Lee Ritenour Quotes

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.

Traveling all around the world, music sounds different.

What I'm trying to do, in my own small way, is trying to bring African and Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock.

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.

I've been to India, Jordan, South Africa, Namibia, Senegal, Australia, Madagascar, Oman, The States, and a lot of countries in Europe, just to visit... I wanted to make music to connect all of these influences, and make a multicultural music with these experiences.

Since music is a reflection of our mindset and our culture, it is bound to change with time. I am glad that India is such a receiving country and is always open to all kinds of music. Our composers, singers and writers are open to experimenting.

Well, all rock and roll is based in artifice.

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.

When I got out of the Nazz, I had it in my mind that simply to be eclectic was an important aspect of making music. It was something that I derived from The Beatles.

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

Historically, black music has influenced other cultures and other genres and created other genres.

I thinks it really interesting how they throw the world music samples in there. I often wonder what it would be like to do something like that, but use my lyrics and my kind of style.

I spent my last year of high school in Latin America, and there's a edge of salsa under all of my rhythms.

Ah, the bond between English boys and California girls. For those of us who aren't either, it's a bond that fascinates and mystifies. So much of the world's favorite music comes out of that relationship.

All over the world, the idea of creating an melange of international musics, it's a very healthy thing.

We deliberately used elements from Brazilian music and from African and Asian music. Now people can hear that but then it sounded so abstract, they couldn't hear it.

My taste in music originates from my culture and heritage, and from traveling the world and listening to all kinds of fun sounds and bits.

I like to take music from everywhere and put it in my style and let it be accepted.

At first, I found the music I was making really hard to find a home for. I felt like my attitude was really British, but not the actual sounds I was making. Back in 2003, when I made 'Galang,' there were no clubs that had an 'anything and everything' attitude.

I'm no ethnomusicologist. There is a connection between the five-note scale used both in traditional Chinese music and the blues, but I don't really understand it. All I know is, whenever I play with Chinese musicians, we seem to belong to the same musical gene pool.

One of my problems is I'm not really sure if I slot into rock or not. I've always tried to combine world music, folk, jazz, blues and rock, and have done since Traffic.

I definitely see myself as an international musician. When I play, I respect the source of the music, whether it's Cuban, Brazilian or Israeli. I try to bring that to all of the music I play. Music has no borders and no flags.