15 Famous People With Synesthesia

Pharrell Williams. Photo by Frank Schwichtenberg-Wikimedia

15 Famous People With Synesthesia

Synesthesia is a condition where the stimulation of one sense results in uncontrollable, spontaneous feelings in a different sense. People who have synesthesia may sense flavors when they see numbers, hear music when they see colors, and see numbers when they hear sound, among other synesthesia-related experiences.

Numerous well-known people, including musicians, authors, pianists, and engineers, have synesthesia and occasionally use it as a motivation for their creations. Some famous people include Billy Joe, Pharrell William, and Vladimir Nabokov, who saw colors and shapes when he heard a sound.

By promoting awareness and understanding of synesthesia, we may acknowledge the various ways that the human mind can perceive the world around us and help those who experience it. let’s explore and discover 15 famous people with synesthesia.

1. Billy Joel

Referred to as “Piano Man,” Billy Joe is a singer, songwriter, and pianist. Since the 1970s, his solo career has been commercially successful, becoming one of the best-selling artists of all time. He has synesthetic experiences of grapheme-color and sound to color. For his grapheme-color synesthesia he said, “Certain lyrics in some songs I’ve written, I have to follow a vowel color.” He associates strong vowel endings—such as –a, -e, or -i—with “a very blue or very vivid green … I think reds I associate more with consonants, a t or a p or an s; something which is a harder sound.”

2. Pharrell Williams

Pharrell Williams. Photo by Andreas Meixensperger-Wikimedia

Legendary Pharrell Williams is one of the famous people with synesthesia of music to color. He is an American singer, rapper, record producer, and songwriter. Sometimes he relies on his synesthesia when making music, stating, “It just always stuck out in my mind, and I could always see it. I don’t know if that makes sense, but I could always visualize what I was hearing… Yeah, it was always like weird colors.” 

Also read Top 10 Facts about Pharrell Williams

3. Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov. Photo by Walter Mori-Wikimedia

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist known for his controversial novel Lolita. In his autobiography, he wrote about his ability to perceive grapheme-color synesthesia, which he said is heredity. Nabokov’s mother and son both had this condition.

 He described his condition, “As far back as I remember … I have been subject to mild hallucinations. Some are aural, others are optical, and by none have I profited much … In the brown group, there are the rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h … among the red, b has the tone called burnt sienna by painters, m is a fold of pink flannel, and today I have at last perfectly matched v with ‘Rose Quartz’ in Maerz and Paul’s Dictionary of Color.”

4. Geoffrey Rush

Geoffrey Rush is an Australian actor with synesthesia known for his eccentric leading man roles on stage and screen. Rush experiences several types of synesthesia, including grapheme to color and spatio-temporal. His condition goes back to when he was a toddler, “When I was in school, in the very early days, we would learn the days of the week. And for some reason, the days of the week just instantly had strong color associations. Monday, for me is kind of a pale blue …. Tuesday is acid green; Wednesday is a deep purple-y darkish color. Fridays got maroon and Saturday is white, and Sunday is a sort of pale yellow.”

5. Jack Coulter

Jack Coulter is an Irish artist renowned for his paintings and the visceral quality within his work. The Financial Times described Coulter as one of the most famous abstract painters emerging today in 2020. Coulter has sound-to-color synesthesia, which has profoundly affected his work.

6. Tori Amos

Tori Amos at the Theatre at Ace Hotel. Photo by Justin Higuchi-Wikimedia

Born Myra Ellen Amos, she is a singer, pianist, songwriter, and trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Amos has synesthesia of music to color, and from an autobiography, she said, “The song appears as light filament once I’ve cracked it. As long as I’ve been doing this, which is more than thirty-five years, I’ve never seen a duplicate song structure. I’ve never seen the same light creature in my life. Obviously, similar chord progressions follow similar light patterns, but try to imagine the best kaleidoscope ever.” 

7. Olivier Messiaen

Olivier Messiaen. Photo by Rob Croes-Wikimedia

Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, ornithologist and organist. He was renowned as one of the significant composers of the 20th century. Messiaen admitted to being a synesthete in his writings and interviews. His type of synesthesia is chordal structure-color, and he tries to produce pictures through sounds with his compositions.

8. Elvin Jones

Elvin Jones was an American Jazz drummer of the post-bop era. He has synesthesia of music to color, and to talk about the condition, he stated, “I get images sometimes, color images. The lowest, the bass tones, the little D would be purple, the C red, F be yellow.”

9. Kilford

Killy Kilford is a British painter renowned for painting love on stage with musicians during their performances and public installation of Happy Street Signs. He has synesthesia of music to color because his paintings are physical representations of music based on the colors he sees when he hears music.

10. Marian McPartland

Marian McPartland at St Joseph’s Villa school for disadvantaged children – Rochester, N.Y. 1975. Photo by Tom Marcello-Wikimedia

She was an English-American jazz pianist, writer and composer. She possesses’ synesthesia of keys to colors, and she stated, “You see, nobody ever told me it was difficult to play in certain keys, like F sharp. Personally, I find C a hard key. It’s very sterile to me. Somehow all the keys seem to have colors and textures. I love B and E and A and F sharp. I actually associate them with colors, but Jim Hall, the guitarist, does too, so I don’t feel that ridiculous about it.”

11. Mary J. Blige

Mary J. Blige. Photo by Angela George-Wikimedia

Dubbed “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,” Blige is a singer, actress and songwriter who has benefited from synesthesia of music to color in making her top-charting songs and albums. She stated, “I have that condition, synesthesia. I see music in colors. That’s how my synesthesia plays out.” 

Check out 10 Best Facts about Mary Jane Blige

12. Robert Cailliau

Robert Cailliau is a Belgian informatics engineer, computer scientist and author. He proposed the first (pre-www) hypertext system for CERN in 1987 and worked with Tim Berners-Lee on the World Wide Web. He is one of the famous people who have synesthesia of grapheme-color and his website used to include his color-coded alphabet.

13. Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington. Photo by Associated Booking-Wikimedia

He was a jazz pianist, leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra, and composer. He experienced synesthesia of sound to color. Talking about his synesthesia, he stated, “I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it’s one color. I hear the same note played by someone else and it’s a different color. When I hear sustained musical tones, I see just about the same colors that you do, but I see them in textures. If Harry Carney is playing, D is dark blue burlap. If Johnny Hodges is playing, G becomes light blue satin.” 

14. Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman. Photo outsourced from Wikimedia

Richard Feynman was a theoretical physicist renowned for his work in the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the path integral composition of quantum mechanics, and particle physics. He used to experience synesthesia of grapheme-color which he stated, “When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don’t know why. As I’m talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde’s book, with light-tan j’s, slightly violet-bluish n’s, and dark brown x’s flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.” 

15. Michel Gagne

Michel Gagne is a Canadian cartoonist and animation artist. He has synesthesia of music to color and movement, and he was the creator of the synesthetic taste of sequences in Disney/Pixar’s Ratatouille (2008) and the short film Sensology. 

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