American Music Quotes

• 

  Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Music, Lonely

  Twitter post from Oct 02, 2015

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• 

  If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

  Louis Armstrong

  Music, Jazz, Asks

  "Jazz Giants of the 20th Century/ Taglines". www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• I believe the history of American music is just as important as anything political because it's changed generations of people.

  Dave Grohl

  Believe, People, Political

  "Dave Grohl: The ‘Sonic Highways’ Exit Interview". Interview with Jason Newman, www.rollingstone.com. December 8, 2014.

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• 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

  Writing, Simple, Wish

  Quoted in Machlis Introduction to Contemporary Music (1963).

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• I'm weird - I don't really listen to American music while I'm writing. I do occasionally get an anthem song, but generally speaking, when I write, I only listen to Japanese and Hawaiian music.

  Violet Duke

  Song, Writing, Anthem

  Source: happyeverafter.usatoday.com

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• It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Music, May, Characteristics

  James Weldon Johnson “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• 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

  Country, Rocks, Rhythm And Blues

  FaceBook post by Etta James from Jun 16, 2012

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• What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

  Carlisle Floyd

  Sound, Comfort, Answers

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• African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll.

  David Simon

  Loss, Rocks, Rock And Roll

  Source: progressive.org

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• 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

  Music, Mean, Roots

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• Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.

  Ken Burns

  Important, Jazz, Physics

  Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns (2000). “Jazz: a history of America's music”, Knopf

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• I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.

  Terri Windling

  Music, Native American, Tunes

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• The blues will always be because the blues are the roots of all American music.

  Willie Dixon

  Roots

  Willie Dixon, Don Snowden (1989). “I am the blues: the Willie Dixon story”

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• The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.

  Stanley Crouch

  Moving, Airplane, Light

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• I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.

  William Christopher Handy

  Thinking, America, Sprung

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• Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass.

  Paul Zollo

  Music, Country, Boys

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• American music is something the rest of the world wants to listen to. Our job is to make sure they pay for it.

  Jason Michael Berman

  Jobs, World, Want

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• I'm not a comedian. I'm not a show host. I'm a musician. That's why I've turned down offers to host the Grammy Awards and the American Music Awards. Is it really entertaining for me to get up there and crack a few weak jokes and force people to laugh because I'm Michael Jackson, when I know in my heart that I'm not funny?

  Michael Jackson

  Heart, Awards, People

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• I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn't keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music school, because they were taking American music students.

  Burt Bacharach

  School, Piano, Littles

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• The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Running, Country, New Orleans

  "Marsalis: Racism and greed put blues at the back of the bus". Interview, edition.cnn.com. October 24, 2009.

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• 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

  Kids, Dark, Mississippi Delta

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• I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about Black music, about soul music.

  James Taylor

  Growing Up, Thinking, Soul

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. January 17, 2013.

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• The Blues? It's the mother of American music. That's what is is - the source.

  B. B. King

  Music, Mother, Source

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• Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Inspiring, Country, Vocabulary

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• There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing...

  John Deacon

  England, English Music

  Interview with Jim Ladd, queenarchives.com. 1977.

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