World Music Quotes

Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred. ~ George Crumb

And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it's much more polite. ~ Miriam Makeba

There's a great enthusiasm for good country music all over the world. ~ Willie Nelson

Barney Kessel is definitely the best guitar player in this world, or any other world. ~ George Harrison

The boy will grow older, and over time there will be other songs – not many – ten or maybe twenty in a lifespan, that stand apart from the rest of the music he will discover. He will realise as he grows older still, and crosses the Canadian border and drives down into Seattle, that not only are these songs holy or sacred, they are hiding songs – what the Aztec Indians call carrion songs – that deal exclusively in darkness, obfuscation, concealment and secrecy. He will realize that, for him, the purpose of these songs has been to shut off the sun, to draw a long shadow down and protect him from the corrosive glare of the world. ~ Nick Cave

I have very eclectic taste in music. I like everything from Nirvana, which is featured in the film, to world music, to orchestral and jazz. For me, the nineties were about Oasis, because I was travelling around Britain when that band exploded onto the music scene. ~ Isla Fisher

I hope you don't mind,
I hope you don't mind,
that I put into words,
how wonderful life is,
now you're in the world. ~ Elton John

I want to help promote Korean music around the world. ~ Swizz Beatz

Reading old travel books or novels set in faraway places, spinning globes, unfolding maps, playing world music, eating in ethnic restaurants, meeting friends in cafes ... all these things are part of never-ending travel practice, not unlike doing scales on a piano, shooting free-throws, or meditating. ~ Phil Cousineau

World music evokes a feeling. You don't have to think about the scene that it comes from. ~ St. Lucia

I'm a fan of music from all over the world. ~ Michael Winterbottom

I think we're about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world. ~ Brian Eno

World music is music from everywhere: music that creates bridges, music that unites hearts and cultures, music that brings peace. ~ Jai Uttal

Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride. ~ Frank Zappa

Being a woman in music was fine, but when I wanted to direct, I was poking my head into a man's world. ~ Barbra Streisand

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

And there's a feeling you get from making music that is unlike anything else in the world. ~ Kid Rock

When I do uptempo songs, I like to bring in the funk and world music and different elements. ~ Judith Hill

My favorite place in the whole world is Jackson Hole, Wyoming. ~ Miguel Ferrer

I could quite happily just make music because it conjures up a whole visual world for me in my mind. ~ Gotye

Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ~ Arnold Bennett

The Nile Project is the performing side of an effort that also includes education in music and environmental issues, raising awareness of the entire Nile basin as an ecosystem. With such vibrant music, the good intentions were a bonus; the Nile Project was a superb example of what I call small-world music, of what happens to traditions in the information age. ~ Jon Pareles

I thinks it really interesting how they throw the world music samples in there. I often wonder what it would be like to do something like that, but use my lyrics and my kind of style. ~ Marc Almond

Obviously, as the music business has suffered tremendously, with being able to illegally download everything, it's also become amazingly easy to find new bands, because everyone can put their stuff online. Even if you can't find a record label, you can find these awesome bands, all over the world. ~ Jorma Taccone

I don't think that three minutes of music on a commercial record is going to bring paradise, but I feel like there is power in music and power in our words and power in what we put out into the world. ~ Kyp Malone

My music is my way to rearrange the world according to my own hopes. ~ Stephan Jenkins

Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connetcted to everything else. ~ Kim Edwards

When I came back to America, I realized that world music is no joke, it really has a lot to it. ~ Zach Condon

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

What isn't on my iPod playlist? I have very eclectic tastes. Jazz. Classic Rock. Hip Hop. Ska. Soul. Electronica.World Music. Funk. Blues. Chamber Music. Reggaeton. Gospel. And a whole lot of Prince. (I am a Minnesota gal through and through.) ~ Michele Norris

I have truly eclectic taste in music, and I seem to cycle through phases in terms of to what's inspiring me. I'll go from Beethoven to Sigur Ros; world music, Brit-pop, classic rock, blues/jazz, even the odd bit of heavy metal. ~ Rachel Miner

Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point. ~ Rebecca West

Studying music in a conservatory would be stifling for me, although I respect people who can do it. And by no means am I an expert at notating music or music theory - that's not really my world. ~ Beck

The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world. ~ Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? ~ Pablo Picasso

One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world. ~ Jane Hirshfield

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world. ~ Damien Chazelle

Crunk music is the music of the South, it pervades every club and nightclub not only in America, but all over the world. ~ John Singleton

Mum is a photographer, and Dad does world music and plays almost every instrument except for drums. ~ Lykke Li

I probably have the crappiest tattoo - not only in country music - but maybe the world. ~ Blake Shelton

Folk music is the original melody of man; it is the musical mirror of the world. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Making music, if you're a real musician, you carry on regardless in this world. ~ Joe Cocker

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music. ~ Reggie Watts

I guarantee you, yoga will compete with computers, music, sports, automobiles, the drug industry. Yoga will take over the world! ~ Bikram Choudhury

I initially wanted to work in the music industry more on the A&R side. While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business, so you could say I had a natural knack for the advertising world. ~ Adam Kluger

Love is the purest emotion in the world; music is the purest language. ~ Rae Lynn Blaise

When I started in the music business, travel became a huge part of my world, where it hadn't been at all. I visited parts of the world that I'd never been to and found that I was spending maybe 30 days at home a year. ~ Josh Groban

Interspirituality is the world music of religion; borrowing, fusing, blending and bouncing rhythms and riffs off one another not to create a homogenized spirituality, but to birth a radical new sound embedded in the ancient and timeless silence. This doesn't impact or deepen my life-it is my life. ~ Rami M. Shapiro

If one takes all the styles in jazz harmonically from the earliest beginnings to the latest experiments, he still has a rather limited scope when compared to the rest of music in the world. ~ Don Ellis

It was the case in the 70s and 80s that people believed music could change the world. But now people aren't making music because they want to change the world; they're making music because they want to just make a ton of money. ~ Sinead O'Connor

I was hoping we could just listen to Jimmy Eat World and forget we ever grew up. ~ Crystal Woods

I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world. ~ David Sanborn

There are many things I love in this world. Music, acting, and animals are at the top of that list. ~ Orlando Brown

No, I don't really think there's a "golden age" of anything. I think now is pretty fucking amazing. I'm probably the least nostalgic person. I don't think there was a golden time for music. There's always been people making great music standing here on Earth and saying, "This is where I stand, and this is what I've got to say, and this is how I feel about it." The industry of music has always been lousy. The stuff on the top, the stuff that rises, it's always been bad, right from when we first started getting into music. You just have to dig deeper. You have to look inward and outward. And then, when you make music, you can't just copy people. You can't just say, "This is how this was done, I'll do the same." You have to find what makes it good and kind of drag that kicking and screaming into your own world. Music is like a time capsule with no bearing. It doesn't really carry a message from the time when it was made. 1930s blues music doesn't really give you a sense of what it was like to live in America in 1930. It relates to your heartbeat now and where you are and what you're doing. I've said this in other interviews, but when I listen to Iggy Pop singing "Search And Destroy," it has no reference to Vietnam in my world. How could it? I'm from a small town in the middle of England. That's how music works. Looking back in music isn't even really looking back. Music's traveled to where you are. ~ J Spaceman

I am a musician, ya know; music is my world. ~ Stephen Marley

I try to look at this music career thing as the means to an end. And really, at the end of it, I see myself on a sailboat, sailing off the edge of the world. ~ Michelle Shocked

That's what I care about is the people I work with and representing them and helping to make their music apparent for the rest of the world. ~ Diplo

Poetry, plays, novels, music, they are the cry of the human spirit trying to understand itself and make sense of our world. ~ L.M. Elliott

I like the idea of multidisciplinary conversations, so in that spirit, I try and make a contribution from the art world into the music world. ~ Fred Tomaselli

World events can shape culture. Music is either a soundtrack for or a narration of changing times. And who knows how that's going to go? ~ L.A. Reid

I play American and World music, Texas style. ~ Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown

What I like most about directing is creating a world more so than anything. To me, the music is the wrapping paper on that world. ~ Matthew Gray Gubler

Music bears a great responsibility because it is so influential. Everybody listens to music. It is a very influential tool. To me, it is very important to the world ... music is ... to being ... to life. ~ Stephen Marley

The physical impact of taiko music, along with the sheer visual poetry of a choreographed ensemble presenting its music in perfect synchrony, is so powerful and inviting that taiko is beginning to catch on as Japan's most influential and lasting gift to world music. ~ Gil Asakawa

Music is the greatest communication in the world. Even if people don't understand the language that you're singing in, they still know good music when they hear it. ~ Lou Rawls

At home, we don't listen to our music-we listen to other people's music. It keeps you attached to the show business world. ~ Celine Dion

I love many kinds of music: world music, jazz, classical, pop. ~ Anita Diament

Music is the softest cushion in the world. ~ Niki De Saint Phalle

Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand' spread the gospel of American pop music and teenage style that transcended the regional boundaries of our country and united a youth culture that eventually spread its message throughout the entire world. ~ John Oates

This guitar is such a pal. It's a psychiatrist. It's a doggone bartender. It's a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I've got a problem, I'll go pick my guitar up and play. It's the greatest pal in the whole world. ~ Les Paul

I've always tried to listen to a lot of different music from around the world. ~ Serj Tankian

All ballet, all reading, all music. That was my world, my inner world. ~ Natalia Makarova

At the end of the world, music always played on like a bad movie. ~ Mav Skye

Opera lovers may be the narrowest people in the world. ~ Haruki Murakami

World music is about taking things from different places and bringing them together - which is great. ~ Youssou N'Dour

You don't pigeonhole yourself, people pigeonhole you. If the world is not at a place yet where it can just be like, "This music is gay and it's music," then it's not my fault that it gets pigeonholed, it's not the people in the band's fault, it's because people won't just let music be music, people who need to put a name on something or to critique something. ~ Beth Ditto

Any guitar solo should reflect the music that it's soloing over and not just be existing in its own sort of little world. ~ John Frusciante

Music is the harmonious voice of creation; an echo of the invisible world. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini

Music's the medicine of the mind. ~ John A. Logan

Music is the strongest form of magic. ~ Marilyn Manson

Never understood a lot about the world ... music is one of the only things that makes any sense. ~ Austin Carlile

The great Initiates in the spirit world have vast and imposing plans for the musical future. What is this plan? It is to use music as an occult medium through which to develop altered states of consciousness, psychic abilities, and contact with the spirit world. Music in the future is to be used to bring people into yet closer touch with the devils; they will be enabled to partake of the beneficial influence of these beings while attending concerts at which by the appropriate type of sound they have been invoked. ~ John Todd

If I see somebody dancing really well, it can make me want to dance. Or it could be the music. But perhaps the thing I miss the most is that when you're dancing, everyday concerns vanish. It's a unique world. ~ Damian Woetzel

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.. ~ Pablo Casals

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world. ~ Dave Van Ronk

It's VH1, it's everywhere, and you know music is just the world right now. People love music. ~ Brandy Norwood

I meet people every single day who have heard the music and incorporated it into their lives. I feel like I have a tribe all around the world. ~ Jason Mraz

The heart-flute Knows how to charm the world. ~ Sri Chinmoy

One often makes music to supplement one's world. ~ Brian Eno

I want to write, direct, produce, but in steps. I want to take steps. I don't want to just jump in because I sold a lot of records and just feel like I can jump into the movie world. Naw, I want to learn the movie world like I learned the music world. ~ Snoop Dogg

We have to make the physical music a little more valuable instead of just having a download link and a bunch of songs you downloaded from some torrent site. People try to make the music value-less, and I don't think we're going to stop that train, but the one thing that they can't devalue are things that are in the outside world. ~ Lupe Fiasco

I did not like that name "world music" in the beginning. I think that African music must get more respect than to be put in a ghetto like that. We have something to give to others. When you look to how African music is built, when you understand this kind of music, you can understand that a lot of all this modern music that you are hearing in the world has similarities to African music. It's like the origin of a lot of kinds of music. ~ Baaba Maal

Jazz does not belong to one race or culture, but is a gift that America has given the world. ~ Ahmad Alaadeen

My father was interested in bringing reggae music to the entire world. ~ Ziggy Marley

House music originated in America, and it has always been around, but I guess it just got a tighter hold on Europe and other parts of the world. ~ Avicii

But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?' ~ Sidney Lanier

When I talk about rock n' roll, to me, that goes back to the beginning of the 1950s. Blue suede shoes and sideburns, man. Pink and black coloured clothes. Turn your collar up, comb your hair in ducktails. And the music was cool. It was a whole culture then - a different world. ~ Bobby Keys

At the heart, it is world music that I do. It's all connections. Ultimately, we're all connected. ~ Peter Gabriel

Art is the heart's explosion on the world. Music. Dance. Poetry. Art on cars, on walls, on our skins. There is probably no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order. ~ Luis J Rodriguez

I think rap music is rap music. I mean, are there heavy writing aspects of it? Absolutely. In a sense, is it poetry? Yeah. I've heard that so much, growing up in a house with poetry. But I think people like to use that as a shortcut for who's good and who's not. It's like the word 'lyrical' - 'lyrical' is the worst word in the entire world. ~ Earl Sweatshirt