"It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project"
About this Quote
Herbie Hancock isn’t romanticizing inspiration here; he’s quietly demoting “style” from a guiding star to a byproduct. Coming from a musician who’s moved from hard bop to Miles-era modal experimentation to funk, fusion, and electronic pop, that’s not a platitude. It’s a work ethic disguised as humility: the real engine is an attitude, a posture of receptivity, not a genre label you can market.
The intent is practical. “Openness” is Hancock’s way of describing a discipline of curiosity: walking into a session ready to be changed by it. In jazz, where credibility can calcify into orthodoxy, this is a subtle rebuke to gatekeeping. He’s suggesting the musician’s job isn’t to defend a brand (“I’m a straight-ahead player,” “I’m a fusion guy”) but to stay porous enough to hear what the music needs today, with these people, in this room.
The subtext is also about risk. Style is a shield; it keeps you safe inside familiar licks and familiar audiences. Openness means you might fail publicly, or worse, make something that doesn’t fit the lineage cleanly. Hancock has taken that gamble repeatedly, and history eventually reclassifies the gamble as vision.
Context matters: a Black American artist navigating an industry that rewards categorization. By centering attitude over style, Hancock claims agency. He won’t be filed away; he’ll keep moving. That restlessness is why his career reads less like a catalog and more like a conversation with the future.
The intent is practical. “Openness” is Hancock’s way of describing a discipline of curiosity: walking into a session ready to be changed by it. In jazz, where credibility can calcify into orthodoxy, this is a subtle rebuke to gatekeeping. He’s suggesting the musician’s job isn’t to defend a brand (“I’m a straight-ahead player,” “I’m a fusion guy”) but to stay porous enough to hear what the music needs today, with these people, in this room.
The subtext is also about risk. Style is a shield; it keeps you safe inside familiar licks and familiar audiences. Openness means you might fail publicly, or worse, make something that doesn’t fit the lineage cleanly. Hancock has taken that gamble repeatedly, and history eventually reclassifies the gamble as vision.
Context matters: a Black American artist navigating an industry that rewards categorization. By centering attitude over style, Hancock claims agency. He won’t be filed away; he’ll keep moving. That restlessness is why his career reads less like a catalog and more like a conversation with the future.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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