Anthony Braxton Quotes

Is jazz a rhythm, or is it a vibration?

Everybody in America is angry about something.

I am interested in the study of music and the discipline of music and the experience of music and music as a esoteric mechanism to continue my real intentions.

I have learned through time that not everyone is interested in the kinds of things that fascinate me.

The word music is a convenient way to talk about what I'm interested in, but actually, in some ways, it's a limitation.

I would find myself backing away from all of the 'isms,' all of the communities. I have always been able to be misused by every community But that is OK. I would rather be misused than neglected.

I thank the Creator of the universe to have discovered the discipline of music was the greatest gift that I could have been given, the possibility to be a student working in the world.

My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.

I am viewed as the Negro who has gone outside of the categories assigned to me.

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

So, yes, I am in the underground, but actually, it feels like home.

I'm seeking to have an art that is engaged as a way for saying, 'Hurray for unity.

Most African Americans, especially the men and women from my generation, would accept the nationalist gambit that says only European Americans can be racists, which is an interesting gambit.

I'm a post-Abner Jay kind of guy mixed with Roger Corman and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

...I have great hopes for the possibility of a dynamic universalism that respects all our people.