Jazz Quotes - page 30

I have no idea who that is. It's a terrible performance, the band is horribly out of tune-is that Maynard Ferguson? It starts off at a dynamic peak and never deviates from it. It also starts out with what is supposed to be jazz musicians trying to play some sort of a Latin bag, which is not making it, because there's no solidity of rhythms. Latin rhythm sections being based on the constant contrast of instruments, and it never moves any place. And then that thing on the end-what's that supposed to be? An adaptation of Porgy and Bess of some sort? I guess it was some sort of an allusion toward Porgy and Bess. But then if it is, it's completely escaped all the rest of it. It's like giving a paragraph of reference out of a two-page article and then saying, Well, this is about this. (Clare Fischer)
Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history. View quote
August Wilson
I can show you that I have played with just about every jazz musician, every African musician, every blues musician. It's not like I'm cashing in on a false concept. This is what I do. View quote
Carlos Santana
The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas. View quote
Miles Davis
I believe in dressing for the occasion. There's a time for sweater, sneakers and Levis and a time for the full-dress jazz. View quote
Ginger Rogers
I think my own way. I don't think like you and my music isn't meant just for the patting of feet and going down backs. When and if I feel gay and carefree, I write or play that way. When I feel angry I write or play that way - or when I'm happy, or depressed, even. 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. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions. If someone has been escaping reality, I don't expect him to dig my music, and I would begin to worry about my writing if such a person began to really like it. My music is alive and it's about the living and the dead, about good and evil. It's angry, yet it's real because it knows it's angry. View quote
Charles Mingus
«She is able to oscillate between classical allusions to the holy books and the works of great poets like Hölderlin, Baudelaire, Borges, Artaud and Celan, and then she comes to terms with the Beat Generation, with Ferlinghetti, Corso, with the philosophy of the existentialists. With immediate acceptances, repulses, with vast ignitions and immense fires, with echoes of jazz and pop music» (Dante Maffia about Fatti deprecabili/Deprecable Facts) View quote
Caterina Davinio
I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing. And about sex. Writing for me is about my freedom. When I was a kid, my parents were like monsters to me, and the world extended from them. They were horrible. And I was this good little girl - I didn't have the guts to oppose them. They told me what to do and how to be. So the only time I could have any freedom or joy was when I was alone in my room. Writing is what I did when I was alone with no one watching me or telling me what to do. I could do whatever I wanted. So writing was really associated with body pleasure - it was the same thing. It was like the only thing I had. View quote
Kathy Acker
...so much joy to the world...and the system, meaning the record companies, totally took advantage of me. This is very important, what we're fighting for, because I'm tired, I'm really REALLY tired of manipulation. I'm tired of the how the press is manipulating everything that's been happening to this situation. They do not tell the truth, they lie. They manipulate, they manipulate our history books. The history books are not true: it's a lie. The history books are lying. You need to know that, you must know that. All the forms of popular music: from jazz to hip-hop to be-bop to .. to SOUL. To um, uh, dances, from the cake-walk. to the jitter-bug, to the Charleston, to uh, breakdancing. All of these are forms of black dancing. View quote
Michael Jackson
When things get solved in Cuba, the Cuban musicians will scare a lot of musicians from here. I always tell everybody: As soon as the Cubans come, a lot of people are going to have to go back to school all over again. In Cuba it's different--there they really study music. If you are a musician in Cuba, that's all you do. Brazilians also play a lot of jazz, but I think Cubans are the more advanced in both jazz technique and rhythm. View quote
Tito Puente
A Sky of Honey is, in a sense, a lyric poem set to music. Full of lush, fecund melodies which swing from jazz to rock, it is threaded through with bird song and chatter and feels distinctly organic and earthy.... Side two is the album Pink Floyd might have made if Kate Bush had been their lead singer and lyricist in 1979. (Kate Bush)