Shankar Mahadevan Quotes

Music is a reservoir... of sounds.

What I can feel the most and what I can remember the most are the melodies I want to write to.

The African people and tribal chiefs are hospitable, and African music and dances are invigorating.

I do notice that I spend a lot of all my time steeped in different forms of myth, such as English folk music, for example, not really studying it necessarily, but just trying to experience it so I can recall it later.

In my songs, I'm not saying something that's never been said before. The have lyrics aren't going to blow people away. It's the emotion and the melody that drive it home.

Music is as integral to me as my own DNA. My life has become a continual soundtrack, with music underscoring the most powerful and even the most banal moments of my life.

Now, music almost feels naked in my mind.

I do believe that music has an intense power to connect us together, to inspire us to become ourselves.

The nature of music is mysterious and so much so that it generates strong emotions within us. It moves along passages that reach the most intimate areas of our psyche without being tried by prejudices or influences of any kind.

I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

I've always loved the blues, ever since I was a kid. It has a depth to it that a lot of contemporary music doesn't have. It has pain and suffering in it, but funny stories, too. And it is built on storytelling, which is something I really love.

A love song must respect the canons of music beauty, entering the fibers of those who are listening. It must make them dream and pleasantly introduce them to the universe of love.

Music is the marriage of the feelings of the living to the wisdom of the dead.

When I went to see certain shows when I was a kid, they changed my life. They made me tap into that place inside myself that I was unable to get to, so music is that tool, that bridge, and that's the kind of music I'm interested in making.

It's a unique thing, and it's probably the thing I love most about songs and music - their ability to connect in a human way.

What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.

All that really moves me is music.

The reason I connected with music was because of the stories that people were telling and making me feel when I listened to a song.

It's hard to explain music when it goes in your gut and makes left and right and turns and moves you and resonates with you.

I get inspired by the sounds that evoke an emotion from me. That's what I am drawn to; that's what turns me on.

Without a song the day would never end Without a song the road would never bend When things go wrong a man ain't got a friend Without a song

The fact is that all the recording science and technology in the world is no substitute for a good song or for real feeling. Music is about feeling and if there isn't any genuine feeling, if the song isn't about anything that anyone gives a damn about, there's nothing you can do. All the technique that exists won't make it any good; it'll just make it technological. All the production values you add won't do anything except make it glossy.

Music. Close your eyes and it's a rosebush blooming in time lapse so that it shoots and blossoms flow outward in a swift choreography of growth and collapse, twine and coil, release and fade. Close your eyes and music paints light vines and calligraphy on the darkness within you.

If you ask me, music is the language of memory