These jazz quotes will inspire you. Jazz is a type of music of American origin characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and usually a regular or forceful rhythm, emerging at the beginning of the 20th century. Brass and woodwind instruments and piano are particularly associated with jazz, although guitar and occasionally violin are also used; styles include Dixieland, swing, bebop, and free jazz.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging jazz quotes, jazz sayings, and jazz proverbs.
Famous Jazz Quotes
- “Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” ~ Miles Davis
- “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” ~ Steve Martin
- “It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.” ~ Ella Fitzgerald
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“The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas.” ~ Miles Davis
- “The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.” ~ Herbie Hancock
- “Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.” ~ Miles Davis
- “There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.” ~ Dave Brubeck
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“Jazz is like wine. When it is new it’s only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it.” ~ Steve Lacy
- “Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.” ~ Sonny Rollins , Jazz quotes about life
- “Life is a lot like jazz. It’s best when you improvise.” ~ George Gershwin
- “It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.” ~ Dizzy Gillespie
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“Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life.” ~ Art Blakey
- “Starting in the middle of a musical sentence and moving in both directions at once.” ~ John Coltrane
- “There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “There are four qualities essential to a great jazzman. they are taste, courage, individuality, and irreverence.” ~ Stan Getz
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“What we play is life.” ~ Louis Armstrong
- “You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.” ~ Charlie Parker
- “Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions.” ~ Johnny Griffin
- “If ya ain’t got it in ya, ya can’t blow it out.” ~ Louis Armstrong
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“Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.” ~ John Philip Sousa
- “As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something thats never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish.” ~ Charlie Haden
- “Music is an addiction.” ~ Miles Davis
- “Jazz is a good barometer of freedom.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” ~ Miles Davis
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“One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” ~ Lou Reed
- “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.” ~ Frank Zappa , Jazz quotes about love
- “Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate upon it in order to get the most of it.
You must absorb most of it. The harmonies within the music can relax, soothe, relax, and uplift the
mind when you concentrate upon and absorb it. Jazz music stimulates the minds and uplifts the souls
of those who play it was well as of those who listen to immerse themselves in it. As the mind is
stimulated and the soul uplifted, this is eventually reflected in the body.” ~ Horace Silver - “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
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“Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.” ~ Nina Simone
- “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” ~ Louis Armstrong
- “Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.” ~ Warren G. Bennis
- “Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.” ~ Ornette Coleman
- “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s only a word. What’s in a name? Nothing! Cats say, “Call me Muhammed so-and-so. “” ~ Art Blakey
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“You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.” ~ Sonny Rollins
- “There are singers that I have enjoyed, from Nina Simone and Ray Charles onward. But the music that made music the number one thing for me as a youth was jazz.” ~ Robert Wyatt
- “In a way, the history of jazz’s development is a small mirror of classical music’s development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form.” ~ Mike Figgis
- “From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.” ~ Bill Frist
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“If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.” ~ Ginger Baker
- “I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.” ~ Sonny Rollins
- “I’m not a jazz singer.” ~ Boz Scaggs
- “I’ve been informed by both sides, jazz, western music, Asian music, African music, all sides, because I’ve been interested in the sound of the universe, and that sound is without limit.” ~ Joseph Jarman
- “That’s kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You’re out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.” ~ Branford Marsalis
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“Jazz today, as always in the past, is a matter of thoughtful creation, not mere unaided instinct.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “There is a view that jazz is ‘evil’ because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.” ~ Garth Hudson
- “Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.” ~ Charlie Parker
- “It’s like a whole orchestra, the piano for me.” ~ Dave Brubeck
- “Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.” ~ George Foreman
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“Music is my religion.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
- “I have to admit that more and more lately, the whole idea of jazz as an idiom is one that I’ve completely rejected. I just don’t see it as an idiomatic thing anymore…To me, if jazz is anything, it’s a process, and maybe a verb, but it’s not a thing. It’s a form that demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you. That, for me, is a pretty serious distinction that doesn’t have anything to do with blues, or swing, or any of these other things that tend to be listed as essentials in order for music to be jazz with a capital J.” ~ Pat Metheny
- “Jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.” ~ Max De Pree
- “Jazz is rhythm and meaning.” ~ Henri Matisse
- “Jazz is the folk music of the machine age.” ~ Paul Whiteman
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“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” ~ Miles Davis
- “Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.” ~ Keith Jarrett
- “Critics have their purposes, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what they did.” ~ Duke Ellington
- “It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.” ~ George Santayana
- “In Europe, they like everything you do. The mistakes and everything. That’s a little bit too much.” ~ Miles Davis
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“If someone has been escaping reality, I don’t expect him to dig my music.” ~ Charles Mingus
- “Trumpets! Can you bring your… uh… extracurricular tubing necessities next rehearsal?” ~ Jaco Pastorius
- “Well, I’m too old to pimp, and too young to die, so I’m just gonna keep playin'” ~ Clark Terry
- “If you got up on the bandstand at Minton’s and couldn’t play, you were not only going to be embarrassed by the people ignoring you or booing you, you might get your ass kicked.” ~ Miles Davis
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“Sustained intensity equals ecstasy.” ~ Wynton Marsalis
- “It’s either hip or it ain’t.” ~ Lee Morgan
- “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
Jazz is a type of American music with lively rhythms and melodies that are often made up by musicians as they play.
