Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand.
Interpretation
Quincy Jones sees a strong connection between hip-hop and bebop and envisions incorporating hip-hop into education to inspire youth.
In this quote, Quincy Jones draws a parallel between bebop music and hip-hop, emphasizing their shared characteristics of improvisation and rhythm. He expresses a desire to integrate hip-hop into educational settings, believing that it can engage and inspire the younger generation, who are highly impressionable and receptive to such cultural expressions.
In practice
During a speech at a youth summit, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of cultural education.
Just blow in it and sound bad for about a year and then make it sound a little bit better, and you get a little band together, and then you get a few jobs. You take four guys that sound half bad, but if they're 25 percent each, they can give 100 percent, you know?
Music in movies is all about dissonance and consonance, tension and release.
When you produce an album, you're dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.
You can study orchestration, you can study harmony and theory and everything else, but melodies come straight from God.
I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.
I tell my kids and I tell proteges, always have humility when you create and grace when you succeed, because it's not about you. You are a terminal for a higher power. As soon as you accept that, you can do it forever.
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.
I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.
I saw as a teacher how, if you take that spark of learning that those children have, and you ignite it, you can take a child from any background to a lifetime of creativity and accomplishment.
One of the greatest gifts adults can give - to their offspring and to their society - is to read to children.
Over the past five years, I've met several presidents, several secretaries of education ... and there is no plan. If you want to save your children, you're going to have to do it yourself. It's just us.
Education is not simply to learn to read and write. It's emancipation. It makes you free.
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