Pharoah Sanders famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word.
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Music #Artist #Sound
He didn't say nothing. He would just do things. He never said nothing or explained nothing. He just would do it and that was it. You were on your own. You had to be very independent being around John [Coltrane].
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Music #Independent #Jazz
[John Coltrane] liked my qualities as a person and that's the reason why he let me play with him. It wasn't what I was doing musically or my instrument or anything like that. He let me play whatever I wanted to play.
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Music #Play #Quality
I find that in California I can't find guys that have enough energy. They play a little bit and that's about it. They play less. If I start a tune and then the pianist has to solo, I am looking to everybody to get to a certain climate and then I come back in while the energy is up high. Somehow that doesn't happen.
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Music #Play #California
I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer.
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Music #Jazz #Drummer
I just want a band and keep them working, people that I like and who I think a lot of. Once my band is happy, then I am happy.
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Thinking #People #Band
I've been getting publishing royalties and stuff like that. I have just been lucky. They come in at the right time. Sometimes they don't, but I am not wealthy or anything like that. I just love to work. I would rather work three hundred and something days out of the year. I would rather be working. They don't know. I love playing. Then I can really get my music together.
-- Pharoah Sanders

#Years #Together #Lucky

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.
I don't make music for eyes. I make music for ears.
The focus on my appearance has really surprised me. I've always been a size 14 to 16, I don't care about clothes, I'd rather spend my money on cigarettes and booze.
I think with anything where you delve into the back story of an artist, it kind of explains their work more intimately.
The artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.
Painting cannot be the only activity of a mature artist.
There is a healthy American newspaper tradition of not taking yourself seriously It is the story you must take that way... And if you do take yourself seriously, according to this sound convention, you are supposed to do your best not to let anyone else know about it. (Like bed-wetting.)
For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn't live with it--even of my own music--with the same nuances forever.
I am in total silence when I write - I don't even like the sound of the dryer going - I like the quiet.
The thing that's good about Hip Hop is that it has experimented with a lot of different sounds and music.

Pharoah Sanders famous quotes

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