Quotes About Diversity

It doesn't matter to me what is going on today because my music encompasses every kind of mood that exists in human beings. That's my stick.

From the heaviest of the heavy to classical to country, that's what I listen to, I listen to a variety and I enjoy good music, good songs.

Motown was about music for all people – white and black, blue and green, cops and the robbers. I was reluctant to have our music alienate anyone.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

People sometimes forget that jazz was built not only in the minds of the great ones but on the backs of the ordinary ones — ordinary musicians.

The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.

I buy records from all across the board. I get kind of a hybrid of influences in my own music.

Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world.

If a guy's got it, let him give it. I'm selling music, not prejudice.

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

Blues music is becoming more and more popular than it ever was. I'm always meeting people on the road that are really young, and are guitar players.... male and female.

I take a lot from everywhere. I take from music, architecture, novels, and plays. Anywhere that hits you.

I grew up with all kinds of music, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.

Making music should not be left to the professionals.

I don't separate one era of jazz from another, because I listen to everybody... Everybody takes from everybody else and adds their own thing and goes on from there.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

Hip-hop educated me about other forms of music, because it sampled from all different styles.

My biggest dream to connect people through music has come true. In a world where there are enough reasons to separate us, the Oscars have unified us.

There are as many ways to write songs as there are songs.

There are a lot of people in this world that listen to wide ranges of music and there should never be a CERTAIN type of music that any artist should be confined to, in my opinion.

I see myself as a hip-hop artist, but I never wanted to make music for a specifically white audience. Thats not what I grew up around.

In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.

We should have a music of our own - if possible, without any Sauerkraut.