Top 48 Quotes About Bobby Mcferrin
#1. It's a wonderful way to get at who someone is through their own love of music and going right at their subconsciousness if you will. You don't play girl singers for girl singers. You know, there's certain things. You do play Ellington for Bobby McFerrin.
Carol Friedman
#2. Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin together again for the first time.
Ellen Kushner
#3. By 17, I had a whole band that would go in and play. It was called Spontaneous Inventions, after a Bobby McFerrin album.
Brian McKnight
#4. Hip-hop is getting to the point now where they are going to start sounding like Al Jarreau or Bobby McFerrin or some of the other poets. Some of the better rappers can rap real fast without even melodies. It'll get to that same point.
George Clinton
#5. Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time.
Bobby McFerrin
#6. Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind. I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.
Bobby McFerrin
#7. To me, it's our job as artists. You must bring joy.
Bobby McFerrin
#8. Then when I was in grammar school I played the clarinet, and then, after clarinet I played the flute in college orchestra - besides singing in the college chorus and things like that.
Bobby McFerrin
#9. Miles Davis turned his back to the audience when he came out on stage, and he offended people. But, he wasn't there to entertain; he was all about the music. I kind of do that.
Bobby McFerrin
#10. I don't want anything to get in the way of me and my singing. I want my mind as clear as possible.
Bobby McFerrin
#11. In every life we have some trouble, but when you worry you make it double. Don't worry. Be happy.
Bobby McFerrin
#12. I do a lot of performing, but don't get a chance to go to the studio and write good music.
Bobby McFerrin
#13. I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.
Bobby McFerrin
#14. Whenever I'm onstage, I try my best not to think that I'm performing. It's simply another part of my day.
Bobby McFerrin
#15. I played piano as a kid; I still play a little bit.
Bobby McFerrin
#16. My father was a very disciplined singer who worked hard at his craft, and I was around that growing up.
Bobby McFerrin
#17. Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Don't worry, be happy now
Bobby McFerrin
#18. Music is still part of my spiritual life. Sometimes I sing my prayers. When I get audiences singing, I hope I'm helping them feel connected to something beyond themselves.
Bobby McFerrin
#19. I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet.
Bobby McFerrin
#20. I think play and joy and feeling good deserve more of our time. I don't see why adults are supposed to grow out of those things. If I have a mission it's to make everyone who comes to my concerts leave feeling a heightened sense of freedom to play, sing, and enjoy themselves.
Bobby McFerrin
#21. I think we listen to music because we want to be changed. Music is not solely for our entertainment. Music has such tremendous power to bring joy. To me, that's our job as artists. Not happiness, not a groove, whatever. You must bring joy. I think that's the assignment. I have no doubt about it.
Bobby McFerrin
#22. The audience is like my instrument. It's not just me up there, it's collaborative.
Bobby McFerrin
#23. Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next.
Bobby McFerrin
#24. My biggest musical influences are probably my parents.
Bobby McFerrin
#25. When I'm on stage by myself, I don't have to think about anything. I don't have to worry about anything because I'm not responsible for anything except just opening my mouth and making sure music comes out.
Bobby McFerrin
#26. It's not that I don't love the song. My songs are like my children: some you want around and some you want to send off to college as soon as possible.
Bobby McFerrin
#27. I prepared five songs, I sang them, and he hired me. I started working about a month later at the piano bar.
Bobby McFerrin
#28. Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.
Bobby McFerrin
#29. The voice gets to the soul of a person more than any other instrument. Because it's the voice. It sings talks, it cries, it laughs, it squeals, it barks, it shouts it whispers, There is no other instrument that can do that. We're born with it.
Bobby McFerrin
#30. I like to use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
Bobby McFerrin
#31. I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories.
Bobby McFerrin
#32. I did the one concert, and I was not bitten by the conducting bug, and I thought I was done, but then the phone started to ring, and gradually, over time, I started conducting more and more. Now a third of my performances are with orchestras.
Bobby McFerrin
#33. When you worry your face will frown, that will bring everybody down, so don't worry BE HAPPY!
Bobby McFerrin
#34. I bury my mind in my book, the Bible. Every morning it's the first thing that I do. I've been doing it for years and years. So I want to come back here [to Israel] to see the places that I read about every day. It's very important to my faith to feed [my] spirit in Israel.
Bobby McFerrin
#35. I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.
Bobby McFerrin
#37. The true musician is to bring light into people's hearts.
Bobby McFerrin
#38. But, if there's any aspect of my career that needs attention, it's writing.
Bobby McFerrin
#39. Then I left that school and I went to Cerritos College, which was in southern California; they had one of the best big band programs in the country at the time.
Bobby McFerrin
#40. To be a musician, you have to be honest ... to be honest ... to be honest.
Bobby McFerrin
#42. Sometimes mistakes are the best thing that can happen, because they might lift you ... out of your complacency, and open your mind up to a whole other area that you wouldn't have gone to intentionally.
Bobby McFerrin
#43. If I can bring joy into the world, then I'll be successful.
Bobby McFerrin
#45. Part of our responsibility as parents, as adults, is to set examples for children. But we have to like children in order to be really happy fulfilled adults.
Bobby McFerrin
#46. Music is so powerful, it needs to be used for some kind of redeeming work. To lift peoples spirits, to lift their souls.
Bobby McFerrin
#47. If I can bring joy into the world, if I can get people to stop thinking about their pain for a moment, or the fact the tomorrow morning they're going to get up and tell their boss off ... then I'll be successful.
Bobby McFerrin
#48. I'm not a scholar or a psychologist, so I don't really think about why. But I do think about what it means to sing to and with people, to offer music to them, and to ask them to spend time with me.
Bobby McFerrin
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