Krauss and Plant on Artistic Collaboration, 2

Here is an interesting video with Alison Krauss, Robert Plant, and T Bone Burnett (who produced the album) speaking more about the process of making their collaborative 2007 album, Raising Sand. It relates to the subject of an earlier post, Krauss and Plant on Artistic Collaboration. (As well as this post, Yo-Yo Ma on Artistic Collaboration.)

I think this album is another example of artists producing something new and fresh as they deliberately embrace the work of those who have gone before them. In this process, the three (Krauss, Plant, and Burnett) seem to have had simultaneously in mind the spirit of the original artists and their songs, their own present-day musical intuitions, as well as the context of contemporary America with its similarities with and differences from the era in which this music was originally made.

We can see in this that paying careful attention and giving respect to the work of earlier artists--having the humility to follow in their footsteps--rather than stifling creativity, can actually serve as a strong and invigorating catalyst for producing something fresh and original and also delightfully accessible to a broad audience.



The Rounder Records promotional web site for the album describes the result as, "an album that uncovers popular music’s elemental roots while sounding effortlessly, breathtakingly modern."

When an artist remains trapped in the closed-in solipsism that seems to be encouraged in at least some modern art-world circles, I doubt if anything so enduring and broadly appealing (and therefore having such broad impact) could result.

For another musical example of the old and the new being creatively combined together to make something delightful, see Ray Charles, "Oh What a Beautiful Morning."

[And for more on the theme of the old and the new coming together, see here]

Yo-Yo Ma on Artistic Collaboration

I discovered an interesting set of podcasts. Sony Music has something they call, "Sony Masterworks Podcasts." Included in this is a section on the recordings of cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
And in this section is a podcast titled,
"Musical Friends, Trust, & Collaboration."

In this particular podcast, Yo-Yo Ma talks about what is needed for a good musical collaboration. I transcribed a section of this. I think these remarks apply not only for music, but for any artistic collaboration.

Preconditions for great musical collaboration. Of course there's no formula for chemistry. If there were, there would be great chemistry all the time. But if you had to put approximations of what might be good chemistry between people, I think good chemistry can only occur when two people are ready for it, when people are actually open to it. If one person is closed off, and the other person is willing, you can't have a great musical collaboration. So it's a timely thing, because not everybody is open all the time; and not everybody is closed all the time, hopefully. . . But, there are certain moments when people can be open to each other and to something maybe similar or different; like-minded people--they're searching. . . Once people are open there is the willingness to share what they know--the willingness to not just own and say, "This is mine, you can't play with my toys." But, rather, "This is my toy. And you can play with it. Try this." Or, "Try that. Take it into your room. See what it does in your room." Then, there has to be enough mutual respect from both people to say, "Look, I don't really love your toy but I really like you. So maybe I'll play with your toy and then I discover that your toy is really interesting." So, you have to have some predisposition for respect, that you are willing to take a certain risk. . . [A great collaboration] has to honor the fact that two people are willing to take a certain risk, to trust each other, to be vulnerable to the other person, to have enough respect for each other as well as for yourself that you can be vulnerable and not feel that you are making a fool of yourself. . . All of those preconditions I think are important. . . . I think trust is an essential element in collaboration. . . You have to be willing to jump and have the other person catch you.

So, as pointed out by Yo-Yo Ma, these are especially important themes for a fruitful artistic collaboration (these all apply mutually to the collaborators):

• openness
• willingness to share
• respect (for yourself as well as for each other)
  
• willingness to take risks
• trust
• vulnerability

[images from the Internet Cello Society photo archive]

Krauss and Plant on artistic collaboration

Here is an interesting and kind of fun clip of iconic musicians Alison Krauss and Robert Plant (renowned bluegrass/country, and rock musicians, respectively) in a backstage interview at the 2009 Grammy awards. They collaborated on the 2007 duet album, Raising Sand; it won an impressive five Grammys, including album of the year.

The part I find most intriguing begins at 0:35 in the clip. Robert Plant describes how in making this album he and Alison both intentionally stepped back from their usual roles while doing their own solo projects wherein they are in control and instead let someone else (producer T Bone Burnett) direct the creative process. They did this for the sake of the music. This is a nice example of established artists, who certainly bring longstanding habits and strong views of their own to a project, realizing that they each need to embrace a certain sort of humility in collaboration so that the music can be the focus and not so much themselves.

Here is how Plant put it:

We both removed our own producer hats that we have in our own worlds and gave them to T Bone Burnett [the album's producer] and so we were in a place that was quite magical; it was like a really, a new world for both of us.

I would say this illustrates another principle that is important when artists work together on a joint project: each collaborator must place his (or her) own ego aside and be willing to accept direction and ideas from others for the sake of the overall project. Each one gives generously for the sake of a shared artistic vision which, while not the sole possession of any single contributor, belongs to the group as a whole. The final artistic product benefits greatly from this sort of humility.