Roy Hargrove

I’m going to make music out of whatever style it is, being true to the artform itself.

Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere.

Hell, nobody knows where jazz is going to go. There may be a kid right now in Chitlin Switch, Georgia, who is going to come along and upset everybody.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

If my own work had more importance than any others, it’s because the piano is the key instrument in music.

I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.

Musicians have a really big part to play in spreading messages because they’re able to reach a large portion of people on an emotional level. Artists reach people at their heart; it’s the only time we meet in one place and put our differences aside. When you’re in a forum listening to music, all you feel in that moment is love and the understanding.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

Even now, at 82 years old, if I don’t learn something every day, you know what I think? It’s a day lost. Now, I don’t practice every day. I just take the guitar, swear at it. But I should be swearing at myself. But I fool with music. I’m doing something musically all the time. And my ears are wide open for anything I can hear.

The way a band works is a metaphor for all sorts of collaborative and larger enterprises that people do.

What I’m doing, I prefer to call that jazz, because it is a beautiful word – I love it.

When you know the lyrics to a tune, you have some kind of insight as to it’s composition. If you don’t understand what it’s about, you’re depriving yourself of being really able to communicate this poem.

Jazz stands for freedom.

I wanted to put jazz on the record, all the loves of music that I had on the record, so I could show people I was ahead of my 19 years. It may have been over the heads of some people.

There’s so many ways you can hit one note.

I never wanted to be like other blues singers. I might like hearing them play, but I’ve never wanted to be anyone other than myself. There are a few people that I’ve wished I could play like, but when I tried, it didn’t work.