Robert Glasper Quotes

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.

We listen to a lot of classical and a lot of jazz, and so you get some funky notes here and there. And we get a little experimental in some of the deeper tracks.

I started out playing traditional jazz, and I still do: I love standards, I love the music. But it must move on, and it must live and breathe, and continue to grow, and continue to change, and continue to mesh with other music - all that kind of stuff. Jazz can be on the playground too, you know.

I wanted to make a jazz record. I didn't want it to be a standards record.

Ultimately, I think there's this umbrella term of jazz, and what's cool about not just what's happening with my music but this general sense of what's happening with this generation of musicians, is it's a very broad term, and we can incorporate all types of music, and we can be influenced and inspired by all kinds of sounds.

We may play in a contemporary rock vein, use standard bebop themes, and many other things besides.

Even back when I played 'straight-ahead,' I mixed it up. I played some free-form, classical adaptations, solo flute stuff. It was New Age in its own way.

Some songs are just going to be acoustic with just maybe some light background stuff going on and maybe violin or something like that. Or sax - I mean, I'm definitely having some sax. That's just what I love. It's going to be jazz-rock stuff. That's what I'm aiming for.

The Lounge Lizards were relating with a tradition and it was like I was playing within a musical context. The guitar playing stood out as being different in some way. That was a real education for me.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone.

Jazz was uplifted by what I did.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

The jazz chord substitutions in a country song... that was another thing that bent people's ears. I guess that my favorites are the unique ones. It's not how fast you play. It's that unique blending of different stuff I'm most proud of.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.

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

There are a few things that I will hopefully be credited for as a pioneer. One is my four-mallet playing. Another one is the starting what was first called jazz rock in 1967 when I started my first band, later became jazz fusion by the 1970s.

I think that the jazzy approach that I have is based on the way that I hear music and in the way I play a supporting role to the other people in the band.

It's sort of what jazz would be if it stopped being snobby and what rock would be if it stopped being stupid.

I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

I never heard anything so brilliant in my life as I did that first time I heard Ornette. He played like some revolutionary angel. Soon, we were rehearsing in his place, music scattered everywhere, and he was telling me to play outside the chord changes, which was exactly what I had been wanting to do. Now I had permission.