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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 use the audience as my color palette, my instrument.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Color Music Use
The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Heart Music Science
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

Heart Mean Song
I do a lot of performing, but don’t get a chance to go to the studio and write good music.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Chance Performing Writing
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

Needs Powerful Soul
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.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Moving Song Talking
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

Alongside Figuring Harmony Perform Song
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

Deserve More Play Thinking
I want them to have this sense of real, real joy from the depths of their being. Because I think when you take them to that place, then you open up a place where grace can come in.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Depths Grace Joy Place Real Sense
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

Feel Heightened Psychologist Sing
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

Bible Country Morning People Spirit
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

Children College Possible Song
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

Deserves Each Love Good Song
You keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That’s how life is.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Fearful Forward Keep Life
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.
BOBBY MCFERRIN

Crazy Ideas Mind
If I stand there, appreciating the world around me as full of amazing sounds and the possibility of new ones,
BOBBY MCFERRIN

People Teaching Thinking

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Bobby McFerrin Quotes