Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kaleb Moten. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kaleb thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

Music is a challenging thing to corporatize. On the one hand, corporatization is a necessity in order to generate profits at a large scale; you need infrastructure, project management, operations to ensure products are delivered and everyone gets paid, etc. However, with corporatization often comes risk aversion, and innovative art is always risky. It’s challenging to know what sort of art has the ability to do well in a market until it’s released, especially if that art is unlike anything else happening in the industry at that time.

However, when it comes to music, if this risk aversion isn’t balanced with an educated desire to innovate (and I would argue that it isn’t balanced currently), the art eventually becomes stale. Part of what allows for the industry to continue to be profitable is the idea that it is moving and changing. This is impossible without innovators.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a musical artist and producer. I’ve been playing instruments for most of my life. I began formal classical piano training when I was 6, and stopped formal training when I was 13 as I became more interested in composition. I began composing for short films when I was 16, and gradually transitioned into producing music as a solo artist. I’ve release four studio albums to date. In addition, I have produce music for other artists, such as Grammy award winning singer-songwriter Victory Boyd.

I think there are many things that make my approach to music unique. First, I draw a lot of inspiration from my faith; to make something beautiful, you have to be inspired by something beautiful, and God is the most beautiful inspiration I know of. Second, I think of myself as a storyteller, and I use the conventions of story-telling and narrative very heavily in my music, from my lyrics and melodies to the textures and timbres of my sounds. I want to create a whole sonic world for people to dive into. Third, I have an eclectic musical taste, and I’m not afraid to make something that sounds strange, as long as it’s serving the overall narrative I’m trying to convey. Music is an opportunity for me to talk about the things that I’ve seen and felt in greater detail than I could ever get at by using prose.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Music has such an ability to elicit particular emotions and feelings from people. You can turn on a song and it can brighten your whole day. A message in a song can literally change the way a person sees the world. My goal in making music has always been to spread love, and not in a fluffy idealistic sort of way, but in a real, tangible, “I was suffering and then I heard this song and it awakened hope” sort of way. There are so many people in really hard places, and they may not all have access to good friends or community to coach them through, but they have access to music. I would love for the music industry to actually appreciate the level of opportunity that they have through that access, and for many artists to seize that opportunity and use it to raise others up, not only themselves.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of artistry for me is the process. Releasing music is kind of anticlimactic. Once it’s out, it’s out, and there are so many stories and experiences that listeners have that you’ll never know about. But in the process of creating there’s so much joy; that’s where you uncover the richness of what you have on the inside of you. I feel like I know that I have something really great when the more I refine it, hone it, and approach it with finer and finer levels of precision, the more rich and beautiful it becomes. There isn’t anything quite like that feeling. My hope is that when I release a work, I’ve gone through that process enough that people can experience a version of that feeling by listening again and again and uncovering something new every time they listen.

Contact Info:

• Website: kalebmoten.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kalebmoten/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2FKalebMoten
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kalebmoten9060

Image Credits
Sobeit Media