Dana Hawkins - Why Creativity is So Hard to Cultivate

Anyone who came up listening to drum youtube in the 20-teens is familiar with Dana Hawkins. His collabs with Evan Marien started appearing in 2010. Every few months, there would be a new one, and it was pure drum-fusion crack.

I actually met Dana in person before I discovered those videos, however. He was playing with two of my friends on a live gig on the Lower East Side.

In any event, I had zero idea how this conversation would go, because I’ve never before spoke to Dana at length. I’m happy to say it went to territory I never anticipated. Dana’s takes on things like the word “jazz”, the music industry, and “kids these days” are deep, surprising, funny, and at-time firey.

I’m going to have Dana’s thoughts and this conversation on the brain for some time to come, and I hope you do too.

 

Chapters

0:00 - intro     2:00 - how did he get so good at learning songs by ear?     4:51 - Dana's split between reading and memorization     9:30 - Dana's early teachers (sorry, I could not find links to them;)     11:42 - When did Dana start studying jazz     15:19 - why Dana doesn't like the word "jazz"     25:11 - has social media been a pro or a con     31:04 - but aren't Dana and Evan an example it's not all bad?     37:03 - have we lost something now that there's no more "dues paying" in music?     43:09 - the paradox of needing artistic space but some people needing "hard knocks"