Max Roach Quotes

Jazz is democracy in music.

The record Clef and I did was just sitting there. So I said, Clef, I got a record, hit a verse on it. He just went in, messed around and ended up doing the hook too.

I kind of make music where and when I can, and I guess that's why I collaborate so much.

There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.

The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art

Jazz brought this sense of democracy where four guys come together and your name may be on the marquee, but in this moment, when you're the soloist, it's you, and we follow you. We follow you.

Jazz is about the only form of art existing today in which there is freedom of the individual without the loss of group contact.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

To outsiders it probably seems like splitting hairs, but to me, Bright Eyes is a simply the collaboration between myself and Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. What you hear is definitely the sum of all our ideas and represents all three of us. But I still write the songs myself.

Jazz is letting everybody do his or her thing with the music.

My music is jazz.

We're five people, five individuals who came together to create something, to make music and to complete each other musically, to form a perfect circle.

I wanted to look at the mentality that can breed that sort of intensity, that kind of cutthroat, pressure-cooker feeling, especially a form of music like jazz, that should be - or you'd think should be - all about liberation and improvisation and everything.

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

When we started there was this element of these experiments we were doing where we weren't really sure how the music would play out because the music was all on different players.

I love working with an orchestra, but there are many ways to make music.

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.

As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also.

I'm not thinking about what needs to be on the radio. I'm not thinking about anything other than - I'm just going to let this music come out of me and not have any sort of preconceived notion of what I should do. I'm just going to do it.

Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

Music is a passion of mine, so I also want to continue along that path, creating with my friends.

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 ...

When they say 'jazz,' I'm thinking of a word called 'the creative process.' It intersects every vein and tributary, avenue, path, that everyone's living. It crosses through there, but it's been contained.

When I'm working, I'm pretty busy with that, but when I'm not, yeah, I like to make music. I sing in jazz bars and stuff, and then I mainly paint every day. It's kind of like a different side of my mind I like to use, and it keeps the other one fresh, and yeah, writing, I've been writing with some friends.