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In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.

— Charles Mingus

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Source, in full

Statement to Nat Hentoff , as quoted in California Rock, California Sound : The Music of Los Angeles and Southern California (1979) by Anthony Fawcett, p. 56; also in “Jazz : Beyond Time and Nations” in The Nat Hentoff Reader (2001), Part 2 : The Passion of Creation, p. 99

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More quotes by Charles Mingus

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?

Setting the Tempo : Fifty Years of Great Jazz Liner Notes (1996)

Good jazz is when the leader jumps on the piano, waves his arms, and yells.

I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer.

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts.

What Is A Jazz Composer? (1971)

All Charles Mingus quotes →

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The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.

Lucy Green

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Eduard Hanslick

Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Mingus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.