Henry Rollins Quotes

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!

Jazz, of course, is our heritage. Jazz is a culture, it's not a fad. It's up to us to see to it that it stays alive.

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.

Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.

Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.

Jazz is the American’s preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires ...

I love how music and chants were used in the Civil Rights movement to help people keep marching. How songs were both a balm and a call to action.

Jazz, and the history of jazz, is the history of America.

Berry Gordy is a music legend, and we all know that, but I don't think Berry gets enough credit for his involvement with the civil rights movement.

I want to play Martin Luther King. That is absolutely a role and a character who is important to the landscape of the world that I really want to play.

As a civil rights leader, Mrs. King's vision of racial peace and nonviolent social change was a fortifying staple in advancing the civil rights movement.

My music is jazz.

The Civil Rights Movement, it wasn't just a couple of, you know, superstars like Martin Luther King. It was thousands and thousands - millions, I should say - of people taking risks, becoming leaders in their community.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

The tragedy of the civil rights movement is that just as it achieved the beginning of the end of racial segregation, white educated elites became swept up in the glamour of the sexual revolution.

I wrote a great deal about the Civil Rights Movement when I was writing for 'The Nation' in the '60s, and also for Esquire magazine. Reading the biography of Coffin, it just reminded me that in those days, when you saw the term 'Christian,' it usually meant people for civil rights and for justice.

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

I loved Martin Luther King more than a brother.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of my personal heroes.

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz.

Jazz is progressive, and it's alive.

Some of the most moving experiences I've had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.