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Sometimes
it takes a long time
to sound like yourself.

—Miles Davis

~

If you don’t live it,
it won’t come out of your horn.

—Charlie Parker

~

I stole everything I ever heard, but mostly I stole from the horns.

—Ella Fitzgerald

~

If you have to ask what jazz is,
you'll never know.

—Louis Armstrong

~

Jazz music is the power of now.

—Wynton Marsalis

~

Jazz is there and gone.

—Keith Jarrett

~

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

—Ornette Coleman

~

Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.

—John Philip Sousa

~

Jazz is a white term to define Black people. My music is Black classical music.

—Nina Simone

~

Boxing is like jazz. The better it is, the less people appreciate it.

—George Foreman

~

I only hope that one day America will recognize what the rest of the world already has known, that our indigenous music—gospel, blues, jazz and R&B—is the heart and soul of all popular music.

—Quincy Jones

~

John Coltrane is rock and roll.

—Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def)

~

Play your own way.

—Thelonious Monk

~

I play by ear.

—Ralph Ellison

~

There are no wrong notes.

—Miles Davis

~

God breathes through us so completely, so gently, we hardly feel it, yet it is our everything.

—John Coltrane

~

No America,
no jazz.

—Art Blakey

~

No jazz,
no America.

—Unknown

~

We got the jazz
We’ve got the jazz
We’ve got the jazz
We got the jazz

—A Tribe Called Quest

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Poem: We Real Cool

Poem: Jazz Fan Looks Back

Poem: The Fantastic Names of Jazz

Poem: Walking Parker Home

In a Silent Way

West End Blues

A Night in Tunisia

Scrapple from the Apple

‘Round Midnight

Dr. Jackle

Sid’s Ahead

Kind of Blue

Blue in Green

Gone

The Sorcerer

Pharaoh’s Dance

Bitches Brew

Directions

Panthalassa

Miles Beyond

Lonely Woman

Bright Size Life

Spain

Köln

Song X

Stretching

Mars

Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall

Thelonious Monk at Newport Jazz Festival

John Coltrane at the Village Vanguard

Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard

America’s music

First Great, Second Great, & Lost Quintets

100 essential jazz albums

The Jazz 100

Jazz poetry | a brief guide

Jazz Poems

Jazz as Communication

Scrapple from the Apple: Jazz & Poetry

We Jazz June

If you can’t be free, be a mystery

‘Holy flowers floating in the air’

Jazz Age

Jazz

Jazz

Spiritual

Rag

Blues

Scat

Jazz

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What are you jazzed about?

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