Creativity Quote by Norman Granz

Granz is admitting a heresy in the culture business: taste is not the same thing as judgment. He’s telling you, plainly, that curating isn’t a playlist of personal favorites. It’s a set of standards you’re willing to defend even when your own enthusiasms don’t line up. That’s a quietly radical stance in an industry that usually hides its gatekeeping behind romance ("I just love this") or market logic ("the audience wants it").

The key move is the tension between "I like less" and "warrant being presented". "Warrant" is legalistic, almost prosecutorial. It suggests evidence, criteria, a burden of proof. Granz frames presentation as something earned, not bestowed by proximity to his own pleasure. The phrase "my own, personal standards" is a flex, but not a narcissistic one; it’s an insistence on accountability. If the choices are subjective anyway, he’s going to be transparent about whose subjectivity is running the room.

Context matters: Granz wasn’t just a musician, he was a producer and impresario who built Jazz at the Philharmonic and helped define what audiences heard, who got booked, and who got recorded. In a jazz world shaped by racism, club politics, and commercial pressure, his standards carried real consequences - money, exposure, legacy. The subtext is curatorial ethics: you can dislike an artist’s sound and still recognize their craft, importance, or truth-telling power. Granz is arguing for a canon built on principle, not crushes.