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Photo courtesy of Cate Oxford |
I’ve had a lot of moments where another person might have looked in from the outside and thought, ‘Well, he always knew! Look at that kid writing songs about nonsense even before learning how to talk!’ The relationship I’ve had with the Kai that wants to create has been stubborn, joyful and brazen. There have been many periods where I’ve been disconnected from him, and years when he felt completely lost, maybe gone.
I love writing songs and making music, playing piano and singing. For a long time, in a great portion of my adolescence and adult life, I had no idea how much I did love it. I grew up in a musical household with a film and TV composer father and piano teacher mother. Even though I was surrounded by sound and music, during middle school I became much more isolated in my house, estranged from my family, and I was often overpowered by the lethargy of that feeling, unable to write from an honest place.
Despite this, I had a great number of advantages; my house was filled with instruments, up the walls and down the stairs, and almost constant exposure to music from different periods and cultures I might never have discovered on my own. When I was a kid I would make up stories in the form of songs almost constantly. I was a big fan of High School Musical and sometimes I’d turn the TV on and select just the credits of Pirates of the Caribbean so that I could hear the theme song; a truly optimal accompaniment for lapping around the living room with a big stick, jumping off the couch and fighting imaginary skeletons.
I felt quite starkly that the atmosphere of playfulness in my house faded as I grew older. In this way, the moment I knew I wanted to make music was a rediscovery of an earlier knowing, of what Kai knew when he was a kid.
One of the most important moments in this rediscovery was when I was 11 years old at summer camp. We had a music class in the mornings, graciously taught by a brilliant jazz trumpet player named Brownman Ali. He described the roots of music, breaking it down into three distinct parts: melody, rhythm and harmony. His description remains to this day the way that I break down music when I’m teaching other people.
One day at lunch, the more musically-interested kids hung around his table. Eager to snack on the feast of musical coolness he provided, he gave us the ultimate treat. It was a video he found on YouTube: Jacob Collier’s rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing”. Digesting that video was a seminal event in the timeline that led to me making music.
At that age I had heard a lot of music, yet there was a part of me that heard Jacob’s tapestry of vocal harmonies weaving together, the depth and nuance and dynamics in all of it, and thought, ‘I didn’t know music could sound this cool.’ My next thought was, ‘I want to understand this.’
From that point onwards there was a little box in my brain that was open and eager to learn as much as I could and to listen just as closely. Beyond the pure sound of Jacob Collier’s music, a part of his energy reminds me of a kid so enthusiastic and excited, that he’s just on fire with joy as he’s creating. Seeing that energy actualized in such a beautiful way reminded me of the way I felt making songs as a kid. This was when I knew I wanted to make music.
- Kai Korven, composer and songwriter