Matthew Shipp Quotes

The iconoclastic mode, that specific mode of language, there is an element of it that it is punk - that is confrontational. That's just a part of the language of jazz - at a certain point.

Every band I've worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they've gone somewhere that nobody else has been.

I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

It's what's missing, I think, from most music - the rebellious part. That rebelliousness is part of great rock music or great literature or any great creative stuff.

I'm a complete deviant. All creative work breaks new ground.

The punk era, at its best, celebrated questioning the norm and the promotion of originality. Both concepts have always resonated with me.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.

Rock is all about writing your own script; it's all about pioneering.

I always do things that are not the flavour of the season. And that's why people like me.

I've had a lot of folks tell me that my songs weren't quite country because they didn't really sound like anybody that had come along and done it before me. I felt a little out of place for a while.

When the whole point of Queen was to be original.

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.

Just trying to be different - when I hear something - I don't like to go trampling on other people's sounds.

Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan.

You gotta stick your neck out and put out a record that isn't safe... that's the Green Day way!

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

When I was 18, the vision was to make music that didn't exist, because everything else was so unsatisfactory.

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I think that what's been holding composers back a great deal is that they feel they must have a new style every year. This, in my case, would be hopeless. In fact, it is said that I have no style at all, but that doesn't matter. I just go on doing, as they say, my thing. I believe this takes a certain courage.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or, 'What you're doing isn't jazz,' are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly.

I actually found not having a routine was inspiration.