A home for creativity and innovation

Chapter 3 - from Little Book of Big Reasons to Love America

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"In America, diversity is our strength, and creativity is our currency." - Beyoncé

Imagination needs a fertile environment.

Creating something out of nothing requires a particular state of mind and the freedom to imagine what is possible. America has been that environment for inventors, scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs worldwide. The cultural impact of American music and film on modern culture is massive. Even in war, our enemies love our movies, listen to our music, and know our celebrities by name. Many of our stars are imported from the countries they are later re-exported to as American stars.

This includes athletes, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and tech leaders who are admired, quoted, and imitated. Collectivist societies and oppressive regimes are suspicious of the power of the individual to create change. In such societies, creators may flourish despite the environment; in America, they succeed because of it.

The extraordinary rise of China's economy, with its ability to make things faster, cheaper, and better, still reveals them as the economic cover band to American innovation. In collectivist societies, vast, coordinated efforts often treat individuals as a means to an end. Conversely, America, at its best, champions a vision where systems and structures are merely the means, placing individuals at the very heart of its purpose.

Artists, innovators, and inventors flourish in the fertile American culture of possibility, freedom, and personal self-expression. The breakthroughs in technology and the arts create worldwide demand and economic opportunities. This attracts more artists, innovators, and inventors to centers of creativity like Los Angeles for film, Silicon Valley for technology, New York for theater, or Nashville for music. Evidence of this is the astounding list of world changers who found a home and realized their potential here.

This is just a sample of the brilliant minds who left their countries and flourished in America.

Albert Einstein (Germany) - Theory of Relativity

Charlie Chaplin (United Kingdom) - Film

Alexander Hamilton (Nevis, British West Indies) - one of the founding fathers of the USA

Nikola Tesla (Serbia) - Alternating Current (AC) Electricity

Ridley Scott (United Kingdom) - Film Directing

Carlos Santana (Mexico) - Music

Elon Musk (South Africa) - Founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla

Isabel Allende (Chile) - Literature

Arianna Huffington (Greece) - Media

Sir Richard Branson (United Kingdom) - Founder of the Virgin Group

Penélope Cruz (Spain) - Film

Sergey Brin (Russia) - Co-founder of Google

Jackie Chan (Hong Kong) - Film

Rihanna (Barbados)- Music

Levi Strauss (Germany) - Founder of Levi Strauss & Co

Alexander Graham Bell(Scotland) - inventor of the telephone and founder of AT&T

Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austria) - Film, Politics

The list goes on and on.

The birth of an unlikely star

The year the USSR ceased to exist, creating fifteen countries in its stead, I graduated with a master’s degree in Economics at age twenty-one - the youngest in my class. My appreciation for economics as a science studying human behavior stayed with me and is partially to blame for the writing of this book. As my fellow alums were going into finance and commerce - all I wanted to do was music. The wall had just come down, and a tidal wave of Western culture came rushing in - now widely available to the 293 million people who previously had limited access to it. A demand was born almost overnight for Western-sounding music.

I was a student of American creativity for years leading up to this tectonic shift. I devoured biographies of artists, read books about the inner workings of the music business, and watched any interview I could get my hands on about the creative process in the studio. I could tell you everything about the labels, producers, songwriters, and even mixing engineers behind the music of my favorite artists. Having nothing concrete to show for my artistic aspirations - I would schmooze my way into afterparties of the emerging music scene to be in the same room with the people doing what I wanted to someday do. My first break came at one of those afterparties, and it was confirmed that the “fake it till you make it” principle works. It came in the form of a conversation that changed my life. We are always one conversation away from a breakthrough if we develop a curious mind and open heart. This is how it happened for me.

A short, intense-looking guy approached me and asked if I was an artist. I think my bi-racial look and cool outfit gave him that impression. I said yes. He introduced himself as the owner of a recording studio. At the time, this meant he was the man in possession of the golden ticket. There were no more than a dozen studios in the city, and home studio technology was not yet available. Anyone who wanted to record anything had to get access to a real studio. He had my full attention. The man told me he would give me a few night hours at the studio if I could come up with good material. I confidently told him I would write a few songs and lyrics and show him what I had. He didn’t know that I had never written a single song or lyric in my life. I went home and wrote a couple of songs. To my surprise - he liked them. I still remember the first time I recorded in a sound booth; I had imagined it a thousand times. It felt like a holy place, and my accelerated heartbeat interfered with my singing.

I needed a producer to work on beats and arrangements for me. A mutual friend introduced me to a keyboard player in a cover band, playing in restaurants around town. We rented an apartment together and spent countless hours listening to R’n’B, hip-hop, and pop tracks, coming up with terrible tracks before we got to the decent ones. Our first songs started shaping a signature sound driven by a decidedly American beat called New Jack Swing. I recruited a few street dancers and a rapper and started creating choreography for a show. The choreography was a mix of styles my dancers were not familiar with. We practiced four hours a day for months. The passing exam for a new dancer was performing an entire song routine with no mistakes and no sound, and the rest of the dancers were trying to throw them off the whole time. That part was a lot of fun and created an ethos of excellence in the group.

When we finally had a small repertoire, our manager got us an audition in one of the hottest nightclubs in town. We were hired on the spot to work four nights a week. Word spread of a new and eclectic act with a unique sound. By the end of that year, I was on national television and had three record contract offers. As a bi-racial young man with darker skin playing a very un-soviet mix of R’n’B and Pop, I was an unlikely star in the post-soviet landscape. A brief decade of freedom created an explosion of creative work in Russia. Many of them are good friends of mine, brilliant artists in film, music, fashion, theater, and dance.

Fast forward a couple of years. My first album was out with three hit songs preceding the song Our Generation, which took the countries of the former USSR by storm. I played at large venues all over the great expanse of the former USSR, spanning eleven time zones from the Baltic states and Ukraine in the west to southern states like Georgia and Armenia, to Siberia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and all the way to Vladivostok just a short leap away from Japan in the east. It was a surreal experience to hear crowds from all those cultures, languages, and ethnic backgrounds chant the songs I had scribbled down in my notebooks while riding the subway and during late nights of creative work over large amounts of black tea at my kitchen table.

It was an election year, and I got word from my manager that President Boris Yeltsin’s team was asking us to join a campaign to get him re-elected. An anthem song for freedom, Our Generation, was blasting from every radio, TV station, party, and club in the country. It was a perfect fit for mobilizing the youth and was used in most Yeltsin campaign ads. It was a dangerous time as the Communist Party had a real chance at retaking power in Russia, reversing democratic reforms, and Yeltsin was trailing behind in the polls.

This meant much more than one candidate losing to another candidate. I was the son of Marxist parents, had lived under communism, and actually studied Karl Marx in college. I had experienced the oppression, mediocrity, and suffocating grip of absolute state control over all areas of life and was musically one of the voices of this newfound freedom. The stakes were high, as I knew if the Communists won, losing my career was the best-case scenario for me. So, I passionately joined the campaign, touring the country, making TV appearances, and giving interviews to the press about why the youth should vote for democracy and freedom.

I was visiting family in New York when I heard Yeltsin won. I remember the relief and sheer joy of knowing that Russia had a chance to build a new life that gave artists like me an environment to thrive in. That optimism waned as Russia slowly regressed into autocratic rule over the coming decades.

America is still the place where creativity and innovation flourish. The people who built this vision have often fallen short of it. The country built on these ideas has failed in countless ways. And yet, miraculously and wonderfully - this culture of boundless imagination is as strong as ever, attracting world changers from all over the world.

"Creativity thrives in America because we believe in the power of the individual to make a difference." - Maya Lin

"Creativity is the lifeblood of American culture, fueling our drive for progress and innovation." - Steve Jobs

"In America, creativity is not just encouraged, it's celebrated. It's what sets us apart and propels us forward." - Ellen DeGeneres

"Creativity is the beating heart of American culture, driving our music, our art, our literature, and our dreams." - Bob Dylan

"America is a beacon of creativity, inspiring artists, innovators, and dreamers from around the globe." - Beyoncé

"In America, creativity is a birthright, an inheritance passed down through generations of pioneers and visionaries." - Thomas Edison

"In America, creativity is not just a luxury; it's a necessity. It's what drives us to imagine, to invent, to explore." - Steve Martin

"Creativity is the heartbeat of American culture, pulsing with the rhythm of innovation and ingenuity." - Walt Disney

"Creativity flourishes in America because we believe in the power of possibility, in the idea that anything is achievable with hard work and determination." - J.K. Rowling

"In America, creativity is not just a talent; it's a responsibility. It's our duty to imagine a better world and to work tirelessly to bring that vision to life." - Oprah Winfrey