You keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.
BOBBY MCFERRINI 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.
More Bobby McFerrin Quotes
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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.
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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 want to write a book of poetry, as well as children’s stories.
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The audience is like my instrument. It’s not just me up there, it’s collaborative.
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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.
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Don’t just play the licks you know. We’re all improvising all the time – it’s good to recognize that and embrace it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Musicians are the architects of heaven.
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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.
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The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.
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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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Music is so powerful, it needs to be used for some kind of redeeming work. To lift peoples spirits, to lift their souls.
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One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece.
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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.
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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.
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When we listen to improvisational jazz, or solo classical violinists, the way they phrase and inflect melodies feels vocal, like they’re talking to us.
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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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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.
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If I stand there, appreciating the world around me as full of amazing sounds and the possibility of new ones,
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Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion.
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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.
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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.
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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