Western Music Quotes

Certainly, blame for all this [turmoil in the Middle East] doesn't rest solely with the terrible decisions that were made at the end of World War I, but it was then that one particularly toxic seed was planted. Ever since, Arab society has tended to define itself less by what it aspires to become than by what it is opposed to: colonialism, Zionism, Western imperialism in its many forms. This culture of opposition has been manipulated - indeed, feverishly nurtured - by generations of Arab dictators intent on channeling their people's anger away from their own misrule in favor of the external threat, whether it is "the great Satan" or the "illegitimate Zionist entity" or Western music playing on the streets of Cairo. ~ Scott Anderson

I'm very interested in music and where these sounds of Western music come from. ~ Ben Katchor

When an artist is asked to speak about form, you expect something different than when a critic talks about it. Because you think that somewhere between sentences and words, the secret will slip out. I am trying to give you that secret; it isn't a secret at all, but it is building solidly, not using secrets. I had been trying to extend into metaphysical extension; that film is changing, metamorphic; that is, infinite; the idea that the movement of life is totally important rather than a single life. My films were built on an incline, an increase in intensity. I hoped to make a form which was infinite, the changingness of things. I thought I would want to find a total form which conveyed that sense, particularly in reference to an Oriental subject. My impression was: one is walking down a corridor of a hotel. One hears a sound, opens a door and a man is playing; one listens for three minutes and closes the door. The music went on before you opened the door and it continues after you close the door. There was neither beginning nor end. Western music increases in intensity to a climax and then resolves itself. Oriental music is infinite; it goes on and on. The Chinese theater goes on for hours and hours with time for lunch moving scenery, etc. ~ Maya Deren

Within the context of Western music, jazz has always contained certain radical or revolutionary aspects. These are: improvisation, collective composition and individuality or the personal sound (based on amazing variations in sonority, timbre and pitch). ~ Michael Snow

Western music in the Middle Ages was performed in these stone-walled gothic cathedrals, and in architecturally similar monasteries and cloisters. ~ David Byrne

I find a difference between what gets called world music - a fusion of western music and music from different cultures in more of a modernized version - and Explorer Series stuff, which is completely undiluted indigenous folk music. That's a lot more powerful than a lot of the super-processed stuff that comes out now. ~ Glenn Kotche

I'm not crazy about country-western music. But the lyrics are good. ~ Alice Cooper

There's only two kinds of music I don't like ... Country and Western. ~ Bobby Heenan

Both the nationalists and the communists disapproved of jazz and feared it. They thought it would weaken people's resolve to fight off the invasion. And most Americans know, China did ban all Western music for about 30 years, starting in 1949. This is where it started. ~ Nicole Mones

I've been informed by both sides, jazz, western music, Asian music, African music, all sides, because I've been interested in the sound of the universe, and that sound is without limit. ~ Joseph Jarman

I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner. ~ John Tavener

When the truth is that there would be no great Western music, and certainly no decent choral repertoire, without the Catholic faith. ~ Richard Morris

[Europe has] this tradition of self revelation in popular music. We have it here - it's called Country Western Music ... I think that's where the deeper and more complex subjects are treated. ~ Leonard Cohen

As if it were the equal of Western classical or art music. The recordings were given respect, thoughtful presentation, and technical attention that was all too rare for non-Western music. I had grown up on Folkways's Nonesuch field recordings and the stuff Lomax had done for the Library of Congress, but the production values on the Ocora releases were on a whole other level. Eno and I realized that music from elsewhere didn't need to sound distant, scratchy, or "primitive." These recordings were as well produced as any contemporary recording in any genre. You were made to feel, for example, that this music wasn't a ghostly remnant from some lost culture, soon ~ David Byrne

Hildegard von Bingen conveys spiritual ecstasy, if we're talking of Western music. What bothers me about Western music is that it doesn't have an esoteric dimension in the way the music of the East has, whether it be Byzantine chant, the music of the Sufis, or Hindu music. ~ John Tavener

Sometimes I lie awake at night and think about that little red-haired girl ... I don't ever want to forget her face, but if I don't forget her face, I'll go crazy ... How can I remember the face I can't forget? Suddenly I'm writing country western music! ~ Charles M. Schulz

Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns. ~ Terry Riley

I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious. ~ Penn Jillette

Since its beginnings, Western music is bound, by an insurmountable convention, to the need to express subjectivity. It stands against the harsh sound of the outside world just as the sensitive soul stands against the insensibility of the universe. ~ Milan Kundera

Once in rur-al Flathead coun-ty
Stood a cru-wel Christmas scene
Dumped for slaugh-ter were the rein-deer
When an elf did intervene. ~ Roxanne Snopek

She had five tapes from him now - which meant, if her batteries lasted, she had four hundred and fifty minutes to spend with Park in her head, holding his hand. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I'm very much involved with Asian art and its theory and practice, mainly Chinese because that was quite sophisticated. I tend to look at that more than I look the Western. ~ Brice Marden

Music might tame and civilize wild beasts, but 'tis evident it never yet could tame and civilize musicians. ~ John Gay

What you see with your eyes when you're making music is going to have a profound effect on what you hear. ~ Andrew Bird

As far as my solo record, I don't want a gold record or anything, I'm happy to be small and to have the people appreciate the music who really like me for being me. ~ John Frusciante

Lights glittered and flashed in seizure-inducing display. Tables curved and undulated, the backlight making them seem darker than merely black. Music moved through the air with a physical presence, each beat a little concussion. Hasini, standing in a clot of steroid-enhanced bouncers and underdressed serving girls, caught Miller's eyes and nodded toward the back. ~ James S.A. Corey

My secret to success is that I've always loved good music and people. ~ Sid Bernstein

It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be. ~ Bram Stoker

If you have some magical chemistry that actually find the music you make compelling, that is a big bonus. ~ Geddy Lee

There are two things that really move me: music and acting. And I'm not talking about my music or watching myself as an actor, but listening to other people's music and watching other actors. There are so many different songs that have moved me. It all depends upon the mood that I'm in at that moment. ~ Janet Jackson

I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary. ~ Michael Gira

Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food. ~ Anne Lamott

I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts. ~ Chris Stapleton

Being a musician is very easy. My house is full of musical instruments. There's a lot of music, always. ~ Bjork

Because we believe that somewhere in the nest of paradigms contained in the phrase "missional church" lies nothing less that the future viability of Western Christianity. ~ Alan Hirsch

Stores are the same everywhere; small downtowns are done. Not just in America, but globally. You hear the same music on every station, all our building materials look the same, and all our clothes look the same. But I thought that it couldn't be that simple, because Arizona is not Minnesota. There is this other reality, which is a reality of landscape. ~ Cynthia Daignault

I prefer to write music for family films. I like people. ~ Alex North

A great artist can really enter the logic of any particular mazurka and fully understand the language of Chopin's music. ~ Rafal Blechacz

For music, unlike a $500 software program, people are paying a buck or two a song, and it's those dollars and pennies that have to add up to pay for not just the cost of that song, but the investment in the next song. ~ Hilary Rosen

Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music. ~ Chris Cornell

When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder. ~ Ruth Ozeki

Music can enter my soul like none other. It can reach me and awaken my being ~ Tina J. Richardson

I just thank God I can make a living doing something I enjoy as much as I do playing music. ~ Charlie Daniels

I have always loved music. My mom used to sing with my sister and I when I was younger, and I was in choirs and loved to perform, but when I was in college, I went on a study abroad to Trinidad, and while I was there, I sang backup at my first concert. ~ Rachel Platten

Someone like Russell Crowe is questioned for his passion for music, and whatever he does, music is just in his heart and soul. All he wants to do is music. ~ Tina Yothers

I feel like there's no real innovation in having some music. It's more just unique personalities and unique expressions, and you being able to tell your story. ~ Maynard James Keenan

The string of bright beads, he had told her, were to remind her of the twenty brightest days they had spent together, and a promise of twenty more, and then twenty more, infinitely. Even in old age she would be able to call to mind the sound of the word "infinitely", the music it made, coloured by the slight Irish accent in his mouth - a word that whether shouted, sung, or spoken, sounded always like a tender whisper. ~ Jane Urquhart

My pledge to myself is I will believe in my music, always. I stand behind everything I do. If I don't think it's amazing, how the hell is anyone else going to think it's amazing? But that's just me. ~ Torquil Campbell

So the thing is to put out music for music's sake. ~ Josh Homme

I've never heard anything Wynton [Marsalis] played sound like it meant anything at all. Wynton has no voice and no presence. His music sounds like a talented high-school trumpet player to me ... he's jazzy the same way someone who drives a BMW is sporty. ~ Keith Jarrett

Hip hop is still strong. As an art form, music helps people express themselves, find meaning in their own lives and connect with their tribes. ~ Erik Parker

If feminism means anything at all, women with power should be addressing their energies to help the girls and women who suffer the pain of genital mutilation, who are at risk of being murdered because of their Western lifestyle and ideas, who must ask for permission just to leave the house, who are treated no better than serfs, branded and mutilated, traded without regard to their wishes. If you are a true feminist, these women should be your first priority. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali