For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.
'My Country, My Music' is about bringing music in languages like Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malyalam, and Marathi together. It's about bringing musical genres together, different scenarios in which music is displayed in our country in one show.
Bringing people together is one of my favorite things... I believed that's what a rock 'n' roll Jesus would really do - bring people together through music.
Even the greatest musicians, they only represent themselves. You represent who you are and what your experiences are and what you have in your heart, and it's the same for me. I represent who I am and what I've been through and what I'm bringing to the music.
I think that musicians should never forget about the intimacy of bringing two people together, and the aesthetic transference where you're almost vicariously involved in a romance between other people.
When I listen to music, there's usually some aspect of that music that I like, and that's what I take and try to bring into my own music. Bringing in other musicians to collaborate with is a good way for me to test out new ways or make music that I might have not discovered on my own.
One of the greatest men to ever walk this land was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His life exemplified unity by bringing people together for the good of all. In any small way I hope to someday bring people together like Dr. King.
But bringing people together is what music has always done best.
There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.
Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.
We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we're living in, these tools surprise you. ... That's why I love what we do. Because we make these tools, and we're constantly surprised with what people do with them.
... we weren't very professional; she could have gone to almost any town and put together a smoother ensemble, but we were pioneers, and professional musicians probably wouldn't have come up with what we did ... professional musicians probably wouldn't have given Janis Joplin the space to be herself, which was probably our greatest gift to her
I had a vision of bringing two cultures together, and I have said this in the past: my goal is to bring Morocco and India together through music and art.
I was always intrigued by the idea of bringing things together that are considered taboo or risque and bringing them together with something of high elegance and sophistication.
My idea to bridge the world together with music starting in Asia and going to the West is something that is new, untapped and leading to the future of bringing the worlds together.
The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together.