For
this blog post, I would like to talk about a specific musical artist
that I have recently discovered. Her name is Emily Wells and she is
not at all easily defined. Folk, folk rock, and folktronica are some
genres that have been used to classify her. Folktronica probably
describes her most adequately; it is a musical category comprised of
various elements of folk music and electronica, often featuring
samplings of acoustic instruments, all the while utilizing hip hop or
dance rhythms.
She
does not stop with these aforementioned genres however. She started
training as a classical violinist at the age of four, but obviously
has since branched off, using hip hop, classical, blues, and jazz
influences in her music. She has also been known to employ multiple
instruments beyond violin, including glockenspiels, analog
synthesizers, pianos, toy instruments, guitars, banjos, drums, and
more.
Her
true standing out point comes with the way she performs live. Unlike
many solo artists within different variations of electronic music,
Emily does not use recorded loops. Instead, she creates her own
virtual backing band; she does this by creating her own series of
live loops during the performance with whatever instruments the
particular song requires, her voice, sample pads, and synthesizers.
As
for the connections to the readings, I would like to analyze Emily
through characteristics known to be associated with the creative
personality. (All further references/comparisons are from the
Csikszentmihalyi
reading.)
Before
going into the dimensions Csikszentmihalyi describes, I would like to
talk of something else mentioned in this reading. It talks of how
many creatives are seen to start exercising such impulses in childhood.
This is especially true with Emily. As I have already stated, she
started learning the violin at age four and her musical career
sprouted from there. Furthermore, she did not wait for any record
label to begin making her own songs: at age thirteen, she released
her first full length (unofficial) album herself.
The
reading's second dimension of creativity lists creative individuals
as having the tendency to be smart and also naïve at the same time;
more specifically, they utilize both convergent and divergent
thinking. I think Emily is an amazing example of this. She is a
classically trained violinist. Furthermore, she probably learned how
to play the many instruments she now can, one by one, classically or
procedurally. Meanwhile, her combining of all the various elements
that comprise her music is a great exemplification of divergent
thinking. Her music is incredibly layered and diverse. You have never
heard songs like hers before, which is one of the reasons she is so
hard to classify.
This
all nicely ties into the third dimension: the paradox of possessing
playfulness and discipline. To create such novel assortments of
sound, Emily must possess a childlike curiosity and playfulness. She
has said in interviews that one of her favorite parts of her creative
process is simply toying with some random instruments and casually
overlapping sounds to see how they fit together. This is a process
defined by good natured and lighthearted fun. However, the discipline
arrives when putting together the final product (once a desired end is in
mind), especially during the recording process.
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