Musical Responsibility Quotes

There's a responsibility as a musician to do the music that you want to hear.

It's just that as a solo artist, I have more burden and responsibilities on my shoulders.

I do feel I'm responsible to carrying on the music. That's what I was charged with as a kid. When I was a little girl, I was told, 'When we are gone' - when you're a kid, you never think they'll ever be gone - 'you have to keep the music alive, the Carter Family songs, and add your own songs.'

It's much easier to work on other people's music and play in other people's bands as a guitar player instead of being the main songwriter and singer. That's a really big job to do that.

I do feel a responsibility because most people like me that are my age or younger, they don't quite make it over to the jazz side. They flirt with it, but they don't quite marry it.

To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace.

As musicians, and as people who sell material for people to hear and absorb, it's important that we use that voice wisely.

I've always been in a band where it's been somebody else's band - or pretty much always.

A song is composed of music and lyrics: 50 percent is the producer, 50 percent is the artist. So, I'm responsible for 50 percent. All I know is that I have to do my job, and I have to do it well. And he has to do the same.

I don't like it when bands don't want to play that one song everybody wants to hear. I think that's cheating everybody, and I think it's selfish of an artist to do that.

When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.

The collective conscience of a hundred musicians is no light burden. Think for a moment of what it would mean to a pianist if by some miracle every key of his instrument should suddenly become a living thing.

I fear that I won't get better and that I won't have time to practice. To be called a "jazz musician" - it's a big responsibility.

I don't think you can cover a song unless you love it and have a relationship with it. With 'Golden Heart' I felt a sense of responsibility. And when we were recording it in the studio, it felt almost dream-like. Something you might hear if you were in Senegal, with someone singing from the mosque in the morning just as the sun's coming up.

When I do the Led Zeppelin Experience I feel sort of responsible and it's a more nerve-wracking gig.

It was a relief to be able to do my own band, because I was very responsible for all this amazing music I didn't want to mess up before.

In a band that works out well, everybody has a certain role to fulfill.

As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also.