Max Roach

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

Jazz music is collective creativity.

Jazz music grabs you to the point where it never lets you go until the very last breath.

In classical music, only two people are important, the composer and the conductor. Everybody else is a serf. In jazz, a thing of beauty is created collectively with everybody getting to express an idea. And that reflects what democratic society is – or should be.

The people who really got me off were dealing with the musical potential of their instrument.

Music and life are all about style.

Anyone who doesn’t give [his debut album, The College Dropout] a perfect score is lowering the integrity of the magazine

All this is saying is, OK I see now, the ‘hood does not quite want Shirley Bassey yet, so let me still give them this. Crack Music was made after Diamonds. After black people were like, ‘I don’t know about this one.’ It was like me reaching too high for the cookie jar.

Find the best teachers, listen to the finest playing and try to emulate that. Be true to the music.

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

To me, the guitar cuts through. It carries more than the organ, but the organ has got more guts.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

Playing ‘bop’ is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

The value of music is to be able to play one note at the right time in the right way.

I can tell whether a person can play just by the way he stands.

My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

I’m glad I don’t have perfect pitch because it can drive you crazy.

I don’t really get nervous, I prepare. When the music messed up in the beginning, it tapped into my nerves and when you’re nervous and vulnerable, something special and something different can happen.

I could write six songs in one day with everything that’s going on.