After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.
Interpretation
War impacts all aspects of society, including music, reflecting deep emotional and cultural shifts.
Quincy Jones highlights the profound transformation in music that follows periods of war, as it serves as a response to the emotional and societal upheaval experienced by those who serve. The quote emphasizes how soldiers return to a changed world, feeling disconnected from the very culture they fought to protect, which fosters a new artistic expression in the form of music that captures these sentiments and realities.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the evolution of music during historical events.
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.
No matter what mistakes we might have made yesterday, today is the day we can retrieve our innocence.
One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.
Think what a great world revolution will take place when ... [there are] millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country.
The true mission of feminism today is not to carp about the woes of affluent Western career women but to turn the spotlight on life-and-death issues affecting women in the Third World, particularly in rural areas where they have little protection against exploitation and injustice.
When things fall apart in your life, you feel as if your whole world is crumbling. But actually it’s your fixed identity that’s crumbling. And as Chögyam Trungpa used to tell us, that’s cause for celebration.
My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves.
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