Top 1200 Jazz And Life Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.

I was nearing the end of childhood when I started to pay real attention to jazz singers. Women excelled as jazz singers; they surpassed most of the men. Black women excelled as jazz singers; they surpassed most of the whites.

Louis Armstrong is the master of the jazz solo. He became the beacon, the light in the tower, that helped the rest of us navigate the tricky waters of jazz improvisation.

Keith Moon is not interested in jazz and won't ever be a jazz drummer because he's more interested in looking good and being screamed at.

Truth of the matter is, jazz is American music. And that doesn't mean bebop. Jazz is really about improvising. All the music that's been created in America has been pretty much improvised... Whether it's hillbilly or rock n' roll for blues, it's basically jazz music... It's basically about another way of hearing what comes out of America.

My foundation is jazz. I do all the things jazz musicians do.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

Jazz really does try to include everything. It's always been popular music. But the wonderful thing about jazz is its willingness to take chances.

[Manhattan School Of Music] didn't' have a jazz undergraduate program at the time so I played a semester in the big band. There was a graduate program. But I wasn't really that involved in jazz yet.

The great jazz and jazz-influenced singers carry themselves with a certain panache and a certain elegance and, for lack of a better word, self-confidence.

Just because I'm playing jazz I don't forget about me. I play or write me, the way I feel, through jazz, or whatever.

But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience.

Jazz music is a style, not compositions; any kind of music may be played in Jazz if one has the knowledge.

What happens when an art form becomes ambiguous, I think, is that the standards are lowered. You can say anything is jazz. So I think it's important to reflect on what made jazz so special.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

Our intention is to not only attract the hardcore jazz fan, but we're doing it in such a way that it will also be easy to take for those who are not necessarily steeped in the ways of jazz.

I guess certain kinds of jazz music could be Crunk. But the average jazz song, no, it's not Crunk.

I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

Jazz needs the help. It's the more sophisticated music. All the other music is on the TV, but jazz isn't.

In order for a musician to grow, he's got to pay his dues. Some musicians ask me, 'well, what do you mean? You're saying I have to 'starve' and pay all these dues just to play jazz?' And my answer to them is, well, to some degree, yes! Because in order to play jazz you have to live it. Those notes mean something. They don't just come from your brain, they come from your heart and soul too. And in order to have that heart and soul you have to experience life. So I relate my music to my life and my life style. You can't separate the two.

I know jazz is completely un-American. But the reason why America doesn't like it is because it's not funny. We [americans] have made jazz funny.

I'm comfortable singing jazz. The only thing I was concerned about is that everybody, even in jazz, has their own style. To me, the queen of doodling was Ella Fitzgerald, and scatting is something I never thought I could do.

For me it's the high-water mark of American culture - not so much contemporary jazz, which has become kind of academic, but the jazz from the '20s on through the '70s.

You can't teach it [jazz singing]. There's nobody who can teach you how to sing jazz. Either you know how to sing jazz, or you don't.

I like musicians who look at the public. You have to bring the music to the largest number. Otherwise, we'll [the Jazz players] stay in the clubs. Jazz must be accessible to everyone.

I studied jazz at home with my grandparents. They always had jazz dudes at the house, but I didn't study formally. I just hung around a lot of musicians.

If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original.

Jazz scares me. I've witnessed so many incredible singers and jazz musicians. Pop and soul music have always been the things that I felt like I could do.

Jazz has the power to make men forget their differences and come together... Jazz is the personification of transforming overwhelmingly negative circumstances into freedom, friendship, hope, and dignity.

I cringed when I heard myself described as a Jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a Jazz vocalist.

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.

When a human being is oppressed, the natural tendency is to feel anger. Jazz is a response to oppression that is not bullets and blood. Jazz is the expression of harmony ... and at the same time of hope and freedom.

Jazz comes from a tradition where it swings. Swing was the main ingredient of jazz. And once it loses the swing...well, that's it.

'I Am Jazz' was more for children to understand what it means to be transgender, but with 'Being Jazz,' I wanted to get the universal message across that we are all just people, and we have to live our lives authentically.

I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk rock performer' and in the blues clubs I'd be a 'folk blues entertainer.'

Justin Di Cioccio led a jazz program at Music and Art, but there was no jazz in Performing Arts. After they joined, it became Laguardia School of Arts.

We all listened to a lot of recorded music, especially American jazz, modern jazz, and that's where our studies were and our inspiration came from.

Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and wild. He's redefined Latin jazz!

My short answer would be that there is no greatest jazz musician of the century. Jazz, like any valid art form, finds its greatness in its expression of the human spirit, and, to me, this can’t be reduced to a contest.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones

I don't like heroin, unless you're a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin.

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones.

I listen to jazz mainly. Mainstream jazz.

I think you have to have a jazz pedigree to be on jazz radio.

It's funny to find there are still people around who think if a musician has schooling, it automatically makes him a lesser jazz player. But you don't learn jazz in school.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

It's not jazz as we know jazz here in America.

The history of jazz for the last 45 years has come through the Monterey Jazz Festival stages. I think there's developed a legacy and an aura around the festival.

What makes jazz different is that you can't predict it, it's all about freedom. Just when you think you know what you're going to hear there'll be a left turn, a jazz musician will change it up.

I love New Orleans. I love jazz. I grew up practicing jazz piano, and that's just been such a cool genre to me. There's a lot of talent there.

I've often cringed when I heard myself described as a jazz singer. I've always thought of myself as a jazz vocalist.

I was singing totally jazz then, but when I heard the Beatles and heard the gospel influence and everything, I just said, 'I can make jazz with R&B.'

Clint Eastwood said, the only things America has contributed to civilization are the western and jazz. And I don't think westerns are bad, but lots of people make great cinema. But jazz is right there.

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups.

In 1962 I wrote for 'Jazz News,' using the pseudonym Manfred Manne, which I picked because of a jazz drummer with that name. I later dropped the 'e.'

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body's breath, and the strings' wails and moans are echoes of the body's music. It is the body's vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations.

I couldn't get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don't always know who you're making that soul connection with.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life's difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

I don't like totally free jazz, unless it's done by somebody like Coltrane, who did bebop and cool jazz, so he was allowed to go out there.