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 MCFERRINI 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.
More Bobby McFerrin Quotes
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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.
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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.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
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
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Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next.
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When I was figuring out how to perform solo, I wanted to move back and forth between bass riffs, melody, and harmony, so I often used sounds instead of — or alongside — the words of a song.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
I couldn’t do anything without faith. I couldn’t open up my eyes, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t sing.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
Each of us might give that phrase a different meaning. It’s open to interpretation, and one song becomes a thousand songs. I love that.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
You keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
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 -
If I stand there, appreciating the world around me as full of amazing sounds and the possibility of new ones,
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
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 -
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
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If I sing “you broke my heart, you left me flat,” everyone knows exactly what that means – they know the story. But if I sing a line that’s plaintive or wailing, people can experience their own set of emotions and their own story.
BOBBY MCFERRIN -
I found that if I sang a line using the consonants, vowels, shadings, and inflection we recognize as human language sounds, people responded as if I were talking to them.
BOBBY MCFERRIN