Music Quotes
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In the early '70s [the late] Ras Shorty and I took Indian dholak drumming [from chutney music, another Indo-Trinidadian creation], fused it with calypso's African rhythms, and soca was born against the wishes of the purists.
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There is still a very strong subculture of people who want to do great things on an instrument, and who are stimulated by hearing people who can. That's reassuring. But it's gonna take a person - and I don't know who this is - to come along and reinvent the guitar as a virtuosic instrument in a completely different realm than any of us have done, or anybody else in the past. That's the clincher. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won't.
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Country music has to evolve in order to survive.
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I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra plays mechanically, using mechanical energy; the conductor just moves his hands, and his movements have an effect on the music artistry.
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In general, people that we meet in person are pretty cool people - always very respectful, just happy to be there, happy to enjoy the music.
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I listen to music for consolation and comfort. I want my songs to comfort people who listen to it, and I myself want to be a comforting figure to my fans. I think ‘youth’ is not limited to people in their twenties. People in their sixties can be youthful too. I want people of all ages to sympathize with the youthful songs in my album and feel comforted.
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When I first started writing music, it was to express that. I was trying to find God and trying to find meaning in my life. That's what my music was about. It wasn't to entertain.
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Music is all of a sudden much more colorful.
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From Toscanini I learnt the essential and desperate seriousness of making music.
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I think, in a lot of ways, hip-hop is interesting to me because it's like the modern-day folk music.
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People come up to me and tell me how they were in a dark place and our music helped them out. It's mind-blowing. It's not just 'Rock Lobster' or 'Love Shack' - there's much more there.
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People out west love country music.
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It doesn't matter the kind of music, it doesn't matter whether it's a cowboy hat or a yarmulke. I don't care if it's outer space or pop, the spirit is the same.
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In music I do not look for logic. I am quite intuitive on the whole and know no theories. I never like a work if I cannot intuitively grasp its inner unity .
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I was always into classical music and opera because I played the piano as I went through school and was very interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and stuff like that. That changed into heavy metal at around the age of 14 or 13, and I dropped the piano and started to play the guitar.
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I think the glamour of my previous life probably comes into the music somewhere. I think the contrast is probably what led me into the festival. I needed a little bit of that glamour.
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Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
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If music goes out of language, then you are in bad trouble.
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Music is in all growing things; And underneath the silky wings Of smallest insects there is stirred A pulse of air that must be heard; Earth's silence lives, and throbs, and sings.
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Music really isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s all about people relating to each other and doing something that’s really from the soul. It must come from the soul.
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No, I do a bunch of things to entertain myself. I paint, I make music, I take photographs.
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Every award I've ever received has been very gratifying. The Living Legend Award was extremely gratifying; it was voted on by the fans. It's just great to be remembered after all these years, to still be a viable part of the music business. So, I'm very deeply honored by all the awards.
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Pop music is aspirin and the blues are vitamins.
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I think it all comes back to the individual. My instrument's just a pile of metal and wood! If you listen to the way I speak I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I'm playing my instrument that concept comes through very clearly. In fact some people who've seen me play have noticed that I'm singing - but it's more that I'm actually speaking. So it's not really about the instrument. But for me, in my thinking, the music is all about the melody. When I compose, 99 percent of the time I start with the melody.
