Art is the signature of civilizations.
It takes a special, selfless person to make music that accommodates the universal need for mindless escapism - or what I call oblivion.
You're a musician: You play. That's what you do.
Minister and writer Barbara Kaufmann has addressed the subject of guerrilla decontextualization on both the 'Voices Compassionate Education' website and on 'Inner Michael', where she offers the kind of insights into the spiritual aspects of Michael Jackson's creative artistry that mainstream media mostly ignores.
All I've been trying to do all my life is to make great music.
So when I'm playing, I'm sort of painting a feeling in the air.
Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.
It is such an honor to be one of the youngest composers to compose for an Amitabh Bachchan film.
Those three chords were part of my life - G, F, Bb - yeh, it is, it is, and I can't help noticing it. But there have been other things nearly as close to it which people haven't noticed, other things we have done.
A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.
I think that I make chords when I paint, so I think you would be listening to the cello. It's deep, and it's resonant. A lot of people have compared me to Brahms - that slightly melancholic sensuality that's highly structured. Well, that describes my work right there.
All music is beautiful.
I try to decorate my imagination as much as I can.
For me, music is pure abstraction.
My voice makes the genre because I sound like me on all my songs - I've made my own genre: Jorja Smith.
The artist does not exist except as a personification, a figure of speech that represents the sum total of art itself. It is painting that is the genius of the painter, poetry of the poet, and a person is a creative artist to the extent that he participates in that genius.
Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
I hate it when people try to explain music. The best thing about music is that it's invisible. If you make a song and someone is like, 'Explain it,' and you explain the message, it's like - poof. It all crashes down.
If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.
People see me as a theoretician, but my music is also seductive, even spiritual.
Just understand that the type of music that I make is something special.
I would love to put out music that was just stunning or soul-baring or whatever. But I don't think I have the voice for it.
There is the intent of the writer and the interpretation by the artist. What the writer intended and what the artist interprets is not a 1-to-1 translation. It's a crossing of ideas that generates the stories that you see in print.
Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.
