B Mcferrin Quotes & Sayings

When you worry your face will frown, that will bring everybody down, so don't worry BE HAPPY! — Bobby McFerrin

I think we listen to music because we want to be changed. Music is not solely for our entertainment. Music has such tremendous power to bring joy. To me, that's our job as artists. Not happiness, not a groove, whatever. You must bring joy. I think that's the assignment. I have no doubt about it. — Bobby McFerrin

Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I'm helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves. — Bobby McFerrin

Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Don't worry, be happy now — Bobby McFerrin

I have a lot of albums yet to do. — Bobby McFerrin

My biggest musical influences are probably my parents. — Bobby McFerrin

To be a musician, you have to be honest ... to be honest ... to be honest. — Bobby McFerrin

I think play and joy and feeling good deserve more of our time. I don't see why adults are supposed to grow out of those things. If I have a mission it's to make everyone who comes to my concerts leave feeling a heightened sense of freedom to play, sing, and enjoy themselves. — Bobby McFerrin

Don't worry, be happy! — Bobby McFerrin

I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories. — Bobby McFerrin

The audience is like my instrument. It's not just me up there, it's collaborative. — Bobby McFerrin

When I'm on stage by myself, I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to worry about anything because I'm not responsible for anything except just opening my mouth and making sure music comes out. — Bobby McFerrin

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. — Bobby McFerrin

Then when I was in grammar school I played the clarinet, and then, after clarinet I played the flute in college orchestra - besides singing in the college chorus and things like that. — Bobby McFerrin

The true musician is to bring light into people's hearts. — Bobby McFerrin

If I stand there, appreciating the world around me as full of amazing sounds and the possibility of new ones, I think that invites other people to see the world that way, too. I love sharing the experience of singing with people, and I love sharing my stories. But when it comes to teaching, I have a lot of help. — Bobby McFerrin

Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin together again for the first time. — Ellen Kushner

If I sing "you broke my heart, you left me flat," everyone knows exactly what that means - they know the story. But if I sing a line that's plaintive or wailing, people can experience their own set of emotions and their own story. Each of us might give that phrase a different meaning. It's open to interpretation, and one song becomes a thousand songs. I love that. — Bobby McFerrin

Then I left that school and I went to Cerritos College, which was in southern California; they had one of the best big band programs in the country at the time. — Bobby McFerrin

Did I ever tell you that I want to wear a big yellow smiley-face mask and then put on the CD version of Bobby McFerrin's 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and then take a girl and a dog - a collie, a chow, a sharpei, it doesn't really matter - and then hook up this transfusion pump, this IV set, and switch their blood, you know, pump the dog's blood into the hardbody and vice versa, did I ever tell you this? — Bret Easton Ellis

To me, it's our job as artists. You must bring joy. — Bobby McFerrin

When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they're talking to us. When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of - or alongside - the words of a song. I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them. — Bobby McFerrin

Sometimes mistakes are the best thing that can happen, because they might lift you ... out of your complacency, and open your mind up to a whole other area that you wouldn't have gone to intentionally. — Bobby McFerrin

This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of my concert ...
everyone has this sense of rejoicing.
I don't want them to be blown away by what I do,
I want them to have this sense of real, real joy
from the depths of their being.
Because I think when you take them to that place,
then you open up a place where grace can come in. — Bobby McFerrin

Music is so powerful, it needs to be used for some kind of redeeming work. To lift peoples spirits, to lift their souls. — Bobby McFerrin

Part of our responsibility as parents, as adults, is to set examples for children. But we have to like children in order to be really happy fulfilled adults. — Bobby McFerrin

Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time. — Bobby McFerrin

I like to use the audience as my color palette, my instrument. — Bobby McFerrin

I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful. — Bobby McFerrin

If I can bring joy into the world, if I can get people to stop thinking about their pain for a moment, or the fact the tomorrow morning they're going to get up and tell their boss off ... then I'll be successful. — Bobby McFerrin