Jazz Definition Quotes

What I believe to be jazz is constructed and improvised music which is in the air right now. But I don't think that's most people's definition of jazz, you know? We don't know what we're talking about, because we don't know the definition.

Some people say that if you do anything other than a straight-ahead groove, that it's not jazz. But that kind of labeling is wrong. Music is what it is; if it sounds good, it sounds good.

Jazz is not a 'form' but a collection of tags and tricks.

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music.

I have to admit that more and more lately, the whole idea of jazz as an idiom is one that I've completely rejected. I just don't see it as an idiomatic thing any more...To me, if jazz is anything, it's a process, and maybe a verb, but it's not a thing. It's a form that demands that you bring to it things athat are valuable to you, that are personal to you. That, for me, is a pretty serious distinction that doesn't have anything to do with blues, or swing, or any of these other things that tend to be listed as essentials in order for music to be jazz with a capital J.

I don't play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word 'jazz' only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that's fine.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

I haven't got a great jazz band and I don't want one. Some of the critics, Down Beat's among them, point their fingers at us and charge us with forsaking real jazz . . . It's all in what you define as 'real jazz.' It happens that to our ears harmony comes first. A dozen colored bands have a better beat than mine. Our band stresses harmony.

And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.

What is my definition of jazz? "Safe sex of the highest order."

Just figure out what you think jazz is, and then if it fits into that category, it's jazz, and if it doesn't, it isn't. It's no big deal.

It's a shame that jazz is now being turned into dried fruit. It's becoming quantized, diced and defined. It's becoming an idiom. To me if it's anything, jazz is a verb ? it's more like a process than it is a thing.

I think everybody has to kind of decide what the word 'jazz' means to them, and that's fine.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line

Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music.

There is a modern take on certain things you can do that, to me, is still jazz.

When somebody uses a word as a genre distinction, all it really does is trigger certain experiences, or music, that somebody's been exposed to. But that's an individual thing; there's no sort of universal understanding of what jazz is.

It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.