Esperanza Spalding Speaks on the Real Value of Music and How Not Everything Is About “Incredible Technical Prowess”

While technical skill is always welcome for musicians in any genre, it does not guarantee that someone’s music will deeply move listeners. Bass master Esperanza Spalding reflected on the matter, pointing out that there’s much more to music than getting lost in the constant desire to make things too perfect. And this comes from one of the finest bassists today.

Speaking to Guy Raz in a recent interview, Spalding discussed how we process music today. She touched upon the issue when the interviewer brought up some classical composers, like J.S. Bach and Erik Satie, saying they sound very “modern” today. Esperanza replied (transcribed by No Treble):

“I noticed that what we think is modern is people being themselves. People being themselves despite whatever kind of momentum of normalcy has taken root or is influencing the way that music is going.”

“And I don’t think that’s inherently negative,” she added. “We end up sounding like who we hang out with — we end up sounding like our parents. We end up emulating the people that we admire. So that’s gonna happen with music, too. We get carried into a sound, and, with our originality, it’s still gonna have that sound.”

Going more into it, Spalding explained how the whole thing is about expressing your inner self through music. She offered:

“What sounds ‘avant-garde,’ I think, is when somebody is so in touch with their individual sense of how they hear things and are able to bring it out, almost in spite of the aesthetic of whatever music they were educated inside of.”

“And really, whatever ways that we as humans are eternally linked, inevitably interwoven with the sacred and divine, I think the place where that connection lives is in our authentic selves.”

“It can’t live in a performance that we’ve put on. I witnessed, and I experienced that when an artist of any kind allows themselves to create from that seat of themselves, it ends up sounding like ‘Oh, what’s that?!'”

Well, that’s deep. As Esperanza also argues, this all comes down to an individual being able to share their inner experience with other people. She said:

“And I think we get affected by that charge of something sacred that we can feel. Because that uniqueness… And I don’t mean, like, the individualism that says, ‘I’m novel and original.’ I don’t mean that. I mean the uniqueness of the frequency, the frequential essence of anybody and everybody — that is some sacred stuff. It’s divine. That’s what you came in with.”

“When we hear that allowed to flourish and express itself, I think we’re encountering that divine spark and other. And we feel it. It’s different. We do feel it.”

“I mean, we feel it even in Prince singing about ‘Jack U Off.’ The authenticity of his spirit delivering itself uncompromised to you hits you in a sacred place.”

If we take bass players or guitar players, the discussions often tend to go too deeply into the technical aspects of performing. Spalding is more than aware of these matters since she herself is a seasoned bass veteran. But she admits that her arguments are in no way disparaging to technically skilled and highly-trained musicians of any kind. Instead, she opts to see it in a different way.

“And it’s not to diminish the technical prowess of these people,” she offered. “You mentioned Erik Satie, Bach, Milton Wayne — it’s not to diminish that. But there’s a lot of people who have incredible technical prowess, and it doesn’t strike that, like, deep place that we can’t really understand.”

“Maybe I don’t understand it, but the music — it’s like it can bypass our understanding. It can bypass everything we think we know about what music is or isn’t, or even what we like or don’t like, and just directly resonate that complimentary place in ourselves. Like acoustics — when you sing a certain note in a room, the room amplifies that.

“And I feel in the inverse when frequencies of people’s authenticity enter us. It’s like it resonates [with] that authentic place in us, and we feel affected. Almost like you feel more of yourself.”