National Music Quotes

#1. Certainly, jazz has become more of a niche, which is surprising, because it's our music. It's the national music of America.

Renee Fleming

#2. The tango is really a combination of many cultures, though it eventually became the national music of Argentina.

Yo-Yo Ma

#3. There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes.

Evan Parker

#4. It's hard to find an emblem of cultural, national pride that burns as bright as Israel's success in classical music.

Zubin Mehta

#5. American movies and music deliver themes of freedom, innocence, and power that appeal to others - partly because America itself was put together out of a multiplicity of national traditions.

Todd Gitlin

#6. Christine Bass was my high school music teacher. She took a program on its last legs and within a few years turned into one of the best programs in the country. Our high school dominated national choir competitions all through her 20-plus year tenure.

Aaron Lazar

#7. At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.

Aberjhani

#8. The music scene in the '70s was like the United Kingdom in the '70s - we had a lot of unemployment, we had inflation, we had a lot of strikes going on, on a national scale, and a lot of discontent. That was reflected in the music.

Annie Lennox

#9. Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride.

Frank Zappa

#10. Purcell is a composer who had a formative influence on British music - even The Who now cite him as an influence. There's an intense, dirty harmony, but there's a Louis XIV kind of elan and style, too. He had the melancholy DNA of our national folk heritage.

Charles Hazlewood

#11. Queen Victoria did not regard art, letters, or music as in any way springing from national character: they were something quite apart, elegant decorations resembling a scarf or a bracelet, and in no way expressive of the soul of the country.

E.F. Benson

#12. I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw

#13. Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings make sense out of the comedies and tragedies that contextualize our lives.

Aberjhani

#14. The man who disparages music as a luxury and non-essential is doing the nation an injury. Music now, more than ever before, is a national need.

Woodrow Wilson

#15. Musical expression is never primarily national, but is personal and individual rather. It is so deep, so profound, that it goes beyond and below nationality and gives voice to the most private feeling. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is an individual.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

#16. I became an actor by doing school plays and youth theaters, and then National Youth Theatre of Great Britain. And then I did study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. For me that was a good way to enter the field, to work in the theater.

Chiwetel Ejiofor

#17. The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.

Bonnie Raitt

#18. I had brought from Paris the national prejudice against Italian music; but I had also received from nature that acute sensibility against which prejudices are powerless. I soon contracted the passion it inspires in all those born to understand it.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#19. If you were a country," I said, "what would your national anthem be?"
I meant a pre-existing song
"What a Wonderful World" or "Que Sera, Sera" or something to make it a joke, like "Hey Ya!" ("I would like, more than anything else, for my nation to be shaken like a Polaroid picture.")

David Levithan

#20. In India, religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life.

Swami Vivekananda

#21. I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.

Pablo Casals

#22. Folk music isn't owned by anybody. It is owned by everybody, like the national parks, the postal system, and the school system. It's our common property. There is nobody's name on it. Nobody can make money on it. It's not copywritten.

Utah Phillips