Quotes About Jazz

I learned a lot about American history though jazz, and that's why I loved American history when I was in high school. I could hear different stories - the story that they would tell in school, and then the story that I would hear in the music.

My dad was really into avant garde jazz: Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders.

Because jazz music is a thing that, as few things do, makes you feel really at home in the world here, as if it's an okay notion to be born a human animal, or so.

Now, you can think what you like about the art of jazz – quite frankly, I don't really care what you think, because jazz is a thing so wonderful that if anybody doesn't rave about it, all you can feel for them is pity: not that I'm making out I really understand it all – I mean, certain LPs leave me speechless.

I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.

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.

My band, Miles Long, is a jazz-funk spoken word band. There's jazz sensibilities, but I'm a bass player, so I'm very much into the head-bobbing vibe with sophisticated lyrics.

I first met Linda Lawrence in March 1965 in the green room of 'Ready Steady Go!,' the British pop TV show. Linda was a friend of one of the co-hosts. She had an art-school vibe, and after a brief conversation, I asked her to dance to a soul record playing. As we jazz danced, I fell in love.

And more than anything, I like the improvisation of jazz. That's the same thing with DJ-ing. There's so much improvisation you can do with cuttin' and scratchin' that's reminiscent of jazz music, because it's all about how you feel. You're capturing a vibe and just going with it.

People want to have access to jazz because it has a vibe that's very strong.

The truth is hip hop has always complemented jazz and vice versa, but there's always been this communication barrier that exists based on music to lyrics.

My roots and Victor's are jazz, basically, but these two young fellows that we have with us come out of rock bands. And they're tremendously exciting players.

At 3 A.M., I'm still up watching videos of jazz heroes I never saw live. It's so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I'm thrilled by the potential.

I have a taste for a lot of different kinds of music... everything, from hip-hop to jazz to R&B to top 40 to alternative. There's a lot of good music out there. Every now and then, I'll flip through VH1 and watch the videos... the only thing I really don't listen to is country.

Dance has been a driving force in my life for 25 years. From music videos and hip hop, to jazz and musical theater, to ballet and classic modern dance, I have had extensive exposure to a variety of techniques that inspire my own electric style.

Hipsters, flipsters, and finger-poppin' daddies,Knock me your lobes,I came to lay Caesar out,Not to hip you to him.The bad jazz that a cat blowsWails long after he's cut out,The groovy is often stashed with their frames.

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz.

the beauty of America, neither cool jazz nor devoured Egyptian heroes, lies in lives in the darkness I inhabit in the midst of sterile millions

There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.

Don't we look suspicious, the three of us just sitting here in the car? Borden asked. We'd look a lot more suspicious if we were all three making out in the car, Jazz said. What? she added, when Borden turned and gave her a wide-eyed look. You have no idea what kind of happy place you just took me to. Shut up.

When we stopped in front of it and turned off the engine, we heard music coming from inside—jazz. It sounded sophisticated and lonely. We

we heard music coming from inside — jazz. It sounded sophisticated and lonely.

Maybe I'd move to Tibet, climb a mountain with the Dalai Lama or head to Paris and wear nothing but black, grow myself a keen goatee and talk about jazz all the time. Or maybe I'd do what I always do - hang out and see what develops. Fatalist to the core.

My dad was a drummer for The Mamas & The Papas, and his mother was in the jazz world, so music has always been very much in my blood.