Victor Lemonte Wooten is an American bassist, record producer and educator.
His non-profit music and nature camps have been welcoming music enthusiasts since early 2000. So, what makes this man a perfect choice to learn from? In case you didn’t know how good Wooten actually is, his incredible impromptu performance live on EMGtv will convince you for all eternity.
The man’s got some awesome skills and “The Lesson” solo serves as a lesson indeed.
It’s hard to say that someone is absolutely best at anything, but Wooten comes incredibly close to perfection.
Music is subjective, so as a result, it is quite tricky to claim that someone has the best possible skills at something.
Victor Wooten, however, has an undeniable talent he’s been perfecting since he was two. At the age of six, Wooten was already playing bass with his brothers in their family band.
The band was called The Wooten Brothers Band.
Wooten has been heavily involved in music his whole life.
Today, he plays bass for the metal band Nitro, owns Vix records and teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston and at his own camps. As if that wasn’t enough, Victor also wrote a novel The Music Lesson: A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music.
The piece he’s playing in the video is called “The Lesson,” and we’re quite sure that EMGtv has never received such an amazing musical lecture.
His phenomenal solo will most likely send chills down your spine.
Victor couldn’t have chosen a better name for the song!
The stage at EMGtv is simple with dim lights, just enough space to put several instruments and the center of the scene with a spotlight reserved for one of the best bass players around.
Victor wastes no time—he immediately starts playing. Better yet, the man doesn’t play. He lets his bass talk.
“The Lesson” is probably one of the most appropriate names for the tune since Wooten teaches us how it’s done.
As the first musician who won more than once the Bass Player of the Year award from Bass Player magazine, Wooten is welcome to give a lesson or two. The role fits him perfectly—after all, he’s been teaching music since 1990.
One question pops out: If Victor’s lessons are this impressive, how hard must his tests be?
All jokes aside, the official website of Victor Wooten Center for Music and Nature states that past students have tried, but it’s hard to put in words just how fun Wooten’s camps really are.
After seeing the video, we have no doubt about the quality of it.
We felt like the real lesson Wooten was trying to teach us is that you don’t learn the lesson of music—you just feel it.
We get the feeling that nobody will ever be able to recreate this song the way Wooten does this, because it’s his own natural expression.
That’s precisely what music is about—it’s an expression of your feelings and the way you make other people feel.
Every performance is unique to the player and that’s the wisdom of Victor Wooten right here.
The recipient of five Grammy Awards received almost 3 million YouTube views on this one.
The video was originally posted in 2011.
The same year Wooten was ranked No. 10 in the Top 10 Bassists of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine. The solo Wooten performed here is one of the most inspirational and musically brilliant pieces we’ve heard in quite a while.
Let’s just hope that every person who has an interest in music will evolve into having as much passion for it as Victor does.
Check out the full performance in the link below:
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