Music Definition Quotes

People are always defining and re-defining music. My style of playing has been characterized as smooth jazz and acid jazz. I listen as I play; I'm not caught up in defining the type of music I play.

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.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

I don't really know what 'folk music' means anymore.

What a song is is a subjective thing. There's no one real definition for it.

The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.

To me, all music that is made under the umbrella of the United States of America is Americana music.

All that stuff about heavy metal and hard rock, I don't subscribe to any of that. It's all just music. I mean, the heavy metal from the '70s sounds nothing like the stuff from the '80s, and that sounds nothing like the stuff from the '90s. Who's to say what is and isn't a certain type of music?

I do think I'm country, but your definition of that word might be different from my definition. In my opinion, country music, the sound of country, has always evolved. But the one thing that has not changed is the story element. And I think country songs are truthful songs about life written by country people.

When people say to me 'what do you think of rap music?' my answer is there's no such thing. There's rap and there's music.

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.

Alan [Lomax] and his father started off changing the definition of folk music from something ancient and anonymous to something very contemporary.

Pop is everything from Kanye West to Taylor Swift, it's all pop to me.

When people say to me, 'What do you think of rap music?', my answer is, 'There's no such thing. There's rap, and there's music.'

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

Music is a language, and it's like a dictionary that has a lot of words, but if you limited yourself to a couple of definitions you would be illiterate. If one limits oneself to a peculiar definition like 'new music,' 'avant-garde,' or something like that, I think it's like cutting out half the dictionary.

Here's how I understand music. If you can play the same bunch of noise twice, it's music. To go beyond that is supercilious and pontificating.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.

Music is organized sound.

Music is so abstract; it is a combination of words and melody.

Music is the human treatment of sounds.

We are Korean, so obviously they call our music K-pop. But we never thought of our music as K-pop. Our music is just our music.

A name doesn't make the music. It's just called that to differentiate it from other types of music.

If I can sing along to it, it's pop music.

I don't like rap music at all. I don't think it's music. It's just a beat and rapping.