Claudia Acuna

I don’t want to sing anything that doesn’t come real.

The guitar and the dog, in order not to be separated from man, have submitted themselves with resignation to the worst alterations of size and appearance.

[on B.B. King] He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced, and the most humble and genuine man you would ever wish to meet. In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably B.B. King.

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress…so that, even on the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

I am inclined to just write music and not worry about what people can or can’t do.

It doesn’t have to be happy music to be inspiring.

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

[on Django Reinhardt] This was a man who changed my musical life by giving me a whole new perspective on the guitar and, on an even more profound level, on my relationship with sound…During my formative years, as I listened to Django’s records, especially songs like ‘Nuages’ that I would play for the rest of my life, I studied his technique. Even more, I studied his gentleness. I love the human sound he gave his acoustic guitar.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

An orchestra can become as familiar and reliable an instrument as a well-known, well-worn piano.

Darlin… be-bop is the music of the future.

The drummer; he inspired me to play like no one else I have ever met.

The main thing is you want to emote.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I’d shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can’t pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that’s how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.