The Winans have been some of my favorite people, and Marvin certainly has a real anointing when he preaches and sings; he's a great interpreter of my music.
I trained myself by doing other people's songs in clubs way back when. And so I have no pride about doing covers. I love it. And being a song interpreter, to me, is just as important as, you know, putting your own thing out there. It's all about the soul - where the soul comes from.
I did my first movie, 'The Mambo Kings,' in America without speaking the language. I learned the lines phonetically. I had an interpreter actually just to understand directions from my director.
It's a very immersive and intense form of travel to walk around with an interpreter and stop random people on the street and ask them about their lives.
You see the genius that Whitney Houston has as an interpreter of material, and you realize why genius can be applied to only a few interpretive performers. She finds meaning and depth and soulfulness in a song that often the writer and composer never really knew was there.
I'm not really a songwriter - I'm an interpreter. So in a sense I am an actress first and foremost. I act out the songs, and I lead with my heart.
Unfortunately, it happens all too seldom that you really disappear behind a work, that you are no longer audible as an interpreter.
Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
I didn't think I had a voice at all, and I still think of myself as an interpreter of songs more than a singer. I thought it was too deep; people thought I was a man. I had a very strong Jamaican accent, too; the accent really messed me up for auditions.
Foreign journalists have to have an approved interpreter assigned them, which they have to pay for, who also acts as guide. As an Iranian, even writing for foreign media, I've been mercifully unrestricted.
