Devendra Banhart

When I came home my parents were listening to Pakistani Qawwali music, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, they're listening to music from Mali, like Ali Farka Toure, they're listening to Brazilian songwriters, like Gilberto Gil, to opera, to Neil Young even, things you don't hear as a kid in Caracas. I love all the music they turned me onto.

People love to take sides, but it's not effective. It's not really an effective way of communicating something, because you're either already part of the side or you're going to feel attacked and get defensive.

I've always said that musicians are the comics of my generations and comedians are the politicians of my generation.

My interested in Brazilian music stemmed from wanting to find a musical identity other than the salsa and meringue that I was inundated with in Venezuela as a child.

I guess I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing every second.

Coming to Canada, I'd really like to see Sasquatch.

Personally speaking, Canada is becoming more and more beguiling and mysterious and I feel as though I really need to explore it.

Canada has really grown and grown as this unexplored and very mysterious and exotic place to me.

I believe we are all dual beings. Some cultures actually believe we have two souls.

Caracas was a crazy place in the early Nineties. For instance, when I was 11 years old, I pierced my ear. No big deal, right? But everyone was so scandalised that they shut down the school.

Venezuela is incredible, but Caracas? Oh God, I hate it. The sidewalks get smaller every time I go back.

John Cage is someone I got into as a visual artist, before I even knew his music. I don't think a lot of people even know that he does visual art.

I was just a huge fan of Blur, Suede, Elastica and Pulp, of course, even Menswear and Ocean Colour Scene.

I was born with a beard. We're quite hairy down in Latin America. We don't have to use sponges when we wash dishes. We just use our baby beards.

Growing up in Caracas, Venezuela, the ubiquitous music is salsa, cumbia, merengue, a little bit of samba.

Let's take fashion seriously, but not ourselves so seriously. Or reverse that, maybe don't take fashion so seriously, but take yourself seriously. Actually, don't take yourself seriously, that's for sure. So, yeah, take fashion seriously, just not yourself.

No one's fearless. We're all full of fear. But can your fear guide you or lean into it, embrace it.

If you're ever wondering what to wear, just dress like a pumpkin, you're good to go.

A soul singer is always singing to their crowd. They're always singing about their woes to you. And I really appreciate that when a singer is making you feel... when they're directing it at me. When they're including me.

For a long time, soul music was maybe one of my favorite kinds of music.

I look at making records like you make a dish. A culinary experience. The way you throw in a tambourine, it's like spices or herbs. The main part of the song is the stock.

I want to say that Beck is incredible. He is an art machine.

At 15 I discovered girls and '90s ska.

R. Kelly is my favorite singer.

Dad had four world records, and they happened to be Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Ali Farka Toure. I tried singing like these people, and it didn't work.

Green is one of my favorite colors.

Of all my childhood books, 'The Giving Tree and Hope for the Flowers' really did change my early world, but after reading 'Momo' in my 30s, I thought, Ahhhhhh, this is the one book I wish I had read as a kid! Then reread at every subsequent chapter of my life.

I was born in Texas, you know. I was born in Houston.

I love Meredith Monk, and with Instagram, I get a chance to see if she has a cat, and what's she reading.

I practice Rasayana Buddhism.

Something I practice everyday is Tonglin. It's Tibetan for taking and receiving.

The first paid show was in Los Angeles at an art opening and I was paid maybe, I don't know, twenty five bucks?

I've always thought it'd be nice to be seaweed, kind of just floating about.

In the next life what would my career be? Oh, easy. Dried persimmon dealer.

It's embarrassing to quote Gandhi or something, but being the change you want to see in the world is pretty powerful.

The real hippie is trying to create something inclusive, something holistic, something loving and healthy which isn't in perpetual conflict with authority and actually knows that the only way to disarm the entire game is to step aside and not take any sides.

I sometimes feel like I should be in the hotel business.

I remember when I was a kid I thought I could either be an athletic water drinker, like an Olympic-level water drinker, or I could invent Windex. Which I thought was really smart, because it already existed.

I don't make art to make money, I make art so I can make art.

I like clothes. I really do. I like going through colors, in a way. I go, 'Greens, man. Greens. Oh, yellow. This yellow feels good.' So it shapes your psyche in a way. But I don't think about it too much, even though I'm interested in it.

I've been doing visual stuff for as long as I've been making records; in fact, for longer.

One not-to-be-mentioned major said they would sign me if I worked with a team of songwriters to help me finish songs, ha! Of course, in hindsight, I should've done it just to see what that would have been like.

I come from a school of artists, the Mission School in San Francisco, and there are a lot of artists I look up to.

I can't imagine anyone approaching art without the joy of experimentation. The joy of it is inherent... and that is how you flow with the reality of change.

With music there's so many limbs and facets. Video and touring and merchandise and all those little things require attention. They're artist things but I tend to joke around too much with those things.

I've always lived in small places.

I'm very lucky my parents were into different kinds of music.

I don't ever think of myself as a dark person or a ruined person in any way. I just feel happy to be alive, and to be able to love.

Well, love is a difficult thing to hold on to. It's a slippery little beast. It will hold you and then it will elude you at any moment.

I love 'Star Wars.'