SXSW Music: Dave Grohl Urges Musicians to Discover ‘Your Voice’

Jack Plunkett/Invision, via Associated Press Mr. Grohl delivering his keynote address.

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Recounting his rise from obscure punk rocker to mainstream rock star, Dave Grohl gave a impassioned defense of the importance of artistic freedom and a do-it-yourself ethic in keeping popular music vibrant, as he delivered the keynote address at the South by Southwest Music Festival on Thursday.

Mr. Grohl, the drummer in the seminal grunge band Nirvana who is now the leader of Foo Fighters, gave a punk-rock twist on some well-worn advice to artists: reject mainstream conventions, practice until it hurts, find your individual voice and follow it wherever it leads you.

“There is no right or wrong,” Mr. Grohl sid, speaking to more than 1,000 people at the Austin Convention Center. “There is only your voice, your voice screaming through an old recording console, singing from a laptop, echoing from a street corner, a cello, a turntable, a guitar.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he went on. “What matters most is that it’s your voice. Cherish it. Respect it. Nurture it. Challenge it. Stretch it. Scream it until its gone. Because everyone’s blessed with at least that.  And who knows how long it will last.”

Giving a speech that sums up the yearly music festival is no easy task.  It has become a sprawling affair with more than 2,200 bands from dozens of genres who play over six days at scores of venues.  And it is no longer the celebration of underground music and unsigned musicians it once was, as corporate sponsors, major labels, booking agents and media companies have discovered its power to promote their artists and brands.

Indeed Mr. Grohl, who in th! e last year has become a champion of what he calls “the human element” in music, is here promoting his recent documentary film, “Sound City,” about the celebrated Los Angeles recording studio where Nirvana made “Nevermind.”

But in his 45-minute speech Mr. Grohl asserted young artists needed to be “left to their own devices” to make innovations.  He urged musicians to ignore the pop charts, record their own albums and create a grassroots following, just as punk and grunge bands from his generation in the 1980s and early 1990s had done.  He drew loud applause when he made fun of televised talent shows and taste-makers like the Pitchfork Web site.

“I can truthfully say outloud that ‘Gangnam Style’ is one of my favorite songs of the past decade,” Mr. Grohl said. “It is any better or worse than the latest Atoms for Peace album  We should probably have a celebrity panel of judges to determine that for us. What would J Lo do Paging Pitchfork. Come in Pitchfork. We need you o help us determine the value of a song.”

He added: “Who cares Who’s to say what’s a good voice and what a not-good voice  The ‘Voice’  Imagine Bob Dylan standing there singing “Blowing in the Wind” in front of Christine Aguilera”

By turns self-deprecating and self-congratulatory, Mr. Grohl recounted how he had discovered music as a boy through a record of Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” and learned to play on a cheap Sears guitar. He became obsessed with hard-rock riffs and spending hours making two-track recordings with two cassette players in his bedroom.

As a teen, he discovered punk dropped out of high school to join a band after attending the “Rock Against Reagan” concert on the National Mall in Washington in 1983, which turned violent. “That was my Woodstock,” he said.  He discovered music could “incite a riot, an emotion, start a revolution.”

The unexpected success of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album in 1991 â€" the first one the g! roup had ! recorded on a major label â€" took him by surprise and still puzzles him, he said. The charts were chock-full of polished pop and grunge bands were far from the mainstream. The record label only pressed 35,000 copies of the first release. One explanation, he suggested, is many fans had grown tired of over-produced pop songs from performers like Madonna, Phil Collins and the vocal trio Wilson Phillips.

“I like to think that what people hear in Nirvana’s music was three human beings, three distinct personalities, their inconsistencies and their imperfections proudly on display for everyone to hear,” he said. “Three people who had been left to their own devices their entire lives to find their voices. It was honest. It was pure and it was real.  Up until that point no one had ever told me how to play or what to play.”