![]() ![]() "For me playing music doesn't require being a virtuoso, that's not important," he told this correspondent back in 2007. His album of that year - prophetically titled "Future Shock" - proffered the seminal hip hop anthem "Rockit" and won Hancock several awards from a then burgeoning new music television station: MTV. Then, Herbie Hancock's segue into a radically new genre of music in 1983 shocked the purists and introduced him to a completely new generation - the genre was hip hop. Piqued by the new funk sound of Sly Stone, he then formed The Headhunters in 1973 and began to explore a fusion between jazz and funk. Heavily influenced by the futuristic sounds of Germany's electronic pioneers Kraftwerk - and driven by a fascination with gadgets and technology going back to childhood - Hancock began to experiment with his own synthesized and futuristic compositions on the albums "Mwandishi" (1971) and "Crossings" (1972). Hancock with Berlin jazz musician and promoter Sedal Sardan at Berlin's A-Trane jazz club Image: A-Trane Berlin Leaving the security of renowned label Blue Note Records in 1969, Hancock signed with Warner Brothers, where he set about reinventing his sound and exploring new musical possibilities. But not interested in simply being a gun for hire, Hancock set about defining his own solo career with the landmark albums "Empyrean Isles" (1964) and "Maiden Voyage" (1965). ![]() And in 1963 the future was still Miles Davis, who invited him to join his legendary second quintet - where he stayed until 1968. The feat was all the more astounding in that he was an African American, and it was 1951.īut Hancock wouldn't be content playing the music of the past - it was the future that fascinated him. No one embodies that quite as vigorously as Herbie Hancock - born in Chicago in 1940 as the son of a secretary and a government meat inspector.Ī prodigious pianist from a young age, he performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. According to an old adage in the music industry, you are only as old as you sound. ![]()
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