I've realized that a lot of people come to me because of what's called identity. In the sense of "he's like me" - more like identification. Identity is one of those nonsense words: it's been used so much it doesn't mean anything. As individuals, we don't want to stay the same; identity means sameness, and we don't want to be the same, we want to keep changing, we want to grow, we want to become something else. We want to evolve. So when people come to me, it's about resonance - it goes back to that word.
Vijay IyerIn the 1990s I got to play in a group that played in prisons in California. We would play in maximum security wards. It was infuriating. Those kinds of situations stick with me. We got to come in and play music for them because that's a way of caring, just offering something, a gift, basically. They're basically the most grateful audiences I've ever experienced, because nobody's giving them anything.
Vijay IyerI want to make sure that I represent a variety of backgrounds and that represents the reality out here in the world.
Vijay IyerThere are records I'll listen to one time and zero in on what's happening, and then I'll listen again to something I didn't notice the first time. The art of making records is something like this: you want to provide a multiplicity of experience in a single object, which is to say you want layers so that people can revisit and have something revealed to them that wasn't apparent the first time. We often will listen to the same music over and over again, and that tells you something, too.
Vijay IyerI know from the elders that it's not so easy to sustain a life in music, a presence in the music world, for decades on end. And that's what we're here for: we're thinking about the long game. If that is dependent on other people's desire for me, then it becomes extremely vulnerable to change. Rather than subject myself to that vulnerability, I'd rather embrace change and allow myself to transform, and maybe that means that what I do next week, the people who liked me last week won't like anymore, but maybe that will also lead people to like something else.
Vijay Iyer