Balkan Music Quotes

Well, I would say that music just happens with me, I'm not in the driver's seat when I am at the piano, the piano is. ~ Vanessa Carlton

Once, I took the penny whistle
you gave me and discovered a spot
by the roaring falls where I could play
as loud as I wanted.
I lay in the bifurcated trunk
of a low-slung birch tree. The sun peeked
through applauding leaves, high overhead. ~ Kristen Henderson

People call me a bedroom electronic musician, which I suppose I am. But I hate most electronic music; I find it really boring. ~ Max Tundra

We attach to most of our chapels a cultural hall so that our youth may have a place to dance, to perform their talents in musicals and other uplifting entertainment, and we hope our youth leaders as trustees of the building will see to it that only wholesome, uplifting activities are performed in this building. Should you have any reservations whether or not an activity, a style of dancing or tempo of music is in accord with Church standards, may I suggest this guide: Does it uplift and inspire one to higher ideals? Does it develop wholesome relationships between young men and women, or appeal to and arouse their baser instincts? Will it cause one to be a better Latter-day Saint and lead one closer to the Savior? Avoid all activities and dances which bring the world's demoralizing standards into this sacred meeting place. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I think one of the most wonderful things we can do as performers is to remind audiences that they can still relate to the emotions and feelings, as though the music had been written yesterday. ~ David Finckel

You have to train your mind and your ears, but they're more like athletic skills. So, part of music you just have to learn those things or you can't practice the art. ~ Tod Machover

The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's uses. ~ J.G. Holland

Music can set an atmosphere of worship which invites [the] spirit of revelation, of testimony. ~ Boyd K. Packer

Music is an art form that doesn't need to be explained. It needs to be performed; it needs to be felt; it needs to be listened to; it needs to progress. ~ Roberta Flack

My mom worked as a hairdresser at the Village Mall in Horsham Township when I was a little kid. There was a movie theater in the mall that showed second-run features, and I have clear memories of being around five years old and walking through the mall by myself to go watch Star Wars. I believe I saw it in that theater twenty-one times. The research definitely began then.

Actually, it began even earlier. Before I was born, my father conspired with my uncle to name me Wyatt, after Wyatt Earp. There was an election held by putting names into a hat, and whatever name was drawn would be the winner. Uncle Billy distracted the people in attendance while my dad rigged the hat so that every name inside read Wyatt. My mom was horrified at the result, but eventually uncovered their ruse.

The research was really just me referring to things I already knew from the life I've lived. You either hear the music of the open range and a man with two six-shooters or you don't. You either look out at the stars and wonder what lies beyond them or…I don't know what you are…someone who loves Nicholas Sparks books. ~ Bernard Schaffer

I prefer Offenbach to Bach often. ~ Thomas Beecham

Michael [Jackson] reconstructed his face and deconstructed the African features into a spooky European geography of fleshly possibilities, and yet what we couldn't deny, that even as his face got whiter and whiter his music got Blacker and Blacker. His soul got more deeply rooted in the existential agony and the profound social grief that Black people are heir to. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

My talent is definitely a gift. I don't understand where it comes from. I don't play an instrument, and I never went to school for music production, but I know exactly how a song should sound and how to give an artist direction. ~ Sean Combs

There is no music like a little river's ... It takes the mind out-of-doors ... and ... it quiets a man down like saying his prayers. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

At Camp Don Bosco, there were Bibles all over the place, mostly 1970s hippie versions like Good News for Modern Man. They had groovy titles like The Word or The Way, and translated the Bible into "contemporary English," which meant Saul yelling at Jonathan, "You son of a bitch!" (I Samuel 20:30). Awesome! The King James version gave this verse as "Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman," which was bogus in comparison. Maybe these translations went a bit far. I recall one of the Bibles translating the inscription over the cross, "INRI" (Iesus Nazaremus Rex Iudaeorum), as "SSDD" (Same Shit Different Day), and another describing the Last Supper - the night before Jesus' death, a death he freely accepted - where Jesus breaks the bread, gives it to his disciples, and says, "It's better to burn out than fade away," but these memories could be deceptive. ~ Rob Sheffield

And - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds. ~ David Wong

I really like listening to music in my car. ~ Aaron Neville

God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands. ~ Nicholas Sparks

I grew up in a kibbutz in the Galilee, but we were surrounded by Arabic villages, so I heard all these sounds and all this music. My father was very close friends with one of the Bedouin tribes, so I would always go there, to weddings, and I was always very fascinated by that music. ~ Maya Beiser

You need to be able to read music. For the last three parts you need to be able to play a keyboard instrument well enough to navigate at least most of the musical examples. It helps to have previously investigated the overtone series, or be ready to (the text helps you). Also, the more you are in the habit of listening to the music of the world's various cultures, the more insight you will bring to this study. ~ W.A. Mathieu

The voice of a rebeck echoed from somewhere behind him. The music echoed and echoed until it entered his head, still echoing. It suffused his body and he felt himself to be large, very large, not a child at all. And his skin was not his own. ~ Frank Herbert

Let her go?' asked Son, and he smiled a crooked smile. Let go the woman you had been looking for everywhere just because she was difficult? Because she had a temper, energy, ideas of her own and fought back? Let go a woman whose eyebrows were a study, whose face was enough to engage your attention all your life? Let go a woman who was not only a woman but a sound, all the music he had ever wanted to play, a world and a way of being in it? Let that go? 'I can't,' he said. 'I can't. ~ Toni Morrison

One song isn't going to ever change things, but I suppose it's the accumulation of music generally [that is]. If you can imagine a world that has no music in it, it would be a very different world, so music does change the world by virtue of all the music in it. Cumulative music of every kind, from banging a drum to playing a flute or recording symphonies, or singing 'War, what is it good for?' All those things change the whole way we live. ~ Mick Jagger

The arts which need interpretation are the arts of time
music and poetry
and not the arts of space
sculpture and painting. ~ Salvador De Madariaga

Over time, I guess all your teachers find their way into your music, right? ~ Mitch Albom

The difference between me and the newer artists is that I have the history with the architects, the masters that started the music. I know where the music came from. ~ Ricky Skaggs

During college I realized I had a music predisposition and really got involved in it. I started playing bass guitar. That was how I began to fit in. ~ Ronnie Dunn

Rock music had become my religion. Radio my church. And these DJs my priests, rabbis and gurus. ~ Steven Van Zandt

My favorite music to sing would be my own songs, my original songs, just because I know them, you know I write the tunes, so my favorite songs are the newest ones that I write. That's what I like to sing the most, because it means something, it's real, it comes from me. ~ Paul McDonald

There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know? ~ Ethan Coen

Feelings aroused by the touch of someone's hand, the sound of music, the smell of a flower, a beautiful sunset, a work of art, love, laughter, hope and faith - all work on both the unconscious and the conscious aspects of the self, and they have physiological consequences as well. ~ Bernie Siegel