Jazz Culture Quotes

Jazz is like a big secret club. The mainstream media doesn't pay any attention to it; it's, like, 1 percent of the music market - no one cares. Why? Because the majority of jazz is old.

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

I don't like heroin, unless you're a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin.

There is no blood in jazz drumming, and there are no bullies in jazz drumming.

I've met a lot of jazz musicians in my day, and they're all funny.

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences.

No matter what setting I play in, I will always be New Orleans. It's one of the only cities where you can hang out with the Marsalis family, the Neville brothers, whoever it might be, and we all play together.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

The people at Jazz at Lincoln Center are an amazing group and have done a phenomenal job teaching kids and audiences of all ages about jazz.

Jazz is played from the heart. You can even live by it. Always love it.

My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.

Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

Jazz musicians are the coolest people on the planet. Can I have some cool?

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.

I would not describe myself as an avid jazz fan and I am not a jazz musician myself. However, that is not to say that jazz does not play a vital and important role in my life.

When I was in college, I had a jazz radio show. I called it 'Excursion on a Wobbly Rail,' after a Cecil Taylor song. I used to run around the Village following Ornette Coleman wherever he played.

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so.

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.'

My father was a part of that generation, and my mother, too - the late-'30s, early-'40s big-band generation. Frank Sinatra, Art Blakey, Gene Krupa, Billie Holiday - all that stuff was in my background.

New York seems conducted by jazz, animated by it. It is essentially a city of rhythm.

If I had to look at 'Now He Sings'... from outside myself, I see it as a natural part of the growth of the jazz culture, which I've always been so happy - honored, really - to be a small part of.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

Jazz is a beautiful woman whose older brother is a policeman.

Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be some jazz.