AI Analysis of The Red Bulletin Interview with Jacob Collier
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Jacob Collier's interview with The Red Bulletin offers a vibrant tapestry of insights, weaving together the threads of his musical philosophy, personal journey, and visionary collaborations. Collier,
a London-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer, embodies a unique intersection of immense talent, humility, and innovative creativity that challenges conventional boundaries of music. His narrative reveals a profound connection to music, nurtured
in a musical household, leading to a self-taught mastery over a plethora of instruments and a distinctive approach to music creation and collaboration.
Collier's relationship with music is profoundly influenced by his upbringing in a musical family, notably his mother, Suzie Collier, a violinist, conductor, and teacher at the Royal Academy of Music
in London. This familial environment, rich in musical expression and education, played a pivotal role in shaping his musical intuition and versatility. His early exposure to music as a "second language" and the nurturing guidance of his mother laid the foundation
for a career that defies genre limitations, blending elements of jazz, funk, classical, and pop into a singular, harmonious expression.
His career trajectory, marked by viral YouTube success and mentorship from industry legends like Quincy Jones, underscores a democratization of music discovery and development in the digital age.
Collier's use of the internet as a platform for musical expression reflects a broader shift in how artists engage with audiences and create communities around their work. His approach to collaboration and creativity aligns with a modern ethos that values authenticity,
innovation, and the blending of diverse musical traditions.
Collier's exploration of harmony and composition, particularly through projects like the Djesse series, highlights his ambitious approach to music-making. These albums serve not just as collections
of songs but as expansive, collaborative projects that traverse a wide array of musical landscapes. His work with artists across genres underscores a belief in music's universal language and its capacity to foster connection and understanding among diverse
audiences.
The integration of audience participation in his performances and recordings, such as the 100,000-voice choir in his cover of "Can’t Help Falling in Love," exemplifies his innovative approach to
music as a communal experience. This concept challenges traditional notions of the artist-audience dynamic, suggesting a more inclusive, participatory model of musical engagement where the line between creator and listener is blurred.
Collier's reflections on success, ambition, and the future reveal a contemplative, introspective side to his character. His desire to measure success by the emotional and transformative impact of
his music, rather than conventional metrics of popularity, speaks to a deeper artistic purpose. This perspective is indicative of an artist who prioritizes meaningful connections and the pursuit of new creative horizons over commercial acclaim.
As Collier navigates the transition into his thirties, his focus on creating space for surprise and exploration beyond the confines of constant productivity offers a humanizing glimpse into the challenges
faced by artists in the modern era. His anticipation of life's unpredictable nature and the importance of balance between work and personal growth reflects a mature understanding of the complexities of a life dedicated to artistic pursuit.
In conclusion, Jacob Collier's interview with The Red Bulletin encapsulates the essence of a musician who defies easy categorization, driven by a boundless curiosity and a deep-seated belief in music's
power to unite and inspire. His journey underscores the importance of innovation, collaboration, and a heartfelt connection to the craft, offering valuable insights into the evolving landscape of contemporary music. Collier's story is a testament to the transformative
potential of music, both as a medium of expression and as a catalyst for personal and communal growth.
Google Gemini Advanced
Absolutely! Let's analyze the interview with Jacob Collier through the perspective of a Music Philosopher. Here's a breakdown of some key themes and ideas we can explore:
Themes
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Music as a Universal Language: Collier repeatedly discusses music as something everyone inherently
understands. He mentions that music is almost a second language for him and that we can communicate and express things through sounds and melody that may not be possible with traditional language. His audience participation experiments further solidify this
idea of music being something everyone can tap into.
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The Power of Collaboration: Collier's growth as an artist seems deeply intertwined with collaboration. He
cites his creative and supportive musical family, learning from other musicians, and his work with such a wide range of musical legends as pivotal to his development.
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Balancing the Artistic and the Technical: There's an interesting tension between viewing Collier
as some wunderkind and the interview highlighting his tireless dedication to his craft. Music for him is not just pure inspiration but knowledge and deep understanding of the technical aspects.
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The Nature of Success: In a world focused on hits and mainstream popularity, Collier's definition
of success is nuanced. He doesn't define it by reach, but rather by how deeply he can move the people that his music does reach.
Philosophical Questions
Here are some potential questions a Music Philosopher might delve into, inspired by this interview:
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Accessibility vs. Complexity: Collier makes music that is both highly technical and complex, yet
he aims for it to be universally understood and felt. How does he achieve this balance, and what does it say about the true nature of music's accessibility?
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Intention and Instinct: The interview portrays Collier as someone deeply deliberate in his
musical expression, yet he also lets the moment and improvisation lead his collaborations. How do intentionality and spontaneity coexist within his artistic process?
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Music as Experience: Collier talks about the desire for listeners to be moved by his work—an
emotional and visceral experience. Can music itself be considered a form of philosophy, communicating its own ideas through feelings rather than logic?
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The Future of Music Education: Collier's upbringing and the role his mother played raises questions
about music education. If, as he suggests, everyone is inherently musical, how do we unlock that in ourselves? How could traditional education change to be more like the immersive environment Collier grew up in?
Further Exploration
To truly do this analysis justice, a Music Philosopher would likely want to engage with Jacob Collier's music directly. They'd not only listen but analyze the scores and
technical aspects to see how those philosophical ideas are actively translated into his work.
Let me know if you'd like me to expand on any particular theme or philosophical question!
Claude.ai 2.1
Here is my philosophical analysis of Jacob Collier's interview:
At his core, Jacob Collier is a deeply curious and playful musical explorer. Music seems almost like a native language to him - immersed in it from birth thanks to his musical upbringing.
This gives him a fluent musicality and effortless ability to communicate complex musical ideas.
Yet what is most striking is Collier's childlike sense of wonder and joy. He bounds around gleefully, seeing endless creative possibilities everywhere. His colorful attire reflects
his vibrant inner world. Music for Collier is not some formal enterprise, but rather an outlet for unbridled self-expression and a way to create human connections. When conducting his "choir" of 100,000 audience members, he taps into music's intrinsically
communal nature.
Undergirding it all is a generosity of spirit - a desire to uplift others through musical participation rather than flaunt his prodigious talents. Collier spurns ego and competition.
His open-hearted collaborations with diverse artists reveal his guiding philosophy: music is for everyone. It dissolves artificial divides. This democratic ethos aligns with his mission to move people emotionally rather than chase mainstream success.
Yet for all his wisdom, Collier retains a childlike wonder, ever eager to explore new sonic worlds. He yearns for space to let inspiration strike rather than relentlessly chase productivity.
After all, at 29 he is still at the outset of life's great journey. If the last decade is any indicator, the sounds he has yet to discover will be glorious.
https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/theredbulletin/jacob-collier-interview
© Benedikt Frank
Music
LIFE IN COLOUR
You’ve probably heard JACOB COLLIER'S music even if you don’t know his name. The 29-year-old Londoner
talks about his musical journey, creating a 100,000-strong choir, and playing footie with Stormzy
11 min readPublished
on 20.02.2024 · 10:58 EST
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In an east London studio in late November, multi-instrumentalist,
composer and producer Jacob Collier is being given a piggyback across the room by his manager. It’s not the scene you might expect when meeting an award-winning musical talent so unusually gifted he can count industry behemoths including Quincy Jones and Hans
Zimmer as fans and collaborators.
But that’s almost the point. The 29-year-old
Londoner is about as far from the stereotypical, ego-fuelled A-lister as you can get. Instead he’s warm and wide-eyed, bounding around in the brightly coloured attire he’s known for. Today it’s a jacket with fur sleeves, star-emblazoned trousers, and mismatched
aqua and yellow Crocs. It’s an apt visual introduction to the wonderfully unique Collier, whose inquisitive nature and open-hearted approach to the world have seen him win six Grammys and become one of the most sought-after collaborators in music today.
The young talent was raised in a musical household:
his mother Suzie Collier is a violinist, conductor and teacher at the Royal Academy of Music in London, meaning he began his journey at an early age. “I came at music almost like a second language as a kid, because my mother is such a resplendent musical force,”
Collier says with an ever-present smile. “When I was coming into the world, it just made a lot of sense to express shapes, forms and sensations through sound.”
Legendary producer Quincy Jones and jazz icon Herbie Hancock are both fans
© Benedikt Frank
Collier is largely self-taught and, over the
years, has turned his hand to a multitude of instruments – the piano, guitar, mandolin and double bass, to name just a few. As a teenager, he began uploading his one-man, multi-instrumental, multi-harmony, experimental covers to YouTube. Then, in 2013, one
video – his take on Stevie Wonder’s Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing – went viral and changed his life for ever. The clip caught the attention of music legend Quincy Jones, who signed Collier to a management deal and became his quasi-mentor, saying of his protégé,
“I have never in my life seen a talent like this.”
Following the release of his debut, In My Room,
in 2016, Collier recorded the three-volume Djesse series of albums – the title is a pun on his initials – working with a wild array of stars including Laura Mvula, Oumou Sangaré, Daniel Caesar and T-Pain. With each album, Collier explored new musical territory,
ricocheting from laid-back jazz and bombastic funk to orchestral arrangements and pop-centric R&B. His deep harmonic explorations and experimental compositions have led some to view Collier as a wunderkind. Legendary jazz pianist Herbie Hancock likened him
to a young Stravinsky, and when Hans Zimmer asked Collier to help score the 2017 movie Boss Baby, the German composer said of him, “There’s musicianship and then there’s genius, and then way, way, way above all that, out in the stratosphere, is Jacob Collier.”
I continue to find new ways of seeing and listening to
the world
Jacob Collier
Collier has also earned the respect of artists
including Stormzy, SZA, John Mayer and Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who have all brought the prolific artist into the studio to add a touch of ‘Jacobean’ magic, as it’s been termed, to their sound. His deep understanding of harmony was taken to new levels while
on tour in 2022, when Collier recorded his audiences and made them central to his aural experiments. The results can be heard in his cover of Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love, a deeply emotive piece that incorporates a choir of 100,000 voices and
demonstrates not only Collier’s impressive composing skills but the innate musicality in all of us.
Despite touring the world, amassing millions
of social media followers and earning accolades from practically everyone, Collier has yet to enjoy a mainstream hit in his own right. But his ambitions aren’t those of most mainstream artists. “The popular idea is that you measure success by how many people
you reach,” he says. “I would measure success by how many of the people I reach that I move.”
As he prepares for the release of the final,
fourth instalment in the Djesse series, featuring artists including Yebba, Kirk Franklin and Shawn Mendes, Collier shares his thoughts on using music as a form of expression, playing footie in Crocs with Stormzy, and where he wants to go next as an artist…
Collier’s sense of personal style mirrors his approach to music
© Benedikt Frank
THE RED BULLETIN: What’s your earliest musical memory?
JACOB COLLIER: It’s a fun one. I remember sitting on my mother’s lap, looking up and seeing the violin above me.
It was like a ceiling, because she played it with me on her lap, so I was right inside the music. That, as a sensation, doesn’t really leave you.
Do you view music as a form of expression, or a means of communication?
Both, I think. It’s like a language, in a sense. You can reach into the world, into yourself, and find ways of
expressing and explaining the way you see things. Music is best learnt how language is learnt: surrounded by masters of that language. I grew up surrounded by people who were playing, talking about and expressing music, and that felt like a way of finding
myself in the language.
Your mother is a violinist, a conductor and a teacher. How important was she to your musical development?
Massively. She was one of the founding pillars [for me] of how music could feel. I remember going to see her conducting
– she’s an extraordinary conductor – and watching her stand in front of a group of about 50 students at the Royal Academy of Music in London, watching her move her body and initiate the sound. It’s an amazing thing to see as a child. When I think about my
musical development – and I’ve gone on to do all sorts of things across many different kinds of music – a lot of the expressions that feel right begin and end with that vision of a person like my mum, who can be so positive, giving, warm and knowledgeable
about her craft. She’s able to not just communicate to the people but get it out of the people themselves.
My mind is full of crazy colours and crazy ideas
Jacob Collier
You’ve said your mum taught you that, if you listen, everything in the world is singing to you. How did you interpret that advice?
I continue to find new ways of seeing and listening to the world. As a child, a lot of the world can be quite
big and unknown. In a sense, anything that sings to you is your friend, not an enemy. Knowing that even these big, scary things I don’t understand are singing… to me, it’s like an encouragement that everything in the world can be spoken to and listened to
as a confidant. Going to school – and school is filled with all sorts of weird people – you’ve got the kids who want to be big and strong, kids who are going to be bullies and want attention. Going through all of that and it all being a song is really powerful,
because it teaches you to alchemise the world into your own goals – to live life the way you see it.
You got your break performing covers on YouTube as a teenager. Does that help you relate to younger artists who are now finding an audience on TikTok?
Ten years ago, when I came up, internet culture was very different from how it is now. When I found YouTube as
a tool to share some of these multi-instrumental, multi-vocal, pretty unusual renditions of popular songs that were highly crafted and intentional, I used [the platform] as a way to express that. Now, I think that creators are used by the social media platforms
a little bit more, so TikTok kind of eats up creators; it’s a business. Sometimes I see these young creators, and I think, ‘I couldn’t be more different from you, because I’ve never tried to compete with other people.’ That’s not to say that I don’t exist
within other people’s worlds, and that I haven’t been inspired by tonnes of [other musicians]. But TikTok is not necessarily equipped, or doesn’t seem to prioritise, people who are making quiet, gentle work on their own terms.
You launched a collaboration with Crocs in 2023. Why do you love them so much?
Because they’re super-comfortable. I’ve worn nothing but Crocs for the last five years. I can think of probably
10 to 20 times I’ve worn any other shoes – like when I was taking driving lessons. You can’t do that in Crocs, but basically everything else you can. Actually, I once took a penalty against Stormzy in Crocs and that was disastrous. The ball went extraordinarily
wide, so I also wouldn’t recommend football in them.
Fans often gift him items at gigs, such as a custom-made Djesse bracelet
© Benedikt Frank
You’ve said that Djesse Vol 4 would be a space for untapped ideas you haven’t yet found a home for. What kind of ideas were you playing around with?
Vol 4 is the culmination of all the things I’ve learnt in the last five or six years while travelling the world
and collaborating with all these different kinds of people. I went on a world tour and one of the things I’ve been getting into is recording my audiences singing some of my favourite sounds. [In 2022] I captured every audience singing and I used those recordings
to create a choir that’s 100,000 voices tall. That, as a feeling, a sound and a statement, has really motivated this album in a big way.
The audience experiments you’ve conducted demonstrate there’s an innate sense of musicality in everyone. Did you know it would work?
I don’t think, “Right, I’m going to get the audience to sing in three parts.” I just find myself on stage, I find
things that work, and then I’m done. When I played Glastonbury [in 2023] it was my first time, and there were 30,000 people. I’d trained for that moment, to get the audience to move in certain ways, knowing that none of them are musicians, just people of the
world. The beautiful thing was that I got them in three parts without saying a word to them. That was one of the moments when I really realised like, “Wow, this is for everyone.” Music is for everyone.There’s no line between “I’m a musician; I’m qualified”
and “You’re a person; you’re not qualified” – that doesn’t exist. All people need is to feel part of a group, part of a community, and just be given permission to give it a try.
Collaboration is central to your music, and you have worked with an enviable list of artists. How do you choose who to work with?
I didn’t necessarily go into it with a very solid plan. There was definitely a dream list of collaborators, but
I didn’t plan how I wanted all the music to sound. The only criteria is like, “Do I love and respect you? Yeah. OK, let’s work together.”
You’ve been around so many amazing artists – were there times you wanted to pinch yourself?
Every day. I think one of the privileges of being friends with some of these legends – people like Quincy Jones,
Herbie Hancock and Hans Zimmer – is the stories these people tell you. You wouldn’t believe them. Quincy’s sitting there saying he was having lunch with Picasso and then Igor Stravinsky walked by, and you’re thinking, “That’s inconceivable – you were around
my age when these people were kicking it in Paris.” It’s wild.
I took a penalty against Stormzy in Crocs. Disastrous
Jacob Collier
Looking back, how does the 20-year-old Jacob Collier differ from the person you are now as you approach your thirties?
The main change from 20 to 30 for me is not a musical one but a human one. By the time I was 20, I knew quite
a lot about music, but I hadn’t necessarily lived it out. I remember being obsessed with Brazilian music, with samba and the way the groove feels like it’s rolling like an egg. It’s beautiful, but I hadn’t been to Brazil. So it’s like, you go to Brazil and
you feel that music in your body and you collaborate with Brazilian artists, speak to them, and then you really know how samba feels.
You’ve achieved so much at a young age – what do you foresee in the next stage of your life?
I think one of the biggest challenges will be just creating some space for life to take me by surprise; the last
10 years have been extraordinary by anyone’s standards, but they’ve also been very constant and full-on. I haven’t really had a break once in that whole time – a couple of holidays here and there, but really it’s just been constant vision and constant work.
It’d be really important and fun in the next few years to experience life that doesn’t feel so urgent.
How do you relax during downtime?
I can’t think of the last time I chilled out for a while. My mind is full of crazy colours and crazy ideas, so
part of the decompression process for me is just letting those ideas come out. But a good game of badminton will always do me right.
Djesse Vol 4 will be released on Decca/Hajanga
in February, and Collier is performing in Manchester and London in December; jacobcollier.com
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