Quotes & Sayings About Spanish Music

I met people that I couldn't talk to - they didn't speak Spanish or English - but they knew my songs. That's what I love, the music has gone past where I thought it would get to. That's the power of music, how it can travel and break language barriers. — Prince Royce

According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cooke
that Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their lives
were so hard that they didn't really know what happiness was anyway. — David Byrne

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that. — Carlos Santana

I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I grew up moving from country to country due to political, governmental, and social issues and just family atmosphere that wasn't right to bring up your kid in a country where there's a dictatorship or a communist type sense, so I incorporate that int music. — Cristian Machado

But the shadow settled on them, obliquely, and was shuffled off only when Danielle rose to put on music, a Spanish soprano singing Cantaloube, her pure, agonized strains floating, their minor harmonies wavering in the small room, as if to remind them both that beauty and loss were inseparably entwined. — Claire Messud

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I'd listen to Italian music. — Maya Angelou

English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets. — Yann Martel

We had our moment [with Marc Anthony] in the third or fourth year that we were married, when we did everything together: We did "El Cantante," we did the tour, we made all the music together, he produced my album [2007's Spanish-language "Como Ama una Mujer"]. That was a really beautiful time for us. — Jennifer Lopez

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba - 'Lana Del Rey' reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue. — Lana Del Rey

I have never denied my background or my culture. I have taught my child to embrace her Mexican heritage, to love my first language, Spanish, to learn about Mexican history, music, folk art, food, and even the Mexican candy I grew up with. — Salma Hayek

I love the Italian culture - it's a beautiful culture. I love the language, the Italian people, their music, their attitudes ... I just love it! Sometimes I think I'm an Italian trapped in a Spanish woman's body. — Penelope Cruz

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 Spector

I actually chafe at describing myself as masculine. For one thing, masculinity itself is such an expansive territory, encompassing boundaries of nationality, race, and class. Most importantly, individuals blaze their own trails across this landscape. And it's hard for me to label the intricate matrix of my gender as simply masculine.

To me, branding individual self-expression as simply feminine or masculine is like asking poets: Do you write in English or Spanish? The question leaves out the possibilities that the poetry is woven in Cantonese or Ladino, Swahili or Arabic. The question deals only with the system of language that the poet has been taught. It ignores the words each writer hauls up, hand over hand, from a common well. The music words make when finding themselves next to each other for the first time. The silences echoing in the space between ideas. The powerful winds of passion and belief that move the poet to write. — Leslie Feinberg

Whenever I cook, I think of Spanish music, so I always have to listen to some sort of salsa. It gets your body going. — Action Bronson

I started doing shows in places that I couldn't pronounce, didn't know existed, and I've seen people that didn't speak English or Spanish rapping to every lyric and singing to every hook. I said, "This is the type of music that I want to do." — Pitbull

It was dusk when Rick led Amelia and Sam toward the Old Town plaza. "Come with me. You're going to love this."
Amelia could hear music in the distance. She recognized the delicate strumming of a few guitars and the faint sound of singing. As they approached the plaza, Amelia could see four men playing and singing folk songs. It was beautiful. The music was coming straight from their soul and it held her spellbound. She stood in awe and watched, loving every note that drifted toward her.
"Come here," said Rick as he motioned toward some benches. "Let's sit down."
After the three of them got comfortable, Rick put his arm around Amelia's shoulders. "If you think this is beautiful, wait until Christmas. They have Luminarias and sing Christmas songs in both English and Spanish. — Linda Weaver Clarke

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time. — Carlos Santana

My grandparents don't really listen to pop music, and they only speak Spanish and only listen to Spanish music. — Becky G

Spanish and English have such different music, and in my own poetry I feel much less drawn to fluid sounds than I do toward the hard sounds and rhythms that come out of the Anglo-Saxon roots of English. — Joan Larkin

I spoke English at school and Spanish at home, and I'm always eating Dominican food, listening to Dominican music. — Prince Royce

I studied French forever, and when do I ever speak French? I clearly should have studied Spanish. I wish I had stuck with music, because that would still be great. I really wish I had learned to surf earlier in my life. — Edward Norton

In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish. — Yann Martel

Always when I write my music, I take my guitar, and I improvise always with a melody, you know, lyrics in Spanish. But sometimes I use some words in English. I don't know why. Maybe because I listen to a lot of music in English. — Juanes

One of my reasons for living in California is its close proximity to Mexico. The Latin influence is in every corner of the community. My love of Spanish music hasn't wavered since the '50s. I could hear the blues voicing from the Flamanco families and I always dig for inspiration in Latin music. — Eric Burdon

There was something elemental in the air, something that heated the blood and brought to the conscious mind desires long suppressed. Serena's body felt heavy and warm as she swayed involuntarily to the compelling music. The fire on such a steamy night was too much, and she felt an irresistible impulse to tear off her elaborate gown so she could dance freely in the sheer coolness of her chemise. Dance to the insistent music with one man's dark eyes watching her, devouring her, till he was forced to leap up and join her as was the young man who leaped up beside the Spanish woman. — Diane Gates Robinson

For real, some of my favorite music is Mexican. It's something about the bassline and the drumming. I can't even speak Spanish, but that's probably why I like it so much. — Yelawolf

From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound. — Nicholson Baker

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about - or as a ritual like filling up a car - but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon. — Anthony Bourdain

As a singer, it's basic to preserve what I like to do, which is music, and also to remember my cradlesongs in Spanish. — Thalia

The power of music in Spanish is so strong, that I couldn't stay away from it any longer. — Enrique Iglesias

They danced slow circles in the sand, Javier singing the words to the Spanish version of the song, the melancholy music putting a strange ache in his chest, an ache he saw reflected in her eyes. Was she feeling what he was feeling? — Pamela Clare

And I have a dream of a New American Language, one with a little bit more Spanish. I have a dream of a new pop music, that tells the truth with a good beat and some nice harmonies. — Dan Bern

I met some brothers out from Canada recently who are real cool people. They make Spanish-language music called Cold Blue and I met then at a Lat-Rap conference and they seem like real good peoples from Central America ... and that's what it is. It's just based on mutual respect. So when I meet people like that I'm like, "if y'all going to be real with me, I'm going to be real with y'all" and that's all it takes. — Immortal Technique

The real reason we ended up getting into that type of music was our dad worked for an oil company so we spent a year overseas when we were young kids. Because of that, it was all Spanish TV and radio so we ended up having these '50s and '60s tapes, tapes of that music. — Zac Hanson

To me, a big crossover was what happened to me years ago, like bringing my music in Spanish to Europe, or Asia. To me, that's a crossover because Spanish is not a language that everybody talks. — Thalia

I normally listen to Spanish music - well, Latin music. I like a lot of singers. — Rafael Nadal

It's like a dream to come to Spain and stay for a couple of years and get somebody to teach me Spanish music. — Lenny Kravitz

Apartment windows are cracked open to the cold to balance overzealous radiators, and there's comfort in the sounds drifting out. Each window Amelia passes hints at the warmth inside: people talking, people laughing, kitchen sounds, the steady pulse of music. Now salsa, now reggae. Now opera, now rock. voices in English, in Spanish in Korean, in junkie gibberish. And she's a part of it, at least as long as the sounds of all those lives wash over her. — Cari Luna

I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me ... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends. — Juanes