Hugh Masekela

I don’t care for the music when they’re talking bad about women because I think women are God’s greatest gift to the planet – I just like music.

Let me whisper it. Let me sigh it. Let me sing it, my dear or I will cry it.

Kinship doesn’t come from skin color. It’s in your soul and your mind.

Well, for me it’s – music is the instrument of life.

If music is sound and came from silence, then silence is potentially greater than sound.

Invest yourself in everything you do. There’s fun in being serious.

Practice 15 or 20 years and then it comes out spontaneously.

Jazz is an art form that depends on its antecedents. There must be respect for the people that have gone before.

I gave it my absolute everything I had in that howl at the start of the song. And then B. B. King opened up his mouth and I felt like a girl. We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less convincing we were.

To rise above the crowd, discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition.

The only thing better than singing is more singing.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other’s ideas.

Words are the children of reason and therefore can’t translate the feeling of Jazz because they’re not part of it.

People will always need love, romance, a tender touch and really personal and deeply felt music.

The problem is that a lot of the blues stations are late on Saturday night, and like a lot of people, I ain’t no vampire!