Laura Mvula Quotes

I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn.

I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.

Puerto Rico's relationship with music is everything. It's an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

And whether you're drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.

Reggae music isn't Jewish, but a lot of the ideas are.

I've grown up on gospel and blues music, and now it's a huge part of who I am.

I was bred and raised in a multi-cultural music background.

I love all kinds of music. My dad's from London, so he loves David Bowie, the Stones, The Clash. I grew up with that influence while loving poetry and loving all kinds of current music.

I came up in gospel.

I grew up with reggae music.

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

I know that people everywhere listen to hip-hop, but especially being from the South, you really get that influence. You go out, you party, and it's just always there. Also, I grew up listening and loving reggae music, too.

I certainly hope my music is in no way, shape or form influenced by anything that would be known as a jam band. If it is, then I'm going to do something else.

Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer.

Historically, black music has influenced other cultures and other genres and created other genres.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

I grew up in a house full of music. Everything from reggae and afro-beat to Zook and pop.

I was raised on gospel. I remember hip-hop and rock music were secular, so basically, for my first ten years living in Detroit, I was on gospel. But when I moved to Houston, that's when I got to open up my musical horizons.

No, there's something about the sing-song cadence of children's music that has its place in rock.

The biggest misconception about us is that we're just a rock band. We think our music is a cross-section of many genres; a hybrid of what the six of us have grown up on.

I think that one of Elvis' charms was that he could sing almost any kind of music. I am sure that in his heart, which I don't know what was there, but just from his singing I could feel that he was very partial to gospel music.

I came from a very strict background, and didn't hear any Jamaican music when I was growing up.

People who love R&B will love my music, people who love rock will love my music. It's soulful, it's pop. It's a sound that relates to everyone.

When I lived in the U.K., I recorded a lot of ska and rock-steady styles of Jamaican music. But people there weren't accepting it. So I began using a faster reggae beat.

My style has a lot to do with where I've been brought up. I've lived half my life in Puerto Rico and the other half in Florida, so I listen to music in English as well as Spanish.