Herbie Hancock Jazz Quotations

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism.

I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since.

It's not the style that motivates me, as much as an attitude of openness that I have when I go into a project.

Jazz translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

One of the greatest attributes of jazz, I think, is that it is that open.

There are a lot of records coming out, in every field of music, not just jazz.

Oscar Peterson is the greatest living influence on jazz pianists today.

I like the idea of an eclectic approach, incorporating jazz with other forms and other genres of music.

I'm aware that a lot of what is happening in jazz has not had a very dynamic change in a long time.

It pulled me like a magnet, jazz did, because it was a way that I could express myself.

Most people think that classical music is a higher form than jazz only because it is from Europe, and we were taught in schools only about Western European history.

I was on tour with Miles Davis, and we had a gig to play at a theater in Los Angeles in 1965. And the opening act was the Aretha Franklin Jazz Trio. She was this young artist and she played sort of funky jazz piano with an upright bassist and a drummer. Then she sang, and she blew the roof off the place. The rest is history. I'd rate her up there with Zeus.

I wasn't concerned about jazz - that's just one of the tools.

So the ideas is not to shut out jazz - but it is very inclusive, which is great - because jazz is also an inclusive music.

We wanted to share creativity and didn't want to be bound by traditional jazz conventions.

I brought my 40 years of jazz experience to the table, ... but I wanted to make something more ambitious than a little box.

I am still a jazz musician and not a pop star in terms of money and so I have to take care of my family first, then my extended family and my country.

Although my parents were playing jazz for me when I was a kid, I didn't pay much attention until I saw someone my age improvising, playing jazz..

The fact that young hip-hop artists are searching for the jazz roots of their music acknowledges the greatness of roots, helps a person get a sense of being grounded, of being attached, of coming from somewhere.

Another thing that I noticed is a lot of people in the hip hop scene have a great respect for jazz and have incorporated by sampling some elements that come from jazz.

I wanted to work with artists who were strong enough personalities that they'd all have something of their own to bring. My foundation is jazz, which is all about interaction. Jazz gives you a lot of tools to play with.

I was a jazz purist at the time, I had tunnel vision about jazz and classical music,

And jazz is also for the body because it is rhythmic, but it's also for the mind and for the soul, and it is very creative.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasized doing things differently from what other people were doing.

The music becomes something that is its own entity.

I'm always looking to create new avenues or new visions of music.

Jazz is a music that is open enough to borrow from any other form of music, and has the strength to influence any other form of music.

It's not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.

Jazz is about being in the moment.

The spirit of jazz is the spirit of openness.

The concept of improvisation is an idea that's very close to my heart, but I can manifest that in a lot of different genres. It really comes from a jazz sensibility.

One of the most important functions of jazz has been to encourage a hope for freedom, for people living in situations of intolerance or struggle.

As the 1960s began, jazz music was still at an apex, with hard bop groups led by the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane remaining a force on the musical landscape.

But I'm not so focused on intensity from that kind of testosterone level that a lot of jazz is on.

Well, I was becoming more of a jazz snob, in thinking that jazz was a higher kind of music, and that R&B was, yes, for the body and more commercial.

I knew of jazz, but I didn't like it. I always thought only older people liked jazz - you know, you had to be 19 or 20.

Jazz is a music that translates the moment into a sense of inspiration for not only the musicians but for the listeners.

Both men and women have masculine and feminine elements. We've just been concentrating on the masculine elements in jazz coming out for too long. It's time for feminine elements to emerge.

Even during the major avant-garde period of jazz in the late '60s and early '70s, the songs usually had melodies, some harmonic starting-off point, or something to unify a particular piece in the beginning.