BOBBY MCFERRIN

Never a conventional artist, his diversity and range are incomparable. Drawing on the full palette of available musical genres, demonstrating matchless improvisational skills and an ability to create new vocabularies on the fly, McFerrin never fails to dazzle. But what’s most telling about the journey through his YouTube entries are the comments from fans old and new: “He is the Johann Sebastian Bach and the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of today!”, “Beautiful—there’s no other word to describe this music.”, “Bobby McFerrin makes me happy!”, while yet another simply resorted to the thesaurus, dropping some 30-plus adjectives all meant to convey joy and wonderment.
Bobby McFerrin was exposed to a multitude of musical genres during his youth—classical, R&B, jazz, pop and the rest—and all of them have since been absorbed and assimilated by him in his own creations.
“When you grow up with that hodgepodge of music, it just comes out. It was like growing up in a multilingual house,” he says. Bobby spent his earliest days as a professional musician in jazz and cabaret bands, and it wasn’t until age 27 that he experienced what he calls his “light bulb moment,” realizing that his true calling was singing. With the then-booking agent/singer Linda Goldstein serving as his manager and producer—a relationship that continues to this day—McFerrin first found an early niche within the jazz world. Inspired by soloists such as the pianist Keith Jarrett, the courageous McFerrin decided to try singing unaccompanied.
McFerrin’s self-titled debut album in 1982 was well received, but it was 1984’s The Voice, the first-ever solo vocal jazz album recorded without accompaniment or overdubbing, that truly suggested just how imaginative this singer could be. Spontaneous Inventions (1985) gave Bobby his first of 10 Grammys, but it was 1988’s Simple Pleasures and its smash “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” single that made McFerrin a household name.
Bobby McFerrin has often appeared as a conductor. He conducted dozens of the world’s great orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic. “I’m kind of a chameleon,” McFerrin says. “I like to put myself in situations that are going to twist my brain up in interesting ways.”
Bobby’s subsequent recordings and his hundreds of concerts in numerous formats have all continued to accentuate the sheer breadth of his musical interests and abilities. One of his albums, 1997’s Circlesongs, a meditative masterwork comprised of eight spontaneous improvisations based on African and Middle Eastern traditions and created entirely impromptu. Beyond Words (2002), McFerrin’s most recent release prior to VOCAbuLarieS, was a trans-global excursion through Asian, African, Middle Eastern and European influences, with accompaniment by Chick Corea, bassist Richard Bona, drummer Omar Hakim and others. The album’s title was shared by an incisive Bravo Channel documentary on Bobby, also released on DVD.
VOCAbuLarieS (Universal Jazz and Classics), Bobby McFerrin’s first new album in eight years, is the culmination of all that McFerrin’s music has embodied over the years, and simultaneously a bold step forward. VOCAbuLarieS is a collaboration with the composer, arranger, producer and vocalist Roger Treece, a longtime member of Voicestra, Bobby’s dozen-piece improvisational acappella vocal ensemble.
Bobby McFerrin never seems to run out of new ideas, repeatedly discovering his creative spark: “Music is like a spiritual journey down into the depths of my soul. And I like to think we’re all on a journey into our souls. What’s down there?  I want to find out. That’s why I do what I do.”