Quotes About Street Musicians

“... the two chatting surreptitiously as a procession of priests, musicians, and locals dressed like demons paraded down the street: the men hoisting erect wooden phalluses, the women embracing smaller carved penises swathed in red paper, the spectators touching the tips of passing phalluses to ensure good health for their children.
"How remarkable," commented Holmes.
"I thought you might find this of interest," said Mr Umezaki.
Holmes grinned slyly. "My friend, I suspect this is much more to your liking than mine."
"You're probably right," agreed Mr Umezaki, smiling while his fingertips reached out for an oncoming phallus.”

— Mitch Cullin

“They were different colors: the right one blue, the left green. And her face in the light of the candle on the table startled me at first, just as it had in the icy night air. After seeing it on the street, I was afraid I had only imagined it: a still, luminous face with a silvery sheen. Finely hewn, with a long, straight nose and a wide mouth, it was nearly identical to another face, which I had photographed years before. Not on a person, bu on the fragment of a frieze I found in some ruins near Verona, The frieze, which depicted a band of musicians, had once been shadowed beneath a cornice high on the temple of Mercury, god of magic. Belonging to one of the musicians, it was a riveting face - like a puzzle that could not be solved - which I had never found, or expected to find, on a living woman.”

— Nicholas Christopher

“The coffee shops were doing a brisk business, and street musicians filled the air with the sounds of guitar, lyre, panpipes, and armpit noises. (Percy didn't get that last one. Maybe it was an old Roman musical tradition.)”

— Rick Riordan

“When a street musician lowered his violin to inquire, 'Hey lovely, what you got there?' she said, 'Musicians who ask questions,' and kept on dragging.”

— Laini Taylor

“I used to go to Bourbon Street when I was a kid and there would be club after club after club of people who were around when the music started. I mean these are legendary, maybe not so well known, but legendary musicians.”

— Harry Connick, Jr.

“It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.”

— Charles Hazlewood

“There's pride on Bourbon Street for the musicians that work there. They take it very seriously. I've never worked there or played in band there, but it's a part of the city. They play for the tourists and represent a whole different side of the culture of our city.”

— Trombone Shorty

“For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.”

— Pat Metheny

“My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out.”

— E.L. Doctorow

“The people of the heart-the painters, the poets, the musicians, the dancers, the actors-are all irrational. They create great beauty, they are great lovers, but they are absolutely unfit in a society that is arranged by the head. Your artists are thought by your society to be almost outcast, a little bit crazy, an insane type of people. Nobody wants his or her children to become musicians or painters or dancers. Everybody wants them to be doctors, engineers, scientists, because those professions pay. Painting, poetry, dance, are dangerous, risky-you may end up just a beggar on the street, playing on your flute.”

— Osho

“There is a view that jazz is 'evil' because it comes from evil people, but actually the greatest priests on 52nd Street and on the streets of New York City were the musicians. They were doing the greatest healing work. They knew how to punch through music that would cure and make people feel good.”

— Garth Hudson

“I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform.”

— Tony Bennett

“Bourbon Street is like playing, a tourist, you know? It's just a tourist attraction ... those musicians on Bourbon Street, they play all day. They might start at 12 noon and end at 3 in the morning, like, it's like sets, like a job. You go play, take a break, play again, take a break, then later on that night, the club gets busier, then you play some more. There's pride. They're a group of great musicians- and they're holding it down.”

— Troy Andrews

“I went down to London with the idea that I was going to do vocals over this crazy, crazy trip-hop digital beat. Within two or three months, I heard Hunky Dory by David Bowie and that changed me in one way, and I realized what I actually wanted was to have an E Street Band - individuals, not session musicians.”

— KT Tunstall

“I grew up listening to my grandfather's stories of our musical past. He would often talk about the orchestras that played at concerts and the musicians who played on Sunday evenings on street corners. By the time I grew up in the '80s, all of this was a thing of the past. I lived vicariously through his stories and often wondered what it would have felt like to have been part of his generation.”

— Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

“There are street artists. Street musicians. Street actors. But there are no street physicists. A little known secret is that a physicist is one of the most employable people in the marketplace - a physicist is a trained problem solver.”

— Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen
may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols or bombs without incurring any penalties.”

— George Bernard Shaw