Freedom is the thing that has attracted me most to jazz. Within improvisation, you're really able to express something that maybe I'm not so adept at expressing via language. So I develop a language through the instrument to tell stories. So it's kind of this freedom of thought and freedom of expression that kind happens.
I never wanted to sound clean and pretty. In jazz, I felt I could sing these deep, husky lows if I want and then these really tiny laser highs if I want as well.
Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.
As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.
Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.
I was exposed to jazz early on.
We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.
We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.
America used to be proud of abstraction, and we have fallen away from it. The future depends on people trying to promote that abstract thinking. Not just in relation to music and jazz and the arts, but the economy, social strife, tension between people.
Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
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.
I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.
'Soulfire' is a collection of stuff I've done in the past. Each song is an element of who I am: There's a doo-wop song on the album; a blues song, R&B and some jazz. For people who are going to be hearing me for the first time, it's an introduction to who I am.
People have taken time out of their day and spent their money to come sit down at a concert. And it's jazz music-it's not easy for them to get to it. I don't want them ever to feel that I'm taking their presence lightly.
You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.
New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.
I used to be just a total jazz freak. People used to say, 'Where's the melody? Is there a melody in there anywhere?' Now I let the music follow the song.
I love jazz music and sad music. I'm a sentimental guy. I'm a romantic guy.
For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.
I'm done with industrial. Seriously, my iPod collection at home has no industrial music on it; it's strictly jazz, blues and country.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.
I'm saddened to see that everyone's pitched out the baby with the bath, in that we say that it can't be one or the other, it could be both. I mean, just because we listen to classical music doesn't mean that we can't listen to jazz.
As for what I look for, I don't know any other way to put it, but I look for truth, and honesty, because that's something that's few and far between. And obviously, someone who takes care of herself physically. But truth, honesty, and love, that's what's most important. Oh, and someone who can vibe to some jazz. Because I love jazz music a lot.
If he's a true symphony artist, he knows better than that because he knows that the only truly creative musician is the jazz musician.
That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.
Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.
So I went into jazz and performed in jazz clubs all over the country.
I listen to jazz about three hours a day. I love Louis Armstrong.
Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well.
It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way.
Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.
Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.
Jazz was my first love.
I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here.
Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.
