I, of course, wanted to play real jazz. When we played pop tunes, and naturally we had to, I wanted those pops to kick! Not loud and fast, understand, but smoothly and with a definite punch.
New York seems conducted by jazz, animated by it. It is essentially a city of rhythm.
Guys like Clyde McPhatter used to sing their tail ends off!
Music is power.
The trick of Afrobeats is it doesn't just move your upper body, it moves your hips as well, and I think that's what people have been missing in popular music for a while. I think that's what people need around the world.
For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian.
It's wonderful when music is intellectually stimulating. But ultimately it has to be a visceral experience.
Classical music gives musicians a kick. But African music gives everyone a kick.
Life is so mundane, isn't it? It's great to hear a guitarist getting into it and the rhythmic section blasting, even if it's all meaningless.
The voice of the drum is a spirit thing.
That's the kind of music I want SoulBird to represent: music with intelligence and heart, music that moves people in their souls and their bodies. Music with wings.
In music the passions enjoy themselves.
No one person or material thing could ever come close to the feeling I get when the music is right.
I like any music I can feel.
I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.
I do not remember-that is the point-the first impulse that pumped and shoved most of the earlier poems along, and they are still too near me, with their vehement beat-pounding black and green rhythms like those of a very young policeman exploding, for me to see the written evidence of it.
The energy moving through your body is quite rhythmic.
A good groove releases adrenaline in your body. You feel uplifted, you feel centered, you feel calm, you feel powerful. You feel that energy. That's what good drumming is all about.
Today's records, even though they may be lyrically repetitive and not saying anything particularly heavy, they have energy.
But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.
You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.
What I've always tried to do is to express the highest point of me, and rock 'n' roll is the first and the most open form created by our generation. The cool thing about it is that you get the power, you get the rhythm; you can be taken over sexually, you can be taken over cerebrally; it's great to look at - it's a package deal.
It's the bounce in go-go that inspires me.
I was drawn to West Africa. I did listen to a bunch of different styles of African music, and there was something about the percussion and the drums of West Africa, and the energy, that felt so cinematic to me.
Music is creation. In reggae the lyric, the music itself, arrangement, that vibe, such melody - everything within the music moves the people, understand?
