Miles Davis Quotes

Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.

Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature.

Jazz is not background music.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

I'm making music that I love and I want to hear. At the same time, things like making money, making crazy money - you gotta find ways to reach to everybody but uplift everybody.

I think the world is very much embracing this whole concept of musicians going out and playing their instruments and playing music for music as opposed to music that has something to do with some form of image or imagery.

The novel is the first art form that is an honest-to-god commodity. That's what makes it different from both high art and folk art.

Now that we do not have priests and philosophers any more, artists are the most important people in the world.

Twenty years from now, will we listen to Lady Gaga? No. She might think she is making a stand for the freaks and the weirdos. But they're not going to have any decent music to play, are they?

The importance of the arts to the societies in which they thrive is well documented.

Being on the road is a great habitat for creating new music because there's so many different experiences.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.

It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'

I don't see how they can with most of my pieces, but I think it's unfortunate that they can through familiarity with flashy performances of a great deal of other music.

No art that is not in the end understood by the People can live or ever did live a single generation.

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say 'This is a good song' as somebody who is in the music business.

Maybe all theatre is going to be irrelevant for all time.

The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist.

Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it's lacking substance, and it's difficult to find good stuff. There are too many corporate interests. It's not about the actual music because it's about the corporation, and music just becomes part of a package.

I like the fact that music is more abstract.

To the average mind popular music would mean compositions vulgarly conceived and commonplace in their treatment. That is absolutely false.

American Pie speaks to the loss that we feel. That's why that song has found the niche that it has.

Bob Marley is one of the most recognized artists. He didn't care to be defined. People wondered, 'Is it reggae? Is it rock?' But at the end of the day they were still playing his music and that's what matters.

Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.