During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music. I feel this has been granted through His grace. ALL PRAISE TO GOD.
— John Coltrane
Colorful Music And Spirituality quotations
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music.
If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.
Whether a person is spiritual or not, we all seek to get away from the stress, anger, and anxiety of everyday life. Some people drink, do drugs, or do worse to escape, and they hurt themselves in the process. Some people listen to music, mine included, and feel better.
There's a very basic human, non-verbal aspect to our need to make music and use it as part of our human expression. It doesn't have to do with body movements, it doesn't have to do with articulation of a language, but with something spiritual.
My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music.
In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.
Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
The whole of life itself expresses the blues.
That's why I always say the blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling and understanding. The blues can be about anything pertaining to the facts of life. The blues call on God as much as a spiritual song do.
I prefer to learn everything through music.
If you want divinity, the music in every human being and their love for music is pretty much it. It's the big indication of their spirituality and their ability to love and make love, or feel pain or joy, and really manifest it, really be real.
Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.
It is music that welds spiritual and sensual, that can convey ecstasy free of guilt, faith without dogma, love as homage, and a person at home with nature and the infinite.
Don't die with your music (stories/talents) still inside you.
Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.
There are people hell-bent on the idea that we're a Christian band in disguise, and that we have some secret message. We have no spiritual affiliation with this music. It's simply about life experience.
I don't believe in any kind of artistic snobbery or musical snobbery.
You know, to me, the sexiest and the most spiritual words ever uttered in rock and roll are wop babaloo balop bam boom.
The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect.
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist.
The purpose of dancing isn't to end up at a particular spot on the floor.
The purpose of dancing - and of life - is to enjoy every moment and every step, regardless of where you are when the music ends.
I can tell you, dearest friend, that if it became known how much friendship, love and a world of human and spiritual references I have smuggled into these three movements, the adherents of programme music - should there be any left - would go mad with joy.
John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet.
He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality. That's why I regard the music he played as spiritual music -- John's way of getting closer and closer to the Creator.
We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living, and with that we are satisfied.
My whole trick is to keep the tune well out in front.
If I play Tchaikovsky, I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggle.
My raps are a decision, rabble rousing, spiritual, like gospel music.
I don't want to dance. We have so many things to deal with, we need to talk straight up and down.
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That happens every time I get behind a guitar, regardless of what I'm saying, 'cause music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.
There tend to be two different drives that lead young people toward music.
One is that music provides an escape; it takes you away from the unhappiness or torture of where you are and makes you feel less alienated-you believe there is a place you fit in somewhere else. The other is a sort of transcendent, spiritual feeling in the purity of music.
James Brown's Live at the Apollo is not just a musical whiplash, it's a spiritual cleansing. You can just close your eyes and see him doing the splits, kicking the mic stand and doing a 360.
Real music will help you move towards meditation, beyond the mind needs, towards spiritual needs. Real poetry will give you a glimpse of the minds of the sages - a glimpse of course. It will open a window so you can see the faraway distant Himalayas. And then an urge arises in you, and you start travelling.
Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world.
I believe in spiritualism. It's like, when you listen to music or something and then you're sort of primed. If you're an artist, you're sort of primed and inspired, and you start drawing, you sort of have the spirit of what you're listening to, still in you. You just have sort of an inspiration.
If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to.
The singing of our sacred hymns, written by the servants of God, has a powerful effect in converting people to the principles of the Gospel, and in promoting peace and spiritual growth.
...man is a musical being. His origin is in the spoken Word. By sound was he sustained and by music he evolved. One day he will recognize music as a vital factor in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual evolution of the whole human race.
Music speaks from spirit to spirit and in that sense you could call it a true spiritual language.