you're going through challenges. And so I was like, well, I got to write these down. There have to be, like, principles that I've learned from this.

And so I'll go with that, if you don't mind answering a different question. Like, I'm on the debate stage.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. And what I did was I was very un. I was very much determined whenever I felt okay to work. And I learned.

And by that, very early on, I told my wife, I said, if I'm feeling somewhat all right, we're not going to watch a TV show. We're going to wait until I feel semi lousy or really lousy, which was most of the time to do those things.

And I said, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to go have lunch with people as much as possible if I want to work. So having said that, I was very forgiving of myself for the mistakes I was making while I was working.

So to me there were two things that were involved. One was just like being really hard on myself, like, you got to work. And I guess I would say that would be a little bit of what I would tell a kid.

Although kids, you know, they shouldn't forgive themselves. That's part of their process.

You know, self hate is like, you know, you start doing this, you're in your early teens, you know, you have a lot of hatred for your parents, hatred for the world, all that stuff. So I'm not going to say like, be like me.

I remember what it was like to be like a kid, you know, what I would say is like, don't, don't be divorced from your emotions.

Right.

Maybe that's the advice I give with kids. Like sometimes they're learning the technique of stuff and I just like, always be aware of how you're feeling and add it on to your process.

If you're disciplined, it's not going to be an issue.

If you're not disciplined, this is something you have to fix a little bit and hopefully you enjoy it so much that discipline is not the issue that you don't have to start being disciplined till later on.

I know a lot of people who don't play any better than they were when they were 18 years old and they might have been really great then and by the standards of now are not really great.

So you do have to, you have to develop discipline if you didn't have it like when you don't feel like doing something, but in terms of creating when you're not, well, it's very much like you just can't be like, oh, I. If you feel okay, you gotta, you gotta map out the time and you gotta do it. But I made a lot of mistakes on the road and then there were.

Sometimes you have to learn how to back things up.

Because I would first come home from chemo and I would be feeling pretty good for like in, actually in some ways because of the amount of steroids they were giving me.

Sure.

But I, but I was also jacked up and like a little insane. So I was making, so I was making editing mistakes and Different. Different stuff like that.

And so because I had gone through so many health things also, even though for the first couple months after my diagnosis and chemo, I very much felt like I was going to die, even though no one was saying you're going to die, like this week or anything like that, so it was later on I kind of got over that feeling. But all I can say, that's a good impetus for work because I was like, well, I want to get this done.

Once I started and I had a commitment from, like, the record company, and I knew that the movies was starting to go well and certain aspects of the creation were. Were moving well. I was like, I don't want to record a note after I'm finished with chemo because I don't want this record to be about.

I want it to be all from the process of where I was. And also with the movie that I made about it, I also wanted that to be finished. And I kind of got there with the movie.

I mean, I did some editing after, but the. There's no scenes or anything. There's no footage or anything like that. It's just sort of like cleaning up the edges of what I did.

Because part of it was if people asked me how was it, I wanted to just say, well, listen to the music, watch the movie, and if you.

Pay attention, you will understand. You'll get all your questions answered. Because it sounds to me like you put it out there for everybody to get.

So definitely watch, listen, and you will learn. Fantastic. Well, I know we had talked a little bit about some future projects that you have coming up. You mentioned that you have a.

An album coming up soon or you're working on an album.

Well, there actually now I'm taking a little bit of a break, but there's two albums, which by the time this podcast is released, I think they're both going to be out. So the first one is called Scavenger, and that's the music I've been talking about making.

And part of that album is the soundtrack for this lo fi ambient movie I made, which is called Scavenger in six parts. So hopefully everything is called Scavenger. Now the other one is. Is like a boombop.

Oh, boom bop downtempo remix album made by this guy named Hugh who lives in England. And he has made remix albums based on my recordings before. But this time I sent him the first tracks because he. He masters my stuff and he was.

Would you. How would you like to send me your stems?

By stems, it just means the individual Tracks, the raw tracks, like the piano by itself, the vibes by itself. The drum. Not the drums. He puts its own drums, the sax. And I'll make a record while we're doing. I said, be my guest. So he started.

And I love what he was doing and what he did also on this album. I didn't know these things. You're an electronic musician, so you know these things. I had never even heard of Boo Bop until it showed up.

But he said, there's a lot of. He said, we're gonna. I want you to do some talking. So on the first one, I started talking things that vaguely are about what happens with my. With.

With my life, but I did not do the talking. And all of them, a couple of them. My wife, who was a singer and a poet, she wrote.

But I also had other people recite the words because I didn't want it to be my voice. And so there's one where a guy says in French, he says all the things that people said to me which were not too helpful.

For instance, like, you look good. That's the main thing people told me, yeah, you look good, or you're a fighter. I was like.

I said this to Claire Daly while she was going through this. She said, if this is a fight, we're losing it. I hear you on that. Yeah, yeah. Or something that you get from black people.

God doesn't give you more than you can handle, you know?

Sure.

You know. So anyways, a. I love it.

Because it's in French.

Yeah.

Because I love the French language. I'm doing the duolingo thing and I'm trying to learn it, but I love when people insert a different language into the music that I don't.

I may get bits and pieces of it, but I just really enjoy that because then I get to imagine a little bit more about what it's about. What is the person saying? So definitely I want to hear that one.

There's another track on that record, which is also in the movie that I'd like to talk about. So one night I'm talking with my wife, and I said something, and I was feeling pretty terrible at this point, and. And I say to her.

And I said something, and she laughed. And I said to her, all I have left is my language, because I felt like I didn't really have a physical presence and all of that.

And I shouldn't say I felt terrible, because I did so. Because a couple days later I go to work and it's this. This really creepy.

It's this really Overcast day and a really beautiful light of New York City from the ferry. So I have the phone going in its thing and of course I gave this whole rap about don't be on the phone.

But all of a sudden I get a message from this guy in England. He says, could you please talk about your experience? Just riff about what this album is about.

So I'm leaving the ferry and it's like a five minute walk to work. And I'm saying, I say, well, you know, this album is about having cancer and all I have left is my words. Which ended up being the name of the song.

And I do this whole thing. I said, now I'm going to get a latte. And it's Luke who's giving me the latte. And my voice is really terrible, but sounds good.

It's like Miles Davis or something like that.

Sure.

Which. The video was just perfect. And then he edited out the obvious stuff out of the.

And I also said something like, I really love Boom Bop in the morning because I didn't know what Boom Bop was. Which is weird because I even auditioned for KRS1 back in the 90s. I didn't get the gig, but obviously I didn't know enough when I was. When I was.

He was very nice, by the way. And so. So this ended up being a movie and also the. The music. So. So the remix in some ways has more. It's. It all alluded, like there's another one.

And then I. I won't tell you any of the other ones, but this one I like because I like the story because, you know, people.

People send you stuff when you have cancer. And so. So this friend of my wife, she sent me an amaryllis plant. So we got the plant, we got the instructions. The plant started to die.

The next day it just started to die. It looked absolutely terrible. So my wife, Paula G.D. bennett, is a poet and she says how to kill a plant.

And I go and I get a pencil and she just starts free writing right there. And she says the lines, this whole poem, it's like straight out, four lines, we're done. I said record it into the. Into the phone.

I send it to him, he puts it on a track. But I mean, it was like the most. It was like. It was like the best analogy of like what was happening with me.

And so it's never, never am I gonna do a story where it's just like. So it should relate to people.

Exactly.

Not just me.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have had the privilege of talking to Richard X. Bennett here today. Is there anything else that we can put in this interview that we haven't touched on that you'd like to hear?

No, I'd just like to thank you, Tim, and I really enjoyed it.

Well, thank you so very much.

So that was my interview with Richard X. Bennett, jazz musician, raga musician and filmmaker as well. I hope you got a lot out of this.

I know I had a crash course in raga music throughout this interview and I really appreciate his time that he took with me to, to teach me and to talk with me about everything that he's doing. And I also want to send a special shout out to Ron who introduced us virtually.

If you got something out of this interview, naturally go ahead and share that with a friend of yours on whatever podcast app that you're using. And just a few things before we close out here.

I want to thank you for listening in on this interview and being open and exposing yourself to something new that you may not have heard of before.

Sometimes it can be challenging, but once you do open yourself up in this way and learn something new like we did in this interview, you're just going to be that much better of an artist and a citizen of the world. So thank you for doing that. If you got something out of it, please reach back to me on that. Timothy atcreateartpodcast.com.

as you can tell, I answer emails. Yes I do. When you have ideas like Ron had to interview Richard, I am, I am game for it.

I really want to expose other people to this great music that he is creating and I want to expose all the people that listen to the show to what you're creating. So reach out to me, let me know what you're doing. The next thing I want to talk to you about is I do run another podcast called Find a Podcast About.

You can find it at Find a Podcast about xyz and there I help you outsmart the algorithm and find your next binge worthy podcast. So check that out. Lastly, this has been a production of TKB Podcast Studio. You can find it at TKB Podcast Studio Calm.

And that's where I help people like yourself create podcasts that touch other individuals. And we treat every, every person that works with me as if they were the only client that I had.

So check out tkb podcast studio.com to see all the works that I am doing. We lead through the noise as quiet professionals. Alright, I'm going to let you get back on with your day. I need to go ahead and get on with my day.

But do yourself a favor. Check out Richard's website. Links are in the show notes. Do yourself a favor for that.

And go out there, tame that inner critic and create more than you consume. Go out there and make some art for somebody you love. Yourself. I'll talk to you again next time.