WORD LISTSQuotes about Jazz from Those who Play it and Those who Love itJune 24, 2015
The 100th Anniversary of the first use of the word "Jazz" is coming up on July 11th and this list presents quotes about what Jazz is as an art form and what it has meant in the lives of those quoted. If one isn't raised listening to Jazz, or taught it in school or through a music program, it can admittedly be difficult to appreciate when you first start to listen. Its pleasures may be less immediate, but they can be enriching and long-lasting. Here are 11 quotes about the personal and national significance of Jazz.
  
sanctify
Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and
sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.
— Wynton Marsalis
communal
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.
— Max Roach
nonchalance
Jazz music is an intensified feeling of
nonchalance.
— Francoise Sagan
eclectic
Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.
— Ralph Ellison
interject
It's not easy to play in a framework that requires simplicity and to tastefully find ways to
interject the kind of freedom that we have in playing jazz.
— Herbie Hancock
improvisation
The genius of our country is
improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.
— Ken Burns
conglomerate
Jazz music by its very nature is just a
conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.
— David Sanborn
cerebral
Some people try to get very philosophical and
cerebral about what they're trying to say with jazz. You don't need any prologues, you just play.
— Oscar Peterson
malleable
The beauty of jazz is that it's
malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.
— Pat Matheny
aspiration
The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual
aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.
— Wynton Marsalis
indigenous
I only hope that one day, America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our
indigenous music - gospel, blues, jazz and R&B - is the heart and soul of all popular music; and that we cannot afford to let this legacy slip into obscurity, I'm telling you.
— Quincy Jones
Rate this wordlist:
|
Word List Actions:Create a new Word List |
