Robbie Robertson Quotes

My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

I like the idea of an eclectic approach, incorporating jazz with other forms and other genres of music.

I don't really see huge barriers between any styles of music.

'Supafunkrock' is a musical gumbo. We throw all those musical influences into the pot and put it out there.

I just like blending all the genres together but blending them up in a good way. I try to be as free as I can with it.

My brothers came home with country, jazz, everything... it was always very normal to me to make any type of music. It was possible to fuse all the sounds, so it never sounded confusing to me to mix jazz and dubstep.

My particular space has always been quite unique in popular music. I have a background in R&B and hard rock and straight pop, but I never went all the way with any of those genres.

As a kid, I was listening to Aretha Franklin, Etta James and hip-hop as well as music my parents were listening to, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.

Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.

My folks have played everything from rock, disco, pop, funk, and blues. My dad has always brought and played different genres like jazz, classical, and Latin. With all this in my pocket, I feel I have a taste of everything for my influences.

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

The folk music definition has changed in this fast music world and musical styles are blending really quickly.

We're a gumbo of American music, and aren't ashamed to play pop or soul or rock because we all grew up on radio.

I love mixing up my genres.

I think it's hard to put a finger on my music. My music has always been an amalgamation of everything I listen to, which includes everything and anything under the sun. Hip-hop to country to R&B to pop, all the things I'm inspired by find a way into what I do.

Going back and forth between Western Arabic and African countries clearly created the various musical backgrounds I could have and obviously influenced my professional attitude, my way of approaching both music composition and singing, particularly phrasing.

Blues became rock, rock became soul, and all of it was colorblind.

I base my roots and history in old blues, old country and old bluegrass, and I like rock 'n' roll, and somehow it all came together, and that is what I am playing now.

For us, it is all about breaking the boundaries between different genres of music and combining different styles of music and performing what we are passionate about. We are so lucky that we can experience both worlds: the more intimate classical world and the wild and crazy world of rock n' roll.

The blues is the foundation, and it's got to carry the top. The other part of the scene, the rock 'n' roll and the jazz, are the walls of the blues.

Ireland and America, music-wise, are very closely related. The Irish came over with their fiddles in hand, and you can hear it in the bluegrass and rockabilly. I love it when music from different countries combine.

Honestly, I got the best of both worlds: groove of New Orleans meets the intensity of Texas. That's the best education I could have, the best experiences I could have.

I mix up all styles on my albums because that is what music is about now.

People are going to wake up to this great reservoir of music we've created in America - cakewalks, one-steps, boogie-woogie, country and western. I had a bit to do with one of those traditions.