Bela Fleck Quotes

It's like music theory, which was created to study what already was. Bluegrass exists, and since it's been around long enough there are people who want to talk about it.

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We've been playing together since June. It's a cool experience on a personal level. They're the guys that I looked up to when I was coming up.

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It was a very ambitious trip. I have to say, to my surprise, all of our ambitions were fulfilled. All of the musicians we were going down there to record with, we recorded with?I've edited about nine or 10 songs down from the trip, and the stuff is really, really unusual and special. It far exceeds what I hoped for in sort of the refined qualities of it. I thought it might just sort of be rough stuff out in the woods. But? Some of this stuff is just amazingly fine, fine stuff.

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We never really had collaborated [with outside musicians] before Howard left. It's been great, ever since Jeff joined. But I think there was a slight sense if we record as just the four of us, will it be as strong as it was when it was a quartet with Howard, with a guy who played five or six instruments constantly? I think as we played with the role of the saxophone and all of the different instruments that Jeff plays in the band, and all the band has learned to expand into the holes, we know how to play as a quartet now in a way that I think is as powerful as it was originally, and maybe more so in some cases.

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I did so much research that I knew what I was getting into. I was trying to find specific musicians.

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I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

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So it doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

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