Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancockis an American pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, composer and actor. Starting his career with Donald Byrd, he shortly thereafter joined the Miles Davis Quintet where Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the post-bop sound. He was one of the first jazz musicians to embrace synthesizers and funk music. Hancock's music is often melodic and accessible; he has had many songs "cross over" and achieved success...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPianist
Date of Birth12 April 1940
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
Everything has focused on what the technology is capable of doing and making tools and then taking human beings and saying, what can you do with that.
Wisdom is on a higher plane, and as human beings, it's part of our 'being-ness' to have the capacity to manifest wisdom through creativity.
Buddhism opened me up to seeing things from the standpoint of being a human being - looking at the purpose of action and the effects on life.
On a human level, the garbage man is just as important as the teacher or a rock star or a president, because you have to have them. The world would have been dead a long time ago without garbage men.
I'm a human being all the time, even when I sleep. But I'm not a musician when I sleep, and I'm not a musician when I eat, unless I'm paying attention to music or talking about music.
We've been looking at machines for so long, I really wish the technology community would look at human beings first for a change, let's balance the thing out.
The one thing that we should stick to is to figure out how to become better human beings, but in order to do that we have to go to the second level which is to work on defining the palette of what a better human being is made of, and creativity is one of them.
I don't see how we can have both the freedoms we had before and the safety net that we all need considering the way the world is today. And that's just because human beings can't trust each other. We've given in over and over to some of the darkest elements that exist in life itself.
When you talk about 'doing the work', that's the work I'm interested in. What can I contribute as a human being?
What establishes value is something that is going to move humanity forward. If humanity is not in the equation, it's like the planet without any human beings on it.
My idea is that young people who are not as jaded about technology and the use of technology as we are, who didn't create the technological age, but are born into it, may be able to create software that addresses the issues that pertain to the human being and lead toward the advancement of creativity and the human spirit.
But it's all part of the humanistic approach. Humanism amid the machines, you know?
But I'm talking about responsibility, a sense of responsibility. Developing software to help human beings develop more of a sense of responsibility. Kids need that. Adults need it too. More self worth. More self-respect.
The thing is, much of the way I look at music now, and its role as an aspect of culture, and creative expression for human beings in the 21st century, much of the way I look at it for a record like Future 2 Future is very similar to how I might look at it for a record like Directions in Music.