Quotes & Sayings About New Orleans Music

[New Orleans.] Katrina changed everything. Life here is different, every face altered. Yet we feel and sense the landscape not only in its hurricane-leveled, sodden depressions but - perhaps even more so now in the strangely comforting depths of our shared history. Even in the worst hit areas, not all is dissipated. Dense intricate attachments burrow too deep to underestimate or overlook. This is no featureless town to be rubbed off the map and cast aside. Here the band plays on.

Our kindred colors speak to the values of justice, faith and power; to curious combinations of passion, openness, irreverence and loyalty, to the values of individuality, sharing and compassion. Not least, we still enjoy the sounds of music and respond to succulent foods, to the magnificent flowering gardens, to the elements of grace and dreamy escape, and to the languid Southern charm typical of faded days gone by. — T.J. Fisher

I like New Orleans music, I like Memphis music and I like the way that the sound like those places. I like how there are stars and there are people in those cities that are revered in the community. — Joel Plaskett

The New Orleans bands, you see, didn't play with a flat sound. They'd shade the music. After the band had played with the two or three horns blowing, they'd let the rhythm have it. — Danny Barker

White folks have controlled New Orleans with money and guns, black folks have controlled it with magic and music, and although there has been a steady undercurrent of mutual admiration, an intermingling of cultures unheard of in any other American city, South or North; although there has prevailed a most joyous and fascinating interface, black anger and white fear has persisted, providing the ongoing, ostensibly integrated fete champetre with volatile and sometimes violent idiosyncrasies. — Tom Robbins

In New Orleans, bounce music was prevalent. That was all they wanted to hear. It was new and trendy, and it was hot, and it was taking off. Artists were coming out of everywhere. They did some great songs, some really catchy, fun songs. That was just the feel of New Orleans music. — Mystikal

New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born. — Wynton Marsalis

I've been all over the world. I love New York, I love Paris, San Francisco, so many places. But there's no place like New Orleans. It's got the best food. It's got the best music. It's got the best people. It's got the most fun stuff to do. — Harry Connick Jr.

When I am introduced as someone from New Orleans, people sometimes say: "I'm so sorry."
New Orleans. I'm so sorry.
That's not the way it was before,not the way it's supposed to be. When people find out you're from New Orleans, they're supposed to tell you about how they got drunk there once, or fell in love there, or first heard the music there that changed their lives.
At worst people would say: "I've always wanted to go there."
But now, it's just: "I'm sorry."
Man, that kills me. That just kills me. — Chris Rose

One of my pleasantest memories as a kid growing up in New Orleans was how a bunch of us kids, playing, would suddenly hear sounds. It was like a phenomenon, like the Aurora Borealis
maybe. The sounds of men playing would be so clear, but we wouldn't be sure where they were coming from. So we'd start trotting, start running
'It's this way! It's this way!'
And sometimes, after running for a while, you'd find you'd be nowhere near that music. But that music could come on you any time like that. The city was full of the sounds of music. — Danny Barker

There was this rapper from New Orleans, Mystikal, who when I hear his music, I hear myself. Whenever I wanna get hyped, I put on Mystikal. — Anthony Mackie

There are only two things: love, all sorts of love, with pretty girls, and the music of New Orleans or Duke Ellington. Everything else ought to go, because everything else is ugly. — Boris Vian

What city has given the world more in terms of American culture than New Orleans? There is none. Not New York. Not L.A. Not Chicago. Not anywhere, in the sense that African American music has gone around the world twenty times over, and it's continuing to evolve. It is our greatest cultural export. — David Simon

Like the New Orleans tradition that preceded it, and the Swing Era offerings that followed it, Chicago jazz was not just the music of a time and place, but also a timeless style of performance - and for its exponents, very much a way of life - one that continues to reverberate to this day in the works of countless Dixieland and traditional jazz bands around the world. For many listeners, the Chicago style remains nothing less than the quintessential sound of jazz. — Ted Gioia

There's so much music going on in New Orleans. — Anthony Hemingway

Life in New Orleans is all about making the present--this moment, right now--as pleasant as possible. So New Orleanians, by and large, aren't tortured by the frenzy to achieve, acquire, and manage the unmanageable future. Their days are built around the things that other Americans have pushed out of their lives by incessant work: art, music, elaborate cooking, and--most of all--plenty of relaxed time with family and friends. Their jobs are really just the things they do to earn a little money; they're not the organiing principle of life. While this isn't a worldview particularly conducive to getting things done, getting things done isn't the most important thing in New Orleans. Living life is. Once you've tasted that, and especially if it's how you grew up, life everywhere else feels thin indeed. — Dan Baum

My wife is from Laurel, Mississippi, and she has a lot of relatives down in Louisiana, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport, Louisiana. We go down there a lot. We got married in New Orleans. She has a cousin who introduced me to swamp pop, which is sort of zydeco/Cajun music with a little uptempo pop swing. Now I'm a big zydeco fan, I'm a big swamp-music fan. — Charlie Day

New Orleans is a place where people are deliberately undereducated so that they can be a labour class - the economy there is tourism, and one of the only outlets that black males have traditionally been allowed is to play jazz music, y'know? — Christian Scott

I think the rebuilding of the city has to start with the spirit first. So the music, the vibe, the connection spiritually with the artists. Everybody out here is the main key. A lot of people are still in a lot of tough situations. My heart still goes out to the people of New Orleans. — Doug E. Fresh

New Orleans lives by the water and fights it, a sand castle set on a sponge nine feet below sea level, where people made music from heartache, named their drinks for hurricanes and joked that one day you'd be able to tour the city by gondola. — Nancy Gibbs

Everything in New Orleans was competitive. People would always be betting on who was the best and the greatest in everything. That's where the battles of music came in. — Danny Barker

The wild notes of tuba and trumpet and trombone rattled and hummed through the trees. In the first group of musicians, there were kids as young as fourteen playing the tuba and one kid who probably couldn't drive banging a bass drum. They stomped together in rhythm to the music. Two ladies had dressed up in what looked like princess outfits. They wore white gloves and socks with tassels. — Hunter Murphy

[T]he piano was to Harlem what brass bands had been to New Orleans. The instrument represented conflicting possibilities -- a pathway for assimilating traditional highbrow culture, a calling card of lowbrow nightlife, a symbol of middle-class prosperity, or, quite simply, a means of making a living. — Ted Gioia

If I had grown up in any place but New Orleans, I don't think my career would have taken off. I wouldn't have heard the music that was around this town. There was so much going on when I was a kid. — Pete Fountain

It seemed [there are] musical nodes on the planet where cultures meet and mix, sometimes as a result of unfortunate circumstances, like slavery or something else, in places like New Orleans and Havana and Brazil. And those are places where the European culture and indigenous culture and African culture all met and lived together, and some new kind of culture and especially music came out of that. — David Byrne

If New Orleans is allowed to die, a crucial part of the world's music heritage will disappear. — Ray Davies

The music is just so rich and part of the culture there. I suddenly felt like I needed to go on this mission to make sure we save New Orleans because - not that I can save anything - but it's so much part of what this country is, this whole mix of people coming together and doing this thing. — Harold Perrineau

I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music ... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto. — Robbie Robertson

My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by. — Madeleine Peyroux

I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum. — Wynton Marsalis

In New Orleans, on the other hand, geography and time, food, music, holidays, modes of dress and ways of speaking, are part of an integrated fabric. People dress in certain ways for certain events, and certain foods are eaten on certain days, — Tom Piazza

Although I miss my family and friends when I'm away from Amsterdam, I've never had that feeling of missing a city like I have with New Orleans. Especially for the music. — Michiel Huisman

I don't dig that two-beat jive the New Orleans cats play. My boys and I have to have four heavy beats to the bar and no cheating. — Count Basie

New Orleans is of such key importance to American music because historical factors combined to make it the strongest center of African musical practice in the United States, and, cliches aside, that practice really did travel up the Mississippi and did spread overland. — Ned Sublette

Lots of the bands [in New Orleans] couldn't read too much music. So they used a fiddle to play the lead - a fiddle player could read - and that was to give them some protection. — Danny Barker

Those who have not lived in New Orleans have missed an incredible, glorious, vital city
a place with an energy unlike anywhere else in the world, a majority-African American city where resistance to white supremacy has cultivated and supported a generous, subversive, and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues, and and hip-hop to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, and the citywide tradition of red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and food and traditions and sexuality and liberation. — Jordan Flaherty

The word [jazz] never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the 1920s I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing 'Negro music'. But it's too late for that now. — Duke Ellington

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes, 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. — Harry Connick Jr.

I fell in love with the place! You know, the people, the bourbon, the music ... it's in the air. It's something you can't describe on camera. — Brad Pitt

The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel. — Wynton Marsalis

What's New Orleans without music? And what's music without dancing? — Ellen DeGeneres

In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar. — Dr. John

You don't see the European classical musicians allowing the music of Bach, Brahms, or Beethoven to become extinct. That music has gone on for centuries and centuries. We have the same obligation. Why do we have to become so 'hip' that we can say, 'Bebop is square,' or New Orleans is square'? This, to me, is a shame. — Rahsaan Roland Kirk

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed - things like hoe-downs, fiddle songs, and the art of improvisation, and the New Orleans funeral tradition, and call-and-response church singing, and the fact that the blues run through everything. And in our relationship to European music, in that we don't have to imitate it, it's a part of us, inseparable. — Wynton Marsalis

What is interesting in this is the exchange of music that occurred between New Orleans and Cuba, I mean, they had ferries that would go from one port to another. — Ruben Blades

New Orleans has a unique history as a great melting pot of all kinds of cultures, and that manifests itself now through the food, the music, and the kinds of people who live there. — Scott Bakula

My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music, eventually I wanted to play an instrument. — Bill Kreutzmann

I've lived in N.Y. and L.A. for many years, but I still gravitate to New Orleans - it's so unique and so European. There's nothing else like it in the country. It has its own music, its own food, its own style and its own way of life. — Bryan Batt

There's certain things in life that I love. One is architecture. And music, culture, food, people. New Orleans has all of that. — Lenny Kravitz

Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans. — Fats Domino

It is a cultural tradition that makes New Orleans what it is. It also represents the roots of American music and an important part of the African-American community in New Orleans. It unites people in some of the poorer neighborhoods of the city. It is absolutely critical to continue. — Bill Taylor

I forget what the official name of it was, but they did an all-day of roots music - every kind of music you can imagine from around the country - New Orleans Jazz to Indian flute players, R&B, you name it. I met and became good friends with (blues guitar player) Joe Louis Walker. He was on the show. — Scotty Moore

I mean, growing up in New Orleans when you're in seventh and eighth grade and you're into music and you're a dorky dude, you know, you listen to the entire Rush catalog and the entire Zeppelin catalog and you go through these, like, phases of classic rock. It definitely speaks to our dorkiness and the similar hometown that we grew up in, the similar sort of schooling we went through and friends we had. — Steve Zissis

New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture - even the local superstitions. It's a sensory experience on all levels and there's a story lurking around every corner. — Ruta Sepetys

New Orleans, more than many places I know, actually tangibly lives its culture. It's not just a residual of life; it's a part of life. Music is at every major milestone of our life: birth, marriage, death. It's our culture. — Wendell Pierce

For a second, I stop fighting and think about what he's asking me. Did I live? I made a best friend. Lost another. Cried. Laughed. Lost my virginity. Gained a piece of magic, gave it away. Possibly changed a man's destiny. Drank beer. Slept in cheap motels. Got pissed off. Laughed some more. Escaped from the police and bounty hunters. Watched the sun set over the ocean. Had a soda with my sister. Saw my mom and dad as they are. Understood music. Had sex again, and it was pretty mind-blowing. Not that I'm keeping score. Okay, I'm keeping score. Played the bass. Went to a concert. Wandered around New Orleans. Freed the snow globes. Saved the universe. — Libba Bray

I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone's going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. — Soledad O'Brien

It's always on everyone's list, like, 'What's New Orleans like?' I think people have a pre-conceived idea, like it's just Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. But really, there's so much culture, the music's great, the food's great. It's not good for the waistline! But I'm actually from the South, I'm from Georgia, so the weather doesn't bother me. — Sung Kang

When I'm in Los Angeles, it's hard to be creative. For me, New Orleans is one of those places that's like a muse. You can hear music on the streets. There's a certain character the city has that inspires you when you're needing to write lyrics and come up with melodies and come up with rhythm and blues. The city has a pulse and it's an inspiration for me. — Chris Thomas King

A good crowd had formed along the sidewalk and the concrete ledge that bordered Louis Armstrong Park. The anticipation was dizzying...New Orleans had the big-boy parades and [Jackson & Billy] couldn't wait to attend a second line... — Hunter Murphy

The time after college and before music was really rough. I couldn't afford food. I was eating bread and butter for five months. Living in New Orleans, I couldn't afford to take care of myself. I had no health insurance. — Benjamin Booker

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery. — Allen Toussaint

He'd been toting it, and checking it, and packing and unpacking, all the way since fate was on the river - that's how long - the Big River - Fate Marable and his riverboat caliope (Cleo seemed to recall), who hadastonished the landings between New Orleans and St. Louis with the wild, harsh, skirling Gypsy music, and left there, echoing in the young and restless even as it dies off round the bed; to linger with them thereafter, in the pelting roar of November midnights and the clickety-clack of lonesome valley freights, until they up one night and go after it in a battered bus, following the telephone wires that make a zigzag music staff against the evening sky - some variation of that basic beginning could be told for everyone who jazz has touched and altered. — John Clellon Holmes

When I was a little kid wanting to play music, it was because of people like Pete Johnson, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Professor Longhair, James Booker, Art Neville ... there was so many piano players I loved in New Orleans. Then there was guys from out of town that would come cut there a lot. There was so many great bebop piano players, so many great jazz piano players, so many great Latin piano players, so many great blues piano players. Some of those Afro-Cuban bands had some killer piano players. There was so many different things going on musically, and it was all of interest to me. — Dr. John

I've always loved New Orleans music. I always loved it when the Neville Brothers opened up for the Grateful Dead and the Dirty Dozen and all that. — Bill Kreutzmann

If I could put my finger on it, I'd bottle it and sell it. I came down here originally in 1972 with some drunken fraternity guys and had never seen anything like it - the climate, the smells. It's the cradle of music; it just flipped me. Someone suggested that there's an incomplete part of our chromosomes that gets repaired or found when we hit New Orleans. Some of us just belong here. — John Goodman

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of jazz. — Steve Lacy

It seemed each band member was in his own world. Yet, each was in tune with the other. — Jason Medina

He turned around to see the bass drum popping and the horn sections pointing their instruments to the balconies and sending glorious notes to the rooftops. — Hunter Murphy

The tax incentives are things the music business can emulate. If I own Yesterday by the Beatles and I go to a bank and try to borrow $10,000 and use that song as collateral, they wouldn't know what to do. They would run me out of the bank. Whereas if we get specialized people who know how to appraise the value of intellectual property like songs, catalogs and master recordings, they know how to put some type of value on it. They have this in Nashville and Los Angeles. New Orleans is just starting to get it. — Chris Thomas King

It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz and I, myself, happened to be the creator in the year 1902. — Jelly Roll Morton