Quote

Jazz is a word they use to sell our music, but to me that word does not exist.

John Coltrane

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John Coltrane
Age: 40 †
Born: 1926
Born: September 23
Died: 1967
Died: July 17
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Musician
Saxophonist
Hamlet
North Carolina
Trane
John William Coltrane
St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane
Sell
Jazz
Exist
Word
Music

More quotes by John Coltrane

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Any time you play your horn, it helps you. If you get down, you can help yourself even in a rock 'n' roll band.
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Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.
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We should pray and seek for knowledge which would enable us to portray and project the things we love in music, in a way that might wholly or in some part, be appreciated as having been conceived and composed or performed and presented with dedication and in positive taste
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Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.
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Change is inevitable in music - things change.
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I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing . . . the emotional reaction is all that matters as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood.
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My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being.
John Coltrane
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I'm into scales right now.
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The reason I play so many sounds, maybe it sounds angry, is because I'm trying so many things at one time, you see? I haven't sorted them out. I have a whole bag of things that I'm trying to work through and get the one essential.
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I'd like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcends words. I want to speak to their souls.
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All of the technique doesn't matter... only if the feeling is right.
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All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
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I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. You know, I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.
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I've always felt that even though a man was not a Christian, he still has to know the truth some way or another. Or if he was a Christian, he could know the truth. The truth itself doesn't have any name on it to me. And each man has to find this for himself, I think.
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Damn the rules, it's the feeling that counts.
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I think I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy Gillespie and Bird. It was through their work that I began to learn about musical structures and the more theoretical aspects of music.
John Coltrane
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God breathes through us so completely...So gently we hardly feel it...yet it is our everything.
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I think the majority of musicians are interested in truth.
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The first time I heard Bird play, it hit me right between the eyes.
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If you're bourgeois, money is it. It's all the questions and all the answers. Ain't no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000. If it isn't money, it isn't nothing.
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