The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician. Things like old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night or something said long ago.
Louis ArmstrongRead
If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Understanding jazz goes beyond just asking questions; it involves an experiential grasp of the art form.
This quote by Louis Armstrong suggests that jazz is an art form that cannot be fully comprehended through mere inquiry or intellectual exploration. Instead, it implies that true understanding comes from personal experience and immersion in the music itself. The essence of jazz lies in its improvisational nature and emotional expression, which words alone cannot capture, signifying that some things in life must be felt to be understood.
Themes
JazzMusicUnderstandingExperienceArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of experiencing art rather than just studying it.
More from Louis Armstrong
All quotes →Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. You might be able to buy a little better booze than the wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is.
Louis ArmstrongRead
Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.
Louis ArmstrongRead
My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn.
Louis ArmstrongRead
I've Got the World on a String.
Louis ArmstrongRead
It's America's classical music ... this becomes our tradition ... the bottom line of any country in the world is what did we contribute to the world? ... we contributed Louis Armstrong
Louis ArmstrongRead
Similar quotes
I look around me and I don’t see any rock’n’roll at the moment. Instead it’s all choreography and stylists and wigs and stuff. It’s like they’re afraid to let the music breathe. No one has their own identity like the Ronettes did back in the day. We had the skirts with the slits up the side, sort of tough, sort of Spanish Harlem cool, but sweet too. We didn’t have no dancers, we didn’t have no goddamn wigs.
Ronnie SpectorRead
We do two shows a night for five weeks. A lotta times we'll go upstairs and sing until daylight - gospel songs. We grew up with it...It more or less puts your mind at ease. It does mine.
Elvis PresleyRead
Hearing a whole entire room sing back to me, 'I guess it's true I'm not good at a one-night stand,' you know, I just can't explain the feeling. It's unreal. You feel like you've just read your diary to thousands of people and they've gone, 'It's okay. We still love you.'
Sam SmithRead
I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.
Jimmy PageRead
A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!
Cannonball AdderleyRead
It's a gift, and a blessing, just to have a voice. And I'm proud that people do appreciate it, you know?
Roy OrbisonRead