Creativity Quote by Derek Bailey

A guitarist famous for making the instrument sound like it was being invented mid-song, Derek Bailey frames “playing” as something stubbornly social. The line lands as a quiet rebuke to the romantic myth of the solitary genius: the musician alone in a room, excavating greatness from private obsession. Bailey’s world - free improvisation, small rooms, unstable ensembles, high-risk listening - doesn’t reward that fantasy. It rewards presence.

The repetition is the point. “Playing is about playing” refuses lofty mission statements about expression or transcendence. It drags music back to the verb: an activity, a practice, a game with rules made in real time. Then the phrase pivots: “with other people.” That’s where the stakes appear. In Bailey’s context, “other people” aren’t accompanists or an audience to be managed; they’re co-authors. Improvisation becomes less a display of personal vocabulary than a negotiation: offer, response, interruption, repair. The real artistry is relational.

Subtext: virtuosity is overrated if it can’t communicate under pressure. Bailey is also taking a swipe at recorded-music perfectionism and the cult of control. Studio polish can freeze music into a monologue; Bailey argues for music as conversation - messy, contingent, sometimes awkward, always alive. It’s an ethics as much as an aesthetic: to play with others is to accept vulnerability, share agency, and let the work be shaped by someone else’s mind in the moment.