Jazz Quotes

Jazz is not gonna be a dinosaur and stay around in one form.

If it hadn't been for Jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll.

Now as jazz musicians we're saying for this society, you can free up your imagination. You can proceed in an area without much information and you can function in an area without much information.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

Jazz isn't what you do; it's how you do it.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.

And I played in jazz band as well during all three years in school.

Everything I do is Mingus.

the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.

Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.

Composers don't just sit in a room and write things that are in their heads, they actually listen to a lot of music, pop music, jazz, rock and roll, any combination of music that catches their ear.

I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.

I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

Whoever invented smooth jazz, man, I wanna kill 'em: You're turning an art form into a hooker.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

Footballers can be like artists when the mind and body are working as one. It is what Miles Davis does when he plays free jazz - everything pulls together into one intense moment that is beautiful.

I've got my own studio, and I've got four- to five-hundred unreleased tracks. I've got stuff that's electronic, orchestral, jazz, I've got rock, I've got metal, you know, I don't have polka.

I think jazz and comic books are probably the two uniquely American art forms.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I wasn't very aware of pop music because I attended an arts school. For me, it was all about jazz.

If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.

But in Shimabukuro's hands, as he breaks out experimental jazz, lays down a steady blues train, or shreds on rock anthems, this little jumping flea becomes a melodic monster.

There's only two ways to sum up music; either it's good or it's bad. If it's good you don't mess about it, you just enjoy it.

I've always loved black culture; I don't know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone.

In jazz, as in poetry, there is always that play between what’s regular and what’s wild. That has always appealed to me.

If you believe, you will. If you don't, you won't.

Jazz has always been a melting pot of influences and I plan to incorporate them all.

They always ask me the same questions. Where was I born? When did I start singing? Who have I worked with? I don't understand why they can't just talk to me without all that question bit.

If people don't like it [my music] now, they will.

One never knows, do one?

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!

There's an ecstatic side to writing. It's like jazz. It just has a life.

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.

As much as I am hip-hop, I'm soul. As much as I am soul, I'm a turntablist. As much as I'm a DJ, I love jazz and rock.

Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

I don't limit my taste. There's some jazz that I like and there's some opera. I've been listening to what was essentially country music, but it crossed over to rock.

Jazz is an octopus. It will take whatever it can use and it will work with it.

Jazz should be much less about stress on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content.

They say that Jazz is back, and I don't think it's gone anywhere. But they say it's back.

[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do. ... any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice.

I am the worlds laziest writer.

I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.

What about a blues in W, in the key of W.

Jazz is America's own. It is played and listened to by all peoples - in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place... as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.

I always had a great appreciation for jazz, but I'm a very pedestrian musician. I get by. I like to think that my main instrument is vocabulary.

I've had experiences where people say, 'I hated jazz before I heard you guys!' I'm like, 'You didn't hate jazz before you heard us, you hated the idea of jazz.'

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

I thought, If I'm gonna run a jazz club, if I've got Miles Davis' posters in my bar, I should at least know what his horn sounds like.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

I'm very glad to have met you. I like your playing very much.