Whether it's by choice or by accident, some music stars are building a second career that's rather academic.

After spending decades recording albums, staging tours and learning the ropes of the music industry, established musicians are taking their experience and applying it to the classroom, obtaining positions as chairs, fellows, professors, instructors, and lecturers at colleges, universities and other academic institutions.

"I've just finished my second year and it's been fantastic!" enthuses GRAMMY winner Melissa Manchester, who is an adjunct professor teaching voice and songwriting at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.

"I hadn't really thought about doing it since I'd never gone to much of college, but I was invited to teach a master class at [USC and] we had a rockin' time — and then I was brought in to cover a class called Writing For Musical Theatre For Pop Students.

"My students created a musical that was just fantastic, and then Chris Sampson, associate dean [and director] of the Popular Music [Program], invited me back to teach individual instruction for what I call the Art Of Conversational Singing. It's thrilling."

Manchester isn't the only renowned artist teaching at Thornton: the faculty also includes noted GRAMMY-nominated trombonist Bill Watrous, Yellowjackets co-founder and GRAMMY-winning pianist Russell Ferrante, and veteran GRAMMY-winning jazz drummer Peter Erskine. Meanwhile, classic rocker Steve Miller, eminent GRAMMY-winning songwriter Lamont Dozier and GRAMMY-nominated jazz pianist Patrice Rushen have all fulfilled appointments as USC artists-in-residence.

Meanwhile, at Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music — where well-known instructors include bluegrass fiddler Darol Anger, hit songwriter Kara DioGuardi and GRAMMY-winning bass player John Patitucci — Professor Terri Lyne Carrington says that her career as a celebrated jazz drummer works as an invaluable teaching tool for those desiring an insider's view of the business.

"We're currently doing the things that most students want to do," says 2011 GRAMMY winner Carrington, whose rhythmic skills earned her a full Berklee College of Music scholarship at age 11, and an honorary doctorate in 2003.

"There's something about learning from somebody [who] has the experience that you're trying to have that's different than from somebody [who] has dedicated their whole life to teaching. You need both, actually, because educators [who] have dedicated their lives to mostly educating and maybe not touring and playing as much, have methods and ways of teaching that have been honed, specialized and worked out to their maximum abilities.

"Berklee is cool because it has both elements. My students see me juggling my career and my teaching schedule while trying to make sure they get all their lessons in and it inspires them, because that's what they want to be doing."

A few scholars have even gone beyond music to channel their inner educator: Bad Religion singer and co-founder Greg Graffin, Ph.D., currently lectures in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, while Brian Cox, ex-keyboardist with '90s Irish dance pop band D:Ream, is a professor at the University of Manchester. Cox made headlines as an English particle physicist while working on experiments involving the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland.

And in 2010, GRAMMY winner Wyclef Jean was appointed a visiting fellow at Rhode Island-based Brown University's Department of Africana Studies, taking part in Haiti-related lectures, classes and faculty conversations.

But for the most part, musicians have stuck to either their own fields, or ones that bear an immediate association. For example, Mark Volman, co-founder of '60s pop band the Turtles, doesn't teach performance. As chair of Entertainment Industry Studies and assistant professor at Belmont University's Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business, he does offer a practical curriculum involving the business itself.

"You're either in my class because you're interested in the business of music and would like to be on the business side — the record company, the management, publishing and so forth — or you're a musician — a singer, an artist, a creator — looking to be smart enough to go in with a good manager or attorney and ask the questions necessary to negotiate the best deals for yourself as you become better known and more successful," says Volman.

Volman is a latecomer to the academic world. Now 66, he was 45 when he first attended Los Angeles' Loyola Marymount University to obtain his undergraduate degree in communications.

He graduated as class valedictorian with a bachelor's degree in 1997 and eventually earned his master's degree in Fine Arts at Loyola in 1999.

Volman says he's found personal fulfillment through teaching on a number of levels.

"It's the fulfillment of realizing that you're being looked to and trusted for what I'm doing in terms of helping them get to the point where I'm at now: a 50-year career still making a living at what I left high school to do.

"We now license our [Turtles] music to iTunes. We own our master recordings. We own the concert business. Everything of value is coming back to us. So now I can teach students how to do that, and I really get a lot of satisfaction helping students get to that point."

There's maybe another benefit to teaching younger generations. Carrington, who began her teaching career at USC before moving back to Boston to be closer to her parents, says her students keep her contemporary.

"I'm inspired by my students," she notes. "A lot of them have a zest, a drive, and they're trying to do something different.

"My playing has also gotten a lot better after teaching. And I get to stay current and know what the heck is going on with new music, what they’re listening to and rhythms all over the world. There's a lot of mutual inspiration."

(Nick Krewen is a Toronto-based journalist who has written for The Toronto Star, TV Guide, Billboard, Country Music and was a consultant for the National Film Board's music industry documentary Dream Machine.)

Lakecia Benjamin didn't call her last album Pursuance just because it's a Coltrane tune. Sure, that guest-stuffed 2020 album paid tribute to John and Alice — but also to Benjamin's indomitable doggedness.

And over Zoom — where she looks crisp and prosperous in futuristic, trapezoidal glasses and a chunky, ornate gold necklace — Benjamin's tenacity is palpable.

"You've got to just say, Until the day I die, I'm not going to stop," Benjamin declares to GRAMMY.com. "I only have one gig today. Okay, tomorrow I'll have two. The next day I'll have three, and I'm not going to leave. I'm not going to stop. Oh, I don't have a record deal. I'm not stopping."

So much could have tripped her up for good: The jam sessions she was laughed out of, with a dismissal to "Go learn changes." The epic cat-herding session for Pursuance, which could have fallen apart completely. The car accident she suffered in 2021, on the way home from a gig, which could have easily been fatal.

Benjamin just wanted 2023's Phoenix to be a worthy entry in her growing discography. The jazz saxophonist didn't have GRAMMY dreams; she didn't even presume it would be more successful than Pursuance.

Now, Phoenix is nominated for three golden gramophones at the 2024 GRAMMYs: Best Instrumental Album, Best Jazz Performance ("Basquiat") and Best Instrumental Composition ("Amerikkan Skin").

"I was just trying to tell my story about what happened to me, what's continuously happening to me," Benjamin says of Phoenix, which was produced by four-time GRAMMY-winning drummer and composer Terri Lyne Carrington. "Just trying to give people an idea of what it's like to be resilient, what it's like to not give up, what it's like to fight.

Read on for an interview with Benjamin about her journey to the GRAMMYs, and where she unpacks her personal dictum, which should apply to creatives the world over: "Keep going. Keep going. Keep going."

This interview has been edited for clarity.

What role have the GRAMMYs historically played in your life?

I remember being a little kid, watching the GRAMMYs and all. As a musician, at least in America, it's the highest award you can get.

It's something that you dream about. You dream about being nominated. You dream about walking on that stage. You dream about being in that audience, seeing your other peers and superstars performing. I personally dreamed about the red carpet.

Are there past jazz nominees that you found super inspiring?

All of them, really. Chick Corea, Christian McBride, Ron Carter, Terri Lyne, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter. There are just so many.

I first interviewed you for JazzTimes about your album-length tribute to John and Alice Coltrane, Pursuance. What was the underlying theme of Phoenix?

Just the idea that things are possible. You don't have to get things done in a certain timeline, in a certain frame. You just have to keep going, with a lot of determination. That was my goal.

I did not think that the reception would have been bigger than Pursuance. There's no way I saw that coming. It's been a really wild rollercoaster year, for sure.

Working with Terri Lyne Carrington was a huge step. It seems like you were swinging for something bigger. What was that thing?

She was actually the catalyst for the whole thing. I picked her before I even had the music — everything — because I wanted someone that could get the best out of me. Someone who's going to tell me the truth, tell me when it's not good enough, tell me what's not possible.

I felt that the guests that I have picked in mind — and they had already agreed to the project — were in her sphere of people that she's worked with. I felt she could understand my dedication in this project to highlight women musicians, and to highlight [how] women musicians have had to climb the ladder, and sometimes they fall back down and climb back up again.

I felt that her story is a true testament of that. I just felt she embodied where I am right now, and what I'm trying to do.

Terri Lyne commands such a musical universe. You could have made Phoenix with so many different configurations and ensembles. What made these particular folks perfect to tell your story?

The fact that [pianist] Patrice Rushen started as a jazz musician, moved into the pop world, super megastar, back into the jazz world, back into the trenches, still teaching and still educating.

Angela Davis — a huge iconic figure — had her own adversities. They all represent in their own stories the idea of persevering, the idea to keep going, but also doing that while operating at an extremely high level.

As a musician myself, there's always self-doubt about the past. I wish I did this when I was younger, I wish I made this choice, I wish I pushed harder, blah, blah. But it took until my thirties to realize that I have all this life to live. I don't have to cram everything into the now and beat myself up. It seems like you had a similar moment of self-realization.

I guess I still have those struggles as well too. I think we all do, but I think you start to realize you're alive right now.

You can't control what you did 10 years ago. You can't control what you did five years ago. You can only control what's happening right now, and you could sit around and sit in that regret and doubt, and that becomes your story. Or, you could choose to get up and decide, I'm going to make a new reality for myself. I'm going to brand myself, and I'm going to try to accomplish the things that I'm dreaming about.

Why dream about, If I had known this 10 years ago, I would've did this? But it's right now, you know it. You can go ahead forward and try to get there. You don't have to listen to other people's limitations, the part of their life and their reality. But it's not a part of yours.

We're all on Jazz Instagram. We see everyone competing over gigs and vibing each other out. It seems like you're trying to get out of that rat race and be like Terri Lyne, where it's a whole life — a continuum.

That's what I started thinking. Even as a bandleader, everyone's in this pool, crabs in a barrel trying to drag each other down, waiting for a call, waiting to say, "I have more gigs," waiting to say, "I have more GRAMMYs," and I decided the best thing I could do is to take my future into my own hands.

If I become a bandleader, if I'm making the calls, I'm the one doing this. I have a little bit more control, and then I can choose to say, You know what? I'm going to try to live out my dreams, and if it doesn't work out for me, I can die knowing I gave it my all. I did everything I can to get the things I want in life.

And to me, that's enough — if I know that I've tried the very best I can to do something.

What helped you get out of that tunnel-vision mindset?

I wouldn't say I'm all the way out of it, because those thoughts creep in; you're programmed this way. But I do think you have to just say, There's no other road I can take. I'm going straight. I'm not going through the sewer. If there's a roadblock, I'm not going to the left. I'm going straight down this road.

When I did Pursuance [I thought], You know what? I got all 45 of these cats up in here. I did it myself, on my dime, on my time, the way I wanted to do it.

After that, there's immense pressure. What's going to happen with Phoenix? Is it going to be good enough? Is it going to be this? And to know I was able to tell my own story. I was able to get these guests the same way, figure it out, get this music together and get it together, lets me know that I may be crawling to get there, but I'm getting there.

I'm moving forward, and I'm doing it in a way that I'm getting better as an artist. I'm not just getting more, I guess, accolades and noteworthy my actual talent is because I'm choosing to put the music first.

Here's a spicy question. How have people treated you differently now that you're a first-time GRAMMY nominee?

It's only happened recently, but it is drastically changing. I will say that. There are some people that this whole year, the last two years, it started to seriously change. There are people that went from thinking, I'm just an ambitious girl out there, "Good luck. She's trying her best," to taking me a little bit more seriously when I have these [nominations]; they're not dreams anymore. They're like, "She's making things happen."

Where are you at in your development as a saxophonist? What's the status of you and the horn?

I've got a long way to go, but you spend three years playing Coltrane, you'll definitely expedite the process of: at each gig I'm forced to be at a certain level, minimum.

I think I'm making some progress — and we'll have to battle that out with Terri Lyne, but I think I'm getting better, and that's the most important thing. I wish I could expedite that a little faster, but these albums are just pictures of where I am at the time.

John and Alice were such outstanding models for how to live a creative life.

It's inspiring. I tell you that. For everyone out there that is wondering how to keep pushing forward, how not to give up, every time you get a minor victory, that's another example of going the right way.

My first two albums were projects that were more, let's say, ear friendly. You would think people would gravitate to that more because they understand that music is more contemporary, and they [performed] decently.

But then I come out with this Coltrane project and it does exponentially better, and that's being true to myself, then I do another project that's even deeper into the pool of what it's supposed to be, and then has even more success.

I just think that we got to spend less time trying to find these gimmicks, and people really respond when something is authentic, when it's a live show and they see you pouring your soul out there authentically, that's what gravitates them — not trying to find a way to get over on them.

"Get over on them." What do you mean by that?

I feel like that's what a gimmick is. If I say, I'm going to hold this note for 10 minutes because the audience will really love it. I'm trying to find a way to convince them that this is good, this is cool.

I'm like, Let me dress up in this outfit, because this'll convince them. Rather than just coming out and just being like, This is who I am. This is what it is. And putting it all on the stage, and then they can see authentically, This is who I'm voting for.

Do you see a lot of charlatans out there in the jazz scene, just trying to dazzle with cheap tricks?

I will say that I pray for humanity to be more authentic.

Terri Lyne Carrington Is Making Strides For Inclusion And Mentorship In Jazz. And You Can Hear All Of Them In Her Sound.

Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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Living Legends is a series that spotlights icons in music still going strong today. This week, GRAMMY.com spoke with Mark Volman, an original member of the Turtles and one half of Flo & Eddie, who had a memorable stint with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

Volman’s reconstituted version of the Turtles is currently on the "Happy Together" tour with other 1960s acts; his new memoir, Happy Forever, is available now.

Most remember the Turtles as straight-laced hitmakers of the mid-'60s, full stop. But breeze through YouTube, and it's abundantly clear: there was manic energy under the hood ready to blow.

Take their TV performance of their signature song "Happy Together" — the one viewed 26 million times. While the band mimes along without incident, Mark Volman prances around, wildly swinging a French horn; it's as if he'd raided the instrument closet, wandered onstage and nobody asked him to leave.

When he locks eyes with lead singer Howard Kaylan — and puts the bell of the horn on Kaylan's head — there seems to be a flash of twisted, kindred recognition between the two men. In another TV performance, Kaylan's dressed like an austere 19th century banker while Volman wears a comically large, polka-dotted bowtie with matching hat.

When surveying the sea of bowl-cutted guitar combos, Frank Zappa — the patron saint of mischief — clearly sensed these guys had a screw loose. Hence, when the Turtles flamed out, Volman and Kaylan's stories were just getting going.

"I think our sense of humor was let loose when we joined Frank's group," Volman tells GRAMMY.com. "The mischief that we caused was terribly exciting."

Volman's out with a new memoir, Happy Forever, where he takes inventory of his deliciously oddball career — first with those high schoolers-turned-hitmakers, then with Kaylan in Zappa's Mothers of Invention, then striking out as the zonked duo Flo and Eddie.

But it's been far from an easy ride. From the 1980s to the 2010s, the Turtles' business and legal drama was a continuous disaster. After a Turtles-backed copyright suit in 2016 netted $99 million from SiriusXM, Volman was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, which progressively — and negatively — impacts mood, reasoning, memory, and more.

But speaking with GRAMMY.com, Volman had a great mental day, and spoke lucidly and candidly about his unpredictable ride through the music industry.

As the "Happy Together" tour with the Cowsills, Gary Puckett, the Classics IV, and other '60s survivors rolls on through North America, read on for the full interview with Volman.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell me how you realized, Wow, I've lived one hell of a life. This would make a ripping yarn.

Well, quite honestly, I started working on this book 12 years ago, and it feels like it took that long to get it done.

I don't have the kind of discipline to sit and write like that. When I felt like writing, I wrote, and when I didn't, I didn't bother. So, it took a long time to get from one point to another.

But that was what the book was kind of about, getting from one point to another. Having everybody remark about me was maybe a bit arrogant, but I thought you'd get the best look at what I've done by all the people kind of reminiscing about times that we spent.

The facts are out there; you've carved the stories in stone. But what was it emotionally like for you in the mid-1960s, when the Turtles were getting going? Was it a competitive feeling? Was there promise in the air? It just seems like a charged time.

It was a little touch of all of them. There was a feeling of ambiguity, if you kind of look at it.

We didn't really consider chasing the dream of being stars, because we had come out of high school [having] done a couple of records before we did "It Ain't Me Babe." We had already built a fan base out of our high school in Westchester, Los Angeles, California.

We just were really content to have the time that we did have, because things were changing so quickly in terms of leaving folk/rock behind, and shifting gears to how successful pop music was going to be. You really just kind of worried about yourself.

I know we hardly had the time to compete with the groups of that time, because there was a lot of content that needed to be created for radio, for television, and all of the other dimensions that it was taking.

Where do you feel the Turtles fit into the L.A. milieu of the time? You and the Byrds had your breakthrough Dylan covers the same year; you guys even spelled your name with a y.

We were on a small label, so we really didn't have firepower of groups like the Byrds who were with Columbia, groups like the Beach Boys who were on Capitol.

We were on White Whale Records at the time of independence — it would be another couple years until the Beatles would start Apple.

But independent records were hard to figure out, because the competition really wasn't between the groups as much as it was the labels. A group who had a hit that was slow-moving probably was not going to be around competing very much, because there wasn't a lot of money being spent on promotion.

People didn't really have that stuff in their heads like we do today — branding and all the ways that people discover music. We had people who were old guys from record company jobs and they weren't moving towards publicity. They were moving towards how they could make more money.

One of the quickest ways was getting rid of the group that was causing petty problems. When we stepped up and said we wanted to produce ourselves, we wanted to write our own music, we wanted to do all of these things that we saw the Beatles do. That was just not happening on White Whale Records.

*The Turtles in 1967. Image courtesy of the artist.*

Happy Together and its title track marked an evolutionary step nonetheless.

Happy Together probably sold a lot more records than a lot of other artists, and it was on White Whale Records. I give a lot of credit to the time we spent arranging the record, the time spent putting the vocals all together, making an album that was going to have any kind of airplay.

Not just "Happy Together," but "She'd Rather Be With Me" and albums like [1968's The Turtles Present] The Battle of the Bands. We had probably a lot of things that we could have done if we'd have just maybe hung on, but I think being on the independent record [label] really hurt us.

In the long run, you could say we might have had a few more hits, but looking back now, we had a pretty significant career with "It Ain't Me Babe," "Let Me Be," "You Baby," "She's My Girl." You know what I mean? "Eleanor," "You Showed Me." We had a lot of good hits off.

That was kind of the hangover, was that White Whale. We never left that. I mean, we never could get away. So we just kind of played out our run, and then Howard and I joined Frank Zappa, and that was the start of a whole other part of our life.

I have a very strange sense of humor, so I connect with Flo & Eddie in all your wacko-ness. What was going on psychologically between you and Howard? I'm sure you both had a screw loose — a nutty energy raring to get out during the Turtles years.

That's a very apropos way to describe it. I think our sense of humor was let loose when we joined Frank's group.

I mean, we co-wrote movies with Frank like [1971's] 200 Motels, and we did Carnegie Hall with the Mothers and with Frank. Frank opened the door for us to explore and be involved with a lot of really grown up music.

I say "grown up" because it had guitar changes and singing parts that we created for Frank. We couldn't create those for any other place. You look at "Billy the Mountain" as a piece of music: Frank created some brilliant, fun stuff.

It opened the door to comedy music. Groups like Captain Beefheart grew out of that, and groups that came from Alice Cooper. Self-deprecation was very popular and people enjoyed the stuff we were doing, because it wasn't just traditional three-chord pop music. It had a sense of depravity.

There must have been a kinetic energy in the Mothers of Invention. I imagine you could cut the mischief in the air with a knife.

The mischief that we caused was terribly exciting.

I give a lot of Frank credit about me and Howard, because he really turned us loose. He turned us loose to sing what we could bring to the different songs. It's like "A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono," where Howard drops Yoko into a bag and we're singing.

The songs we were singing that night at the Fillmore [as captured on 1971s Fillmore East – June 1971], I think Frank really said it was OK. It was OK to "just do what you guys do." And that's pretty funny. He thought we were the cat's pajamas.

He was upset that the Mothers of Invention never got into the Hall of Fame. They did, but it was as Frank. Frank just felt that the band he had put together with [drummer] Aynsley Dunbar, me and Howard, [woodwindist and keyboardist] Ian Underwood, it was just a massive band.

Jean-Luc Ponty would come in and play with us. For Howard and I, it was just a remarkable opportunity to sing real music. The Turtles offered us a different type of real music, but it was fairly limited because radio was stuck with two minutes and 35 seconds. We were making [songs] that were whole sides of records with Frank.

Our credibility probably shot way up with Frank. Even today, the people I meet — just hearing you makes me laugh because you're exactly the audience that we wanted.

*Flo & Eddie in the 1970s. Image courtesy of the artist.*

And how did Flo & Eddie spring out of the Mothers?

Frank got pushed into an orchestra pit in London, and that was a week after the fire went off in Montreux.

There was a lot going on at that point in the music industry for Frank. Frank kind of felt very strongly that he needed to change his karma. I know that might be hard to imagine with Frank, but he actually was feeling really not well about the fire in Montreux which burned the theater completely down.

And for him being pushed into the orchestra a bit where he was unable to tour for at least a year — he had a broken back. He had a broken jaw. I mean, he was a mess.

Flo & Eddie was started because we needed to tour; we needed to make money. And there was no guarantee we were going to be back with Frank. I mean, he was out two years or something like that. So, we just treated it as Let's get to work writing, and we created [1972's] The Phlorescent Leech & Eddie.

As a duo, you and Howard had legs throughout the 1970s.

There was something going on in our heads. When you go back and listen to things like "Keep It Warm," that [was the] side of the record business that we kind of moved to, which became a little bit more challenging for the listener.

I mean, it talks about the war. Twenty years ago we were writing "Keep It Warm" and it was a very untraditional love song — a love for each other, a love for music, just all the things that were brought to that record.

[1976's Moving Targets] became a very popular record around the world. Our autobiographical kind of look at problems going on in the world. It was a challenging record for the time.

So many epochs of culture have occurred since then. What do you remember about navigating the dry spells?

Album number three was Illegal, Immoral and Fattening, and that record was different. It was kind of pointing at the music business and saying how ridiculous it kind of was.

We were singing songs about other artists. We sang a song that we wrote for Marc Bolan. It's a song about rock and roll and how there's a lot of people running around flaunting their sexuality. It was interesting because it was kind of leading us off somewhere.

And that was where we went with the autobiographical meanderings of Moving Targets. That's the album where we were transitioning to better music. It was a little bit harder with Bob Ezrin working with us who had produced Alice Cooper. So we went for a harder sell on things.

I think at that point we faced the reality that the public was just not interested, or that it just felt like our record company wasn't interested.

We had a chance to go into radio at that point in time. We signed almost a million-dollar deal for four years with radio, and all we had to do was show up and play old songs.

It wasn't as complete a finish in the heart. It felt like we were missing something that we had really wanted to do, but money always makes you aware of itself every time you get an offer.

*Flo & Eddie performing in 1983. Photo: Paul Natkin/Getty Images*

In 1983, you won back the rights to the Turtles name. That must have been a point of redemption.

Yeah. Recently, [there was] that lawsuit that we were involved in with the songwriters, and the publishings, and the songs being a part of what was going on in terms of getting artists paid.

Most of the artists I grew up with didn't understand ownership of master recordings or publishing of master recordings and then performance.

That was always at the root of what we we're trying to wave our hands and say, "Hey, why don't you pay everybody? I mean, they're the ones making the records. Those artists are the people who are writing all the songs. You're already taking money from artists as publishers."

So the beginning of that whole situation that took off was in the 1970s. For our part of the bargain, we wanted to own the recordings because we found a discrepancy of about $600,000 in the White Whale auditing. And we went to an attorney and says, "What do you do here?"

So the lawyer sort of created an industry for us, which was this lawsuit, and it took a long time to clean it up, but we eventually won our name back. They claimed that they owned the name the Turtles. And we knew that that just wasn't true. I mean, we were the Turtles before we were anything else. The Turtles was a part of high school.

Trying to clean that up opened the door to why our songwriting was not being equated financially to us in that 50/50 songwriter publishing. Because the record company claimed they own the publishing on everything, and that was not true.

So what happened from there?

The final thing was performance royalties on records being played on the radio. We were not getting paid for that either because White Whale was such a small company. They couldn't use any of their firepower. They had none. [Our attorney] walked in, filed a $2.5 million lawsuit. That lasted almost seven years.

And then the follow-up to that was the publishing, songwriting ownership. Flo & Eddie for the fact jumped in at the top of all that and said, "Where's our money?" We were part of a group of people, mostly '60s artists probably, who got stuck the way that we did.

There's a whole thing in my book where I talk about what it was like to have a No. 1 record. All the artists from Three Dog Night to the Rascals, talked about how they all got taken advantage, how Morris Levy came along and took music away from Tommy James and the Shondells, all his recordings. He didn't get paid for any of them, and he had to go in.

With our lawsuit victory we were able to begin to commandeer ownership. I think that was probably one of the big things of the '70s and '80s that got us all through was that we were now seeing more and more music coming online, streaming.

We're seeing more money today than ever before. It's a really good thing for the artist who didn't make anything at a certain time.

*Mark Volman performing on the “Happy Together” tour in 2022. Photo: Bobby Bank via Getty Images*

When you let go of the negativity and look back on your long career, what are you most proud of?

Well, every little piece of the pie, there's just no way you can say without one, we wouldn't have the other.

Without "Happy Together," we wouldn't have had the chance to sing with the Mothers of Invention. I mean, we sang with Bono at Carnegie Hall, with the guys from U2.

Our luck is that we made our connection to producers. Roy Thomas Baker, we sang with Roy on a bunch of records that he was making with so many groups and so many of the artists. Nobody knows we sang "Hungry Heart" with Bruce Springsteen. "Hungry Heart" got him into the top 10. We laughingly said something like, "Without us you wouldn't have anything."

When we did "Bang a Gong (Get it On)," the T. Rex record, I asked Marc Bolan, "Are we going to get paid for it?" And he said no.

Oh, god.

In the end result, the circle was way unbroken. That's why there's a real tenderness for the time spent in the music industry.

At the same time I got involved with Howard, we did radio in New York at WXRK. We were working with Shadoe Stevens and Dr. Demento and all of these great radio personalities that taught us about radio.

[Frank] had a record company called Bizarre/Straight Records. And there we were messing around with Frank in the studio making records, doing a movie, 200 Motels.

It's been a lifelong [journey], but I just say to all the folks, "I hope we didn't let you down." Sometimes Turtles fans, Flo & Eddie fans, there's a little part of me that thought, what if we'd have just stayed inthat pop music thing? Where would we be today?

I probably would be like Michael Jackson. Oh, make sure there's a comma after that: "and he laughed."

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Michaël Brun's new EP has almost three times as many guests as it does tracks. And he's keen on you knowing about them.

The first tune on Fami Summer, which arrived July 21, features SAINt JHN, Charly Black and J Perry, with an uncredited J Balvin verse. "Shut Up & Dance" is augmented by King Promise, Kes and Anthony Ramos. The third and final cut, "Closer," enlists Stalk Ashley and Kojey Radical.

But it's not guests for the sake of guests: the Haitian DJ and producer does everything with keen intentionality. "Everybody has a perspective," Brun tells GRAMMY.com. "The chance, the opportunity, to bring my culture and all these amazing artists from Haiti and around the world in one space was something that I've always wanted to do."

He's referring to his volcanic SummerStage performance in New York's Central Park, a day after Fami Summer's release. But it applies to that EP, and his artistic presence writ large.

Brun was brought up in Haiti, where he was exposed to a multiplicity of sounds and styles; as the years rolled on, he acutely perceived the Caribbean's ripple effects, between its various islands and around the world. Accordingly, "I felt like the EP could really encapsulate all the different things that made me who I am as an artist today," he says.

Read on for an in-depth interview with Brun about his globe-spanning Summerstage performance, his impressive roster of guests on Fami Summer and the complicated and evolving role of Haiti in the global music landscape.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell me about your recent Summerstage performance. How did it feel up there?

That was, like, a personal achievement. I've been dreaming about a show like that most of my life. I got to bring out so many iconic artists from Haiti. We had, like, 5,000 people out there.

Tell me about those artists you brought onstage.

I had a really, really big group of artists that joined. For the opening, there was DJ KOLO, a great DJ from Haiti. Right now, he has his own scene that he's been working on in the north. He has a lot of house music influences, Afrotech influences.

And then, Paul Beaubrun, who's a really good friend — one of the original people I started with, like seven years ago. He has an incredible band.

So, they performed, and then during my set, the idea behind this show is: I DJ and MC, but then bring out all these different surprise guests throughout the night. Each of the surprise guests is really meaningful to me in different ways, and some of them are from Haiti.

One example is Naika. There was another artist called Anie Alerte. One more is J Perry, who [worked with me on] my new song, "Jessica," on my EP.

So, those are some of the Haitian artists, but then I also had Saint Levant, who worked on my recent song, "Sak Pase." And Joeboy from Nigeria. Anthony Ramos. So, there's a really interesting mix of all kinds of artists from around the world that I've collaborated with.

For the people who came to the show, they were just hearing the set, and there were surprises every five minutes, which is pretty nuts.

Joeboy was one of the first Afrobeats artists I interviewed when I got hired at GRAMMY.com. What do you take away from him?

I love Joeboy. I've known him for a few years through Mr Eazi, because I worked really closely with Mr Eazi for a while; now, he's become a really close friend.

[Joeboy and I] actually have a new song that's going to come out soon, called "Game Over." We premiered it at the show, and actually shot the music video the day before. So, he came from Nigeria, and that was one of the really big surprises I'm happy we got to make.

**You released three singles earlier in 2023; now, you're back with new music. Tell me about your creative path to this new EP, Fami Summer.**

This year's releases are my first releases with a major. My entire career, I've been indie. I just always felt like I didn't want to do any kind of label partnership until I found partners that really believed in the vision that I had.

As an artist, I've always wanted to make music that builds bridges around the world. So, I felt like with the first three releases, we really focused in on specific areas around the world.

So, "Clueless" was Nigeria, with Oxlade. "Charge It" really felt that confluence. That was with Bayka, who's actually from Kingston; Masego has Jamaican heritage; every time I ever linked with Jozzy, she always talked about how much she loved the dancehall. Then, "Sak Pase" with Saint Levant and Lolo [Zouaï] was very Arabic influenced.

With the EP … I really wanted to bring together my personal heritage as much as possible, which is a mixed Caribbean heritage. There's as much Haitian influence as there is Guyanese influence as there is Jamaican as there is West African, by way of the UK and Europe.

I think because I grew up in Haiti, I was exposed to so many different styles — so many different languages and sounds. So, I felt like the EP could really encapsulate all the different things that made me who I am as an artist today.

Musically, where do all these strains of influence connect for you?

I feel like around Haiti in particular, there's such an interesting history of multiple countries having links to that part of the world. 

So, whether it's European presence, whether it's the incredible West African presence that still exists today … if you even look at the different languages that are spoken throughout the Caribbean, whether it's English or Creole or French mixed with our local languages … In Haiti, we have Creole; but then in Jamaica, there's patois.

All those things are kind of related. If you didn't really know that, you might see them as disparate parts of the world. But really, I think the Caribbean is just as Latin as it is African as it is European as it is local and native. I feel like that diversity of sound is what makes the Caribbean what it is — about diversity of culture.

I grew up traveling to Guyana, and I grew up in Haiti. Sometimes, I would come to the States, and I had a chance to go to Europe and West Africa. All of these different influences, I think, made me appreciate different sounds.

That's how I approached every single song: I wanted this to be the truest version of myself, to the music and the collaborators as well.

Can we do a lightning round where you talk about the special guests on the EP, starting with Anthony Ramos?

Anthony, I linked with a couple of years ago now, and we've been working on music and became such good friends. He's one of the most talented people I've ever met. I think most people know him as an actor, but he's also an amazing dancer and singer. He can rap; he can write. It inspires me a lot.

Charly Black?

Charly Black is such a legend. Like, "Gyal You a Party Animal" is one of the biggest Jamaican hits, I think, in the last decade. And that's one of the songs that truly crosses over, because it's something you can hear at any bar, anywhere in the world.

When I went to Kingston earlier this year and had a chance to work with him — especially on the song "Jessica," to get his voice and perspective — that was so cool.

J Perry?

J Perry is actually my cousin; we grew up making music together. He also happens to be, in my opinion, the best hook maker in the world. So undeniable, so catchy, and I think every time we've ever worked together, there's been only great stuff that's come from it.

Kes?

Kes is from Trinidad, and he has really been my doorway into soca culture and Trinidadian culture. He also has become such a great friend. I feel like the way that he approaches his craft is very similar to my own. It's been so cool with that cultural exchange; we talk a lot about history, actually.

King Promise?

King Promise is, in my opinion, one of the rising stars of Ghana. His hook on "Shut Up & Dance" was so infectious. I remember I sent him that beat a few years ago, and he came back within, like, five minutes. We actually met finally properly in person on Saturday, at my show. He's such a cool guy and really embraced being part of this project.

Kojey Radical?

We linked up last year for the first time, and I was a huge fan of his project. I felt like his artistry, aesthetic and vision are so unique. He's really, really versatile. His voice is really powerful. I'm grateful to see an artist always open-minded to try new things, but also very much themselves the whole way through.

SAINt JHN?

My guy and my brother. We linked up five or six years ago. I feel like he played me his first collection way, way back through a mutual friend. To see his career rise and everything that he's done has been so cool. 

Finally, we have Stalk Ashley.

I actually also met her on my Kingston trip earlier this year, and she is so amazing. Such a sweet person — super, super talented. We actually worked on that song together, maybe the second day that I was in Jamaica, and it just came so naturally. She's really inspiring, and I'm a fan of her music.

From there, can you talk about the role J Balvin plays in the EP, and in your musical world at large?

We've worked on so many projects over the years. We first linked up for the World Cup in 2018, and had a song called "Positivo," and then worked on his [2020] album Positivo. 

We won a Latin GRAMMY from that, and have also been working on a lot of other projects throughout the years and become really, really close friends. He's been an amazing mentor, and also a great collaborator, and I've learned so much through him.

He also introduced me to so many amazing people, like Ed Sheeran. I think with the song "Jessica," it's our first true collaboration for my project. It couldn't have been a more perfect time, because it was right in the center of where our tastes align. 

We've been working for years and years, and I feel like we're going to keep working, as well, in the future. To hear him sing in Creole on our song is really, really exciting. I'm grateful to him for opening his world to my songs and my audience, and I feel like we've influenced each other quite a bit.

Before we go, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this: as borders continue to evaporate in the music industry, where does Haiti fit into this puzzle?

I think Haiti's impact in music and culture has been around, like, low-key. 

So, even if we go to the most obvious Haitian success story, which, in my opinion, is Wyclef and the Fugees, I think their impact is maybe a little bit understated still today — because The Score is still [one of the top] selling rap albums in history. 

To have a Haitian voice have such a huge impact, and then be such a prolific producer, bringing a Haitian flag on TV on the biggest award shows like the GRAMMYs and all kinds of really incredible places — I think that paved the way for future success stories.

And two more recent ones that I know personally are D'Mile and Kaytranada — two artists that have done such incredible things in their respective spaces.

I think the Haitian success stories have been there, but they're not, I think, going to start becoming way more forward facing, as opposed to being more in the background, just because the world's starting to be more open to different languages and new sounds.

I feel like my place in all this is: I feel like a bridge between the diaspora and Haiti. I feel like I'm super connected to both sides of my heritage. I've worked so hard to create a space that feels very welcoming, that feels like a way for people to reconnect with their culture.

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