SHOW NOTES

Quick overview of this week's show:

• How my love affair with Brazilian jazz began
• Why I celebrate the music of Ivan Lins
• Important lessons I learned from studying Ivan Lins' music that I carried over to my writing

TRANSCRIPT

Those are words of wisdom from a man who I have considered to be my creative mentor for the last fifteen years. If it were not for him and his music, I would not be a writer.

Few people in my life have had such an impact on me, and I want to spend some time talking about it because if you understand this, then you understand me and my work on a deeper level.

This man’s name, by the way, is Ivan Lins, and he's a Brazilian singer, composer, and musician.

My Creative Mentor

Hello, and welcome to episode 9.

I wanted to spend this episode talking about an incredible influence on my creative career.

I debated even doing this episode because I will guess that most people listening to this podcast have never heard of Ivan Lins.

So to keep this interesting, I'm going to tell this story in a way you might not expect.

The year was 2003, and I was a freshman in high school.

I was studying music, and around this time, writing wasn't even on my radar.

I wanted to know about every style of music. I wanted to listen to everything, deconstruct it, and learn how to write it.

I found a list of musical genres on the Internet and I made it a personal goal to spend two or three days in the land of each genre.

I started with Ambient…

[CUE YAWN]

And then I made my way down to samba and bossa nova.

[CUE BRAZILIAN SAMBA]

It was my gateway drug into Brazilian music.

Brazilian jazz just has this unique way about it. It's confident, different, and not afraid to go places sonically that are unusual to the ear.

Anyway, I spent hours listening to Brazilian music, so much that my goal of getting all the way through the list of genres went out the window when I happened upon the music of Ivan Lins.

What I noticed first about Ivan was his jazz sensibility, which was unlike anything I had ever heard, and his chord changes. One of the tests for me when I listen to a new musician is whether they sound like anything I’ve heard before. I had never heard anything like this.

When I listen to music, I care more about the emotions and the chords than I do the melody or lyrics. I don't know too many people who listen to music in this way, but I would argue that Lins’s music has the greatest chord progressions of any musician who has ever lived.

But I won't talk about his music because I can't share it on this podcast.

Instead I want to talk about his style and approach to creativity, because his approach is the same I've taken with my writing.

Lessons Learned from Ivan Lins

I opened the episode with a clip from an interview with Lins in 2011. He talks about starting off imitating black singers and trying to mix modern samba with it. What resulted was something entirely different and unique.

I’ve listened to every single one of his albums over and over again, and while I confess that I could never quite learn to play his music well, I learned some important creative lessons.

First, with every new project, I try to imitate something that I’ve seen and mix it with my own storytelling sensibility.

Lins also does something else important that I’ve learned to live by. He takes substantial risks with every new album. In fact, I would say that he reinvents himself with every new album. No two Ivan Lins albums sound anything alike. Yet, his voice ties them all together.

I’m drawn to artists who produce diverse portfolios. I don’t know why; maybe it’s because I don’t like being tied to anything. I like having the freedom to reinvent myself. I like that mind-expanding feeling that I get whenever I’m venturing into new territory where I’ve never been before. It makes me a better artist. It gives me staying power.

And lastly, Lins is himself. Honestly, if you listen to his songs, it’s amazing that someone with his style is as famous as he is. Most artists like him would have hit dead-ends in their careers. But he persists because his music is relevant. His sound is unique. There’s no one else like him, and he continues to redefine what music means to him.

There’s something to be said about being yourself in today’s world. There’s so much pressure for authors to fit themselves into a box. If you don’t fit into the urban fantasy box, or the LitRPG box, or the paranormal romance box, your books won’t sell. And so authors listen to that advice, and they compromise their work in order to make money.

But the money never lasts.

An artist like Ivan Lins proves that you can be yourself and still find an audience. An artist like Ivan Lins writes music that will stand the test of time, that jazz listeners will be talking about a hundred years from now.

That’s a creative lifestyle to live by.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.” –Ludwig van Beethoven

More About Ivan Lins

Official Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ivanlinsoficial/

Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Lins

Full Interview featured in this week's episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0J6yeODzZ0&list=RDI0J6yeODzZ0&t=178 

My Top 10 Ivan Lins Songs (in no particular order)

Song Title – Album

1. Abre Alas -Modo Livre (1974)

2. Beijo Infinito – Ivan Lins (1986)

3. Amar Assim – Amar Assim (1989)

4. Anjo de Mim – Anjo de Mim (1996)

5. Clareou – Awa Yio (1991)

6. Corpos – Chama Acesa (1975)

7. Depois dos temporais – Depois Dos Temporais (1983)

8. Even You and I – Love Dance (1988)

9. Love Dance – Love Dance (1988)

10. Vieste – Maos (1987)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE?

 Let me know!