Emotions, Experiences, Expression – 60 Inspirational Music Sayings & Quotes on World Music Day 2021

More than a hundred countries around the world celebrate World Music Day June 21 every year. Originally launched in France in 1982 to celebrate summer, it honors amateur and professional musicians and encourage everyone to enjoy and play music.

In the pre-COVID era, free performances were held in several parks, indoor spaces and even street corners. This year, most of the performances are taking place online due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the spirit of the music will continue and triumph.

In this compilation, we feature 60 inspirational proverbs and quotes from around the world about the beauty, power and joy of music. See also our previous compilations on World Oceans Day, World Jazz Day, and World Book Day, and application “Oktav: musical quotes and proverbs” (accessible on Apple and Android platforms.)

You can even sing with the millstone. – Marathi proverb

Be patient with your drum, the night is long. – African proverb

The noisiest drum contains only air. – English proverb

Even without drumbeats, the 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

God respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing. – Rabindranath Tagore

Music is the soul of India. It’s always been my life too. – Pandit Ravishankar

Global collaborations help you seek and pursue new directions. – L. Subramaniam

It’s always interesting to play outside of your home country, people react to music without any preconceived ideas. – Dhruv Ghanekar

In Africa, songs are played everywhere – peace, war, birth, death. – N’faly Kouyaté

The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts while telling a sad story. – Nelson Mandela

If music is a place, then jazz is the city, folk is wilderness, rock is the road, classical is a temple. – Vera Nazarian

Music expresses what cannot be said and about which it is impossible to be silent. – Victor Hugo

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the spirit, a flight to the imagination and life to everything. – Plato

Music has great power to bring people together. -Ted Turner

Music isn’t just the black dots on white paper – it’s what happens when those black dots on white paper enter and exit your heart. – Phil Smith

Music is the arithmetic of sound as optics is the geometry of light. – Claude Debussy

Music is the best way we can digest time. – WH Auden

Music is the best medicine – it’s better than taking pills, it’s your soul mate. – Sarah Chebaro

Music is the shortcut for 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 the music speaks. – Hans Christian Andersen

Without music, life is a journey through a desert. – Pat Conroy

A good quartet is like a good conversation between friends interacting with each other’s ideas. – Stan Getz

A musician is like a doctor, you’re supposed to heal people. -Steve Turre

All the sounds of the earth are like music. -Oscar Hammerstein

As long as you have your horn in your mouth, you are growing. – Zoot Sims

The blues is a condition that does not change from generation to generation. Each generation discovers it in its own way. – John Hammond

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes; just be afraid of being uninteresting. – T. Carl Whitmer

Don’t be afraid of mistakes. There are not any. – Miles Davis

If you hit the wrong note, correct it by what you play next. – Joe Pass

If you are going to make a mistake, make it loud so that everyone rings wrong. – Joe Venuti

Evil is good. – Monk Thelonious

It’s always a learning curve to be a musician. You can never stop learning and being inspired. -Kevin Henderson

Don’t play the saxophone. Let him play you. -Charlie Parker

Drum soloing is like doing a marathon and solving equations at the same time. – Neil Peart

Everything and every human action turns in rhythm. -Babatunde Olatunji

The external instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument. – Yusef Lateef

Just as important as the note is how you play a note. -Henri Kaiser

If no one decided to try mixing blue and red, there would be no purple! Fusion is necessary for music to evolve. – Louie Talan

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 better when you improvise. – George Gershwin

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so much and still be jazz. – Sonny Rollins

A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. – Benny Vert

Rhythm is the multicultural common ground of the human family. -Tony Vacca

Rhythm is the soul of life, because the whole universe revolves around rhythm, and when you lose rhythm, that’s where you get into trouble. -Babatunde Olatunji

Life is all about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts pump blood, we are a rhythm machine, that’s what we are. -Mickey Hart

Life is like a trumpet – if you don’t put it in, you don’t get it out. – William Christophe Handy

The piano keys are black and white, but they ring like a million colors in your mind. – Maria Cristina Mena

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, incredibly simple, is creativity. -Charles Mingus

Improvisation is the ability to talk to yourself. – Cecil Taylor

Rap is just one end of a whole spectrum of verbal play and virtuosity. Rap is designed for hearing pleasure. – Rita Colombe

Reggae has a philosophy, you know? It’s not just entertainment. – Ziggy Marley

Some songs are like tattoos for your brain, you hear them and they are put on you. -Carlos Santana

Talking about music is like dancing to architecture. – Monk Thelonious

Traveling with a big band is like being held in a traveling zoo. – Hoagy Carmichael

Your horn is your passport to the world. – Tommy Smith

YourStory also published the paperback “Proverbs and quotes for entrepreneurs: a world of inspiration for startups“ as a creative and motivating guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).

(Image credits: Madanmohan Rao)