James Blake, music, producer, composer, jamesblakemusic.com, took to the stage on day two of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to discuss how one can unpack creativity.

After playing two tracks on the piano, Blake laid out the importance of having strong foundations.

“There is an assumption that I started doing this (creating music) with a laptop. Tools have become so profoundly vast and exciting, so it’s easy to skip a lot of steps and go straight to making things. The reality is that those are shortcuts and they skip a huge amount of learning. Before getting into the digital realm of music, I had done 14 years of study,” he said.

He added that his father, who is also a musician, was insistent that he learned the techniques and he’s grateful because that’s what helps him perform on stage. 

“I want to encourage all young artists and those in the creative field to not shortcut the learning phase. TikTok and platforms like that have accelerated this issue – when one sees someone making videos online, the first instinct is to try that and make a similar video,” he said, pointing out how that eliminates the learning phase.

Integration and collaboration

The conversation was moderated by Suzanne Powers, founder and co-CEO, All&, who asked him about the importance of integration and collaboration, two aspects that are important for the advertising industry.

Blake said, “I don’t envy people who are forced to collaborate in their workspace. But, when thrown into doing that, one needs to navigate people and learn a lot about oneself. When I moved to America, I started collaborating a lot. I was thrown into studios with a lot of different artists – sometimes having to work with friends of friends. And in my brain, I was thinking I didn’t want to be part of it because of the vibe. There were a lot of socially awkward moments then.”

However, he revealed collaborating did help him. 

“I’m not routinely asked to make myself smaller, but in collaborations, it’s about imagining a larger space for all of us, rather than just standing ground. It’s about following ideas down the rabbit hole even if they are bad. Even with my preconceptions and prejudices, we end up bouncing off with each other in new exciting manners,” he said.

Revealing his best collaboration story, he said, “It’s with my current team. In the last year and a half, after leaving my label management team, what was sold to me as a security, I started building my team, rather than having a manager, who filtered things. Now, it feels like a circle where I’m just a team member and a partner of several partners. This has helped me learn team building and getting the best out of every person.”

Human creativity and technology

The talk ended with Blake talking about the role of technology versus human creativity. 

“To put it bluntly, companies right now are faced with a choice. Some people will miscalculate. A lot of people right now are using AI, even if they are saying they are not. Companies will lose out on the potential of human connection with AI-generated content. AI was supposed to give us more time. It’s giving us less. I have been saying this to companies I’m working with – use it for efficiency. But there’s a clear distinction between human creativity and technology,” he said.