Over a hundred countries around the world celebrate World Music Day on June 21 every year. Originally started in France in 1982 as a celebration of summer, it honours amateur and professional musicians and encourages everyone to appreciate and play music.
In pre-COVID times, free performances were held in several parks, indoor venues, and even street corners. This year, most performances are being held online due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the spirit of the music will carry on and triumph.
In this compilation, we present 60 inspiring proverbs and quotes from around the world on the beauty, power, and joy of music. See also our earlier compilations on World Oceans Day, World Jazz Day, and World Book Day, and app ‘Oktav: Music Quotes and Proverbs’ (accessible on Apple and Android platforms.)
Roman Zavada
You can sing even at the grinding stone. – Marathi proverb
Be patient with your drum, the night is long. – African proverb
The noisiest drum has nothing in it but air. – English Proverb
Even without drumbeats, banana leaves dance. – African proverb
The music lover carries the drums. – Ghanaian proverb
When the music stops, a deaf person continues to dance. – Igbo proverb
Indian Music Experience
God respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing. – Rabindranath Tagore
Music is the soul of India. It has always been my life as well. – Pandit Ravishankar
Global collaborations help you to seek and pursue new directions. – L. Subramaniam
It is always interesting playing outside your home country, people react to the music without any preconceived notions. – Dhruv Ghanekar
In Africa, songs are performed everywhere – peace, war, birth, death. – N’faly Kouyate
The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. – Nelson Mandela
If music is a place – then jazz is the city, folk is the wilderness, rock is the road, classical is a temple. – Vera Nazarian
Culturas 360
Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. – Victor Hugo
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. – Plato
Music has great power for bringing people together. – Ted Turner
Music is not just the black dots on the white paper – it’s what happens when those black dots on the white paper go into your heart, and come out again. – Phil Smith
Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light. – Claude Debussy
Music is the best means we have of digesting time. – WH Auden
Bebel Gilberto
Music is the best medicine – it is better than taking pills, it is your soulmate. – Sarah Chebaro
Music is the shorthand of emotion. – Leo Tolstoy
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. – Charlie Parker
Music keeps people sane. – Zoot Sims
Where words fail, music speaks. – Hans Christian Andersen
Without music, life is a journey through a desert. – Pat Conroy
Chick Corea
A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting with each other’s ideas. – Stan Getz
A musician’s like a doctor, you’re supposed to heal people. – Steve Turre
All of the sounds of the earth are like music. – Oscar Hammerstein
As long as you’ve got your horn in your mouth, you’re developing. – Zoot Sims
Blues is a condition which doesn’t change from generation to generation. Every generation discovers it in its own way. – John Hammond
Chieli Minucci
Do not be afraid of being wrong; just be afraid of being uninteresting. – T. Carl Whitmer
Do not fear mistakes. There are none. – Miles Davis
If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards. – Joe Pass
If you’re going to make a mistake, make it loud so everybody else sounds wrong. – Joe Venuti
Wrong is right. – Thelonious Monk
It is always a learning curve being a musician. You can never stop learning and being inspired. – Kevin Henderson
Indian Music Experience
Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you. – Charlie Parker
Drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time. – Neil Peart
Every thing and every human action revolves in rhythm. – Babatunde Olatunji
External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument. – Yusef Lateef
How you play a note is just as important as what note that is. – Henry Kaiser
If no one decided to try blend blue and red, there would be no purple! Fusion is necessary in order for music to evolve. – Louie Talan
Montreal International Jazz Festival
Jazz is about being in the moment. – Herbie Hancock
Jazz is the art of thinking out loud. – Barbara Januszkiewicz
Life is a lot like jazz, it’s best when you improvise. – George Gershwin
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz. – Sonny Rollins
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. – Benny Green
Richard Bona
Rhythm is the multi-culti common ground of the human family. -Tony Vacca
Rhythm is the soul of life, because the whole universe revolves around rhythm, and when we get out of rhythm, that’s when we get into trouble. – Babatunde Olatunji
Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that’s what we are. – Mickey Hart
Life is like a trumpet – if you don’t put anything into it, you don’t get anything out of it. – William Christopher Handy
The piano keys are black and white, but they sound like a million colors in your mind. – Maria Cristina Mena
Drum Circle
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. – Charles Mingus
Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself. – Cecil Taylor
Rap is only one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is geared for aural pleasure. – Rita Dove
Reggae has a philosophy, you know? It’s not just entertainment. – Ziggy Marley
Ilu Leto
Some songs are just like tattoos for your brain, you hear them and they’re affixed to you. – Carlos Santana
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. – Thelonious Monk
Traveling with a big band is like being an inmate in a traveling zoo. – Hoagy Carmichael
Your horn is your passport to the world. – Tommy Smith
YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).
(Image credits: Madanmohan Rao)
