I wanna show that gospel, country, blues, rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll are all just really one thing. Those are the American music and that is the American culture. — Etta James
Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music. — George Gershwin
American style is about confidence, independence, diversity and free expression. — Tommy Hilfiger
The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources. — Bonnie Raitt
Jazz is the favorite music [of America]. It is a type of music invented by [American] Blacks to please their primitive tendencies and desire for noise. — Sayyid Qutb
Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful. — David Del Tredici
Irving Berlin has no place in American music -- he is American music. — Jerome Kern
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. — Ahmad Jamal
Music is a world within itself, with a language we all understand. — Stevie Wonder
Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles. — Ednita Nazario
Music is good when it makes you dance. Music is great when it makes you who you are — Tom DeLonge
My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery. — Allen Toussaint
The blues will always be because the blues are the roots of all American music. — Willie Dixon
The world's most famous and popular language is music. — PSY
I love classic rock, rock and roll, that's the top notch. I love soul - bluesy music as well. — Haley Reinhart
It's meant to reaffirm the validity of that music - clean, minimalist, honest, classic music. — Dwight Yoakam
Music is the soul of language. — Max Heindel
Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world. — Ahmad Alaadeen
Modern music is as dangerous as narcotics. — Pietro Mascagni
Pop art is
the American Dream, optimistic, generous, and naive! — Robert Indiana
Music is the shorthand of emotion. — Leo Tolstoy
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. — Duke Ellington
American Music Image Quotes
My advice would be if you want to pursue a career in the music business, don't. — Simon Cowell
Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also makes music.
What Music Means To Me Quotes
When people ask me what 'American Pie' means, I tell them it means I don't ever have to work again if I don't want to. — Don McLean
What does music mean to me? I don't think I would really be much without it, without it coming through me. It's my means of communication, my means of growth, my means of transportation from one point in my life to another. — Erykah Badu
What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me. — Erykah Badu
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
Money is just a piece of paper. Money burns. You know what I mean? Money is nothing substantial to me. You know what I mean? It's the enemy of music. — Christofer Drew
San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city. I don't mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When they boo you, you know they mean you. Music, that's what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo. — George Halas
I’m not a scholar or a psychologist, so I don’t really think about why. But I do think about what it means to sing to and with people, to offer music to them, and to ask them to spend time with me. — Bobby McFerrin
The earth has music for those who listen.
I have art. I have music. I have the history, this legacy behind me that I can look up to. This is what I believe in. If you want to call it God or spirituality, that's all up to you. Basically I believe in something that's bigger than myself, and that gives my life meaning. — John Zorn
My favorite music to sing would be my own songs, my original songs, just because I know them, you know I write the tunes, so my favorite songs are the newest ones that I write. That's what I like to sing the most, because it means something, it's real, it comes from me. — Paul McDonald
Everyone can of course take their own meaning, that's the beauty of music and lyrics, but to me it seems like everything is about being attached to the past and being afraid of moving forward, afraid of that big dive or step and losing what was. — St. Lucia
We're gonna keep on doin' what we're doin', and we're gonna get it by all means. That's just what "ruthless" means to me. Everybody's got their own definition, but I'm ruthless with this music. — Ace Hood
What Is Music Quotes
It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness. — Jerry Garcia
I'm not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that's more what entertainment and music should be. — Chris Cornell
The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are. — Ludwig van Beethoven
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being...When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups...I want to speak to their souls. — John Coltrane
My music is the spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being. — John Coltrane
The only music minister to whom the Lord will say, 'Well done, thy good and faithful servant,' is the one whose life proves what their lyrics are saying, and to whom music is the least important part of their life. Glorifying the only worthy One has to be a minister's most important goal! — Keith Green
Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.
Music is a beautiful thing to listen to. It is not a thing to preach to others about, it’s not a cause. It is what it is-and that’s a beautiful artform. — Synyster Gates
I want longevity; I love music, being a musician is the greatest gift in the world to me, and if I were to get signed to a label, my family and team around me are always gonna be there to make sure they want the very best for me. My fans are what it's all about. — Christina Grimmie
The winds that sometimes take something we love, are the same that bring us something we learn to love. Therefore we should not cry about something that was taken from us, but, yes, love what we have been given. Because what is really ours is never gone forever. — Bob Marley
Life isn’t a music player where you choose whats being played, it is a radio where you have to enjoy whats being played. — Zayn Malik
America Singer Quotes
America Singer, one day you will fall asleep in my arms every night. And you'll wake up to my kisses every morning. — Kiera Cass
I hit your thigh!” “Oh, please. A man doesn’t need that long to recover from a knee to the thigh. — Kiera Cass
Oh, yes. She’s still here,” Maxon said, not letting his eyes wander from Gavril’s face. “And I plan on keeping her here for quite a while. — Kiera Cass
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
He gave a dark chuckle. “But you’re not, so you had absolutely no qualms about kneeing me in the groin, right?” “I hit your thigh!” “Oh, please. A man doesn’t need that long to recover from a knee to the thigh,” he replied, his voice full of skepticism. — Kiera Cass
It took so long to make it in America. The year I arrived was a bad year for women singers, the record company told me. So I starved. I lived in a hotel so dreadful I can't even talk about it. — Helen Reddy
America? They had a good girl singer, Janis Joplin. — Maurice Gibb
People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise
Obviously there are a lot of 12-year-olds over in America who are incredible singers. — Shayne Ward
My music appeals in America. There is less of the purist criticism I get here. And to be a hit in the U.S... what singer doesn't have that dream? — Katherine Jenkins
Anyone who knows the history of the Pete Best Band or the Combo, we were on the verge of breaking in in America. In the mid-'60s, I had great songwriters; we wrote some great stuff. — Pete Best
America Singer, you get back here." He ran in front of me, wrapping an arm around my waist as we stood, chest to chest. "Tell me," he whispered. I pinched my lips together. "Fine, then I shall have to rely on other means of communication." Without any warning, he kissed me. — Kiera Cass
African American Music Quotes
I have this ability to find this hidden talent in people that sometimes even they didn't know they had. — Berry Gordy
There's a category for me. I like to be referred to as a good singer of good songs in good taste. — Sarah Vaughan
Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going. — Wes Montgomery
My own personal theory is that all popular music, in whatever form it is, to me, it all comes from Africa. Whether it's filtered through America or whatever - African-American. But I still think there's something in that roots music that's very, very African, and I think that's what unites people. — Paul Weller
Ray Charles' revolutionary approach to music was also reflected in his politics and his deep and abiding commitment to Martin Luther King and the plight of African-Americans. Ray Charles may not have been on the front lines, but he put his money where his mouth was. — Diane Watson
Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time. — Bobby McFerrin
American Culture Quotes
Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples. — Rigoberta Menchu
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. — Clark Gable
Violence is black children going to school for 12 years and receiving 6 years' worth of education. — Julian Bond
Without music, life would be a mistake.
I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary. — H. Rap Brown
You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from. — Romare Bearden
Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents. — Alan Dundes
Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans — Ben Shapiro
I don't speak Japanese, I don't know anything about Japanese business or Japanese culture. Apart from sushi. But I can't exactly go up to him and say "Sushi!" out of the blue. It would be like going up to a top American businessman and saying, "T-bone steak! — Sophie Kinsella
I bring quadruple diversity to the Senate: I'm a woman; I'll be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate; I am an immigrant; I am a Buddhist. When I said this at one of my gatherings, they said, 'Yes, but are you gay?' and I said, 'Nobody's perfect.' — Mazie Hirono
American Pop Culture Quotes
I feel the need... the need for speed. — Tom Cruise
I had been an eyewitness to a truly historic moment in American pop culture. — Jean Shepherd
Marilyn Manson is a mockery of American pop culture. — Marilyn Manson
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain
If you're starting to lose your faith in the general intelligence of the American populous, there's nothing like them mistaking pop culture for Van Gogh as a sign that people still read their history books and care about art. — Ben Feldman
I admire the abstract expressionists and pop artists so right now I'm referencing American '60s art and at the same time referencing Japanese manga culture. — Christian Marclay
I think Indians will pick up on a lot of the direct commentary on Delhi, which Americans will obviously miss, while Americans might get more out of watching pop-culture play out in unusual ways in a foreign country. Who knows? — Karan Mahajan
The down side of Americans being obsessed with pop culture is that they kind of like it light. — Bill Griffith
I do think everything that happens in American pop culture sort of prescribes for England and does end up happening there six months later, maybe a year. — Emma Forrest
I grew up on American pop culture so everything that I fantasized about to get out of this sort of humdrum world of Bradford was about America. So when we decided to move there I was on the plane. — Aasif Mandvi
I think American culture had just become so disengaged from the process of government, and we'd been so fuzzed out by our pop culture around us, that I don't think people really saw this guy for what he was. — Adam McKay
Genres Of Music Quotes
Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music. — Herbie Hancock
If you fake the funk, your nose will grow. — Bootsy Collins
I see friends who are in different genres of music, and they say they're so burnt playing the same stuff every night. That's why you see a country act wanting to go out and play an old classic rock song. But what cracks me up is that they all want to be Jimmy Buffett. I can't figure that out. — Kid Rock
The Bee Gees were always heavily influenced by black music. As a songwriter, it's never been difficult to pick up on the changing styles of music out there, and soul has always been my favourite genre. — Robin Gibb
Music is there for us to explore. To intentionally limit yourself to one, two, or three genres is limitation at its worst. Music is huge; its a gigantic history lesson, and if you are true music fan or a musician, you should explore it. Its all right there in front of us. — Phil Anselmo
Dance music is like a virus, it has affected so many different genres. — Avicii
As players of instruments, it is our duty to reach out and give light to those in the dark in whatever way that we can. All my actions are a fulfilment of all the African music genres - I'm only trying to maintain the culture and the tradition. I am a musician. — Sizzla
I think the industry is oblivious to the fact that most people listen to all kinds of stuff. I personally don't know of anyone who listens to only one genre of music. It's vanity because no one does. — Keith Urban
I think my music generally transcends a lot of genres. — Mika
I think hip-hop does a very good job of infusing comedy and humor and wit into music, a lot more than other genres. — Carrie Brownstein
American Tradition Quotes
American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that. — Edward R. Murrow
The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson
It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain. — Sayings
But the fact is, Mr. Chairman, for all the challenges the Postal Service of the 21st century faces, it still retains its traditional place as a key cog in how American businesses conduct their affairs and how Americans all across this land communicate. — John M. McHugh
I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity. — Janet Yellen
What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy. — Arthur Hertzberg
Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment. — Galen Rowell
I don't like political poetry, and I don't write it. If this question was pointing towards that, I think it is missing the point of the American tradition, which is always apolitical, even when the poetry comes out of politically active writers. — Diane Wakoski
We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might. — Theodore C. Sorensen
It is in the American tradition to stand up for one's rights--even if the new way to stand up for one's rights is to sit down. — John F. Kennedy
British Music Quotes
When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland. — Terri Windling
I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills... all apart from cooking. — Heston Blumenthal
[Being in the States] is almost like being on a holiday. It's kind of annoying because everyone's like "Oh, you're so obsessed with America," but it's not really that. I just really enjoy being here - I'm not the first British artist to make music here and be inspired by the country. — Marina and the Diamonds
Before Cliff (Richard) and The Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music. — John Lennon
I don't think the Bonzo Dog could have evolved in America, nor could the old Nice: because of their musical discipline. This is one thing that British groups do have, a sort of discipline. Sometimes it can get a bit soulless, but on the whole I think it's preferable to the American alternative. — Jon Lord
I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs. — Freddie Mercury
Back in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect. — Ronnie Wood
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species. — Alan Lomax
Even though we were influenced by American culture and music, we like the rest of Europe have been colonized with that in the post-war period. At the same time there's a sense of dirty earthiness and Europeanness and Britishness in it as well. — Stephen Mallinder
I was in Britain that year [1963] and some music publishing people in Denmark Street in London suggested me to the BBC. So I found myself in front of a British television show, which was a nice surprise. — Gordon Lightfoot
Modern Music Quotes
Music is enough for a lifetime - but a lifetime is not enough for music. — Sergei Rachmaninoff
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. — Albert Einstein
I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel
With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues. — Brian Setzer
My music is not modern, it is merely badly played — Arnold Schoenberg
Modern music and artistry would look and sound completely different if not for the groundbreaking contributions Michael Jackson gifted to the world. — L.A. Reid
I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach. — Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners. — Alan Freed
Music is a gut thing. You're working in a medium which is more in touch with the primal than the modern. A gig is a ritual. There's a congregation. — Siobhan Fahey
I will never again play anything that does not have social significance. We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we are master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we've been through. — Max Roach
The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues. — Willie Dixon
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Imamu Amiri Baraka Jones
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons. — Amiri Baraka
Regarding the current Broadway revival of The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: There will always be those who sniff that the show is "feel good"-but, oh, it feels good to feel good. And the main reason The Music Man feels so good is that it is good-a great American musical. — Meredith Willson
If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you'd find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies. — Dave Barry
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food. — Francis Ford Coppola
I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male. — Kurt Cobain
My early childhood memories center around this typical American country store and life in a small American town, including 4th of July celebrations marked by fireworks and patriotic music played from a pavilion bandstand. — Frederick Reines
I wanted to invent some kind of American dance that was danced to the music that I grew up on: Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart and Irving Berlin. So I evolved a style that certainly didn't catch on right away - but I had some good mentors in New York who encouraged me. — Gene Kelly
Music has an intrinsic value that touches Americans - they love their music, and want more. — Hilary Rosen
The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish. — Virgil Thomson
I think early on I was really into ambient music and like American original Emo. — Matthew Healy
Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music. Emotionally, he honestly absorbs the vibrations emanating from the people, manners and life of his time and, in turn, gives these impressions back to the world -- simplified, clarified and glorified. — Jerome Kern
Country music has become the music that best represents the reality of American life. — Brad Paisley
Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! — Bram Stoker
Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music. — Alexis Korner
Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana. — Robert Plant
I think the women - Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu - are doing new conceptual things and using their voices to create new American music. — Boz Scaggs
I started with rock n' roll and...then you start to take it apart like a child with a toy and you see there's blues and there's country...Then you go back from country into American music...and you end up in Scotland and Ireland eventually. — Elvis Costello
I quite like American music, like The Fray - I'm a massive fan of them - and The Killers. I also like more acoustic stuff like Ed Sheeran; I like this English songwriter James Morrison and another singer called Ben Howard. — Louis Tomlinson
Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa. — Art Blakey
It's going to be years and years before most people realize how greatly he contributed to American music. — B. B. King
As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music. — Edgar Winter
But, yeah, as far as Asian Americans go, I hope they know they can look at me and see that they can do music on their own, within a band or just on their own, and not feel like there's any barriers. I've never felt any particular barriers myself, being who I am. — James Iha
I have discovered three things which know no geographical borders - classical music, American jazz, and applause as the sign of the public's favor. — Jascha Heifetz
Appalachia is still, for American musicians, a kind of fountain of youth we always go back to, the old home place to a group of artists who represent the quintessence of American independence, fortitude, genius, and madness. — Paul Burch
Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions. — Henry Rollins
Here we go again. Pandering to the .3 percent of the American population that consider themselves transgender. Now I get to explain this to my 8-year-old, if I just wanted to watch a nice family show with some nice music. — Gretchen Carlson
It seems to me that the American popular song, growing out of American folk music, is the basis of the American musical theater… it is quite legitimate to use the form of the popular song and gradually fill it out with new musical content. — Kurt Weill
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