Herbie Hancock dives into AI while all-star album is revamped
SAN DIEGO
Genre-leaping keyboard legend Herbie Hancock has an update for fans eagerly anticipating his new album — originally due out in 2020 — featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, West African guitar innovator Lionel Loueke, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, saxophonist Kamasi Washington, electric bassist Thundercat, producer Flying Lotus and such hip-hop mainstays as Common and Snoop Dogg.
“I tried to complete that record several times. But before I could finish it, I didn’t like it anymore and had to start over from scratch,” said Hancock, an Oscar-winning film composer, 2013 Kennedy Center Honors recipient and 14-time Grammy Awardwinner for his jazz, R&B and pop recordings.
Hancock’s music over the years has ranged from mainstream and cuttingedge jazz to funk, Latin, pop, folk, techno, classical, Afro-futurism, hip-hop and beyond. In 2008, he became the first jazz artist since 1964 to win album of the year honors at the Grammy Awards. His historic victory came for his lovingly crafted Joni Mitchell homage, “River: The Joni Letters,” on which Mitchell is a guest singer.
In a 2019 Union-Tribune interview, the Chicago-born
music maverick indicated his new album was nearing completion. But Hancock’s constantly restless artistic spirit, coupled with the 2020 pandemic shutdown, led him to reevaluate things in a major way.
“It’s gone through a lot of doorways, let’s say,” he said of what will be his first new album since his all-star, globe-leaping “The Imagine Project” in 2010.
“I would think there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and we’re thinking about releasing one or two [songs] either this year or next. I’ve recorded a lot of stuff!”
Hancock spoke recently for more than an hour from his Los Angeles office and recording studio. He laughed appreciatively when reminded that Duke Ellington, when asked what inspired him to compose and record, famously responded: “Give me a deadline!”
“He was absolutely right and that’s what it used to be like for me, all the time,” Hancock said. “I’d have deadlines and things had to be done by a certain day — bam, bam, bam! — and that’s how it had been throughout my whole career.”
But not anymore.
“The pressure isn’t on me the same way it was in the past, when I was signed to different record labels,” Hancock affirmed.
“Now that I’m not formally signed, I make deals with labels to share the ownership of the records I make. It’s different than when records were two sides on an LP. Now, you can release one or two songs at a time, and, eventually, make what is essentially an album.
“This is a different time and a different age, with different ways of doing things. Artists can sign up to put their music on a streaming service, and if I don’t know how that works I can get other people to handle that for me.”
In Hancock’s case, only time constraints prevent him from learning how to stream his own music, if not launch his own streaming service.
A double-major in music and engineering, he was barely 21 when he graduated from Iowa’s Grinnell College in 1960. That was only two years before the release of his 1962 debut album, the aptly named “Takin’ Off,” and just 10 years after he made his debut as a piano soloist with the Chicago Symphony at the age of 11.
Hancock went on to write such classic songs as “Watermelon Man,” “Cantaloupe Island,” “Maiden Voyage,” “The
Eye of the Hurricane,” “Speak Like a Child,”
“The Sorcerer,” “Chameleon,” “Actual Proof,” “Rockit” and a good number more.
One of the first and most prominent artists to come from the jazz world who embraced electric keyboards, synthesizers and music software, he heads the UC Los Angeles-based Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. As a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Goodwill Ambassador, he is the founder and host of International Jazz Day, which is now in its 13th year and is celebrated in more than 190 countries.
While Hancock’s collaborators change from year to year, his interest in technology and the inner workings of things has been a constant.
And what is the latest thing with which he’s been tinkering?
“AI!” Hancock replied, laughing heartily.
“I’m interested in artificial intelligence and where* it’s gonna go — and the possible dangers of it. But even when I was just 5, I would try to take apart a clock to see how it worked.
“I got in a lot of trouble with my father when I tried to take apart the Lionel electric train he had bought me!”
The use of AI in music, film and other mediums is a matter of increasing controversy for artistic creators. But Hancock, who turned 84 on April 12, is interested in AI for multiple reasons.
“Well, first of all, I’m interested in it as a human being,” he stressed. “Because that’s what I am. I play music, but what I am is a human being. I’m concerned about what happens to us as human beings, not just as musicians, and to work. What’s going to happen with a lot of the jobs we have now?
“That’s a big concern, because a lot of jobs in a lot of fields will be taken over. It happened with the industrial age and with blacksmiths when the automobile came in. Now, we’re in the age of technology. Every field will be impacted, including education, and the arts are also at risk. So, how do we solve those issues that most of us will be facing? These are concerns of mine.”
Like many musicians whose tours evaporated overnight because of the pandemic lockdown that began in early 2020, Hancock found himself with unplanned time on his hands. It was then that he took a deep dive into AI and watched countless videos online about new virtual instruments and music technology.
“I don’t know how AI will all turn out, and I don’t feel comfortable predicting. But I am very interested. And I do have some things that are not commitments, but — how do I say this? — on the table for connecting me with AI and its use in musical endeavors.”
Is he worried that AI could rob some musicians of their livelihoods?
“Well,” he replied, “I have a tendency to look for the positive aspects. And — although it hasn’t really happened yet — the potential for [AI] making things better in the world is what I’m looking forward to and believe in.
But the pathway of getting there is going to be through a default line of human beings.
“Machines don’t have ethics because they are not human, right? They don’t have that human experience and are not made of what we are made of. They don’t have a heart, so to speak. … I believe AI will have the potential to teach us ethics and help us become better human beings. Because humans, men and women, birthed AI, so to speak. If we treat AI like our children and ‘raise’ AI mindfully, it will have an understanding of ethics and treating people with kindness.”