African Music Quotes

Trying to be really dark and alienating just felt exhausting to me, so I started going back to the music that I grew up with, whether it was African music or pop music. It took me away from being overly self-conscious about what I was doing. ~ St. Lucia

I stream this radio station, Radio Nova, that's based in Paris. They curate a beautiful set that's really all over the place - they'll play blues or some West African music, then A Tribe Called Quest, then funk from Ethiopia, then James Brown, and then the Beatles. It's an amazing mix. ~ Zoe Kravitz

Symmetria by the Uccello Project is a gorgeous, instrumental and largely unclassifiable record. Best thought of as 'cinematic', each of the tracks conjures up a range of emotions and images, taking the listener on a beautiful journey. The layers of basses, guitars and percussion ebb and flow, drawing on jazz, folk, blues and African music, blending all the elements into one lovely album. Recommended. ~ Steve Lawson

I just wanted to sing, and I didn't want my music to be unique to the US. I wanted Africans to hear it and know that South African music was still alive. ~ Letta Mbulu

I grew up singing Mexican music, and that's based on indigenous Mexican rhythms. Mexican music also has an overlay of West African music, based on huapango drums, and it's kind of like a 6/8 time signature, but it really is a very syncopated 6/8. And that's how I attack vocals. ~ Linda Ronstadt

American audiences don't react in the same way as European ones to African music because, I think, Europeans listen to this music through all the festivals that exist here. ~ Rokia Traore

I feel like kids that grew up in New York City or in L.A. were exposed to all these subcultures and subgenres, whereas I was only exposed to the poppiest of pop music so I never had this negative connotation towards pop music. That's not South African music having an effect on me, but just how international music was filtered through South Africa affected me. It gave me a not-negative connotation towards pop music growing up. ~ St. Lucia

I've been informed by both sides, jazz, western music, Asian music, African music, all sides, because I've been interested in the sound of the universe, and that sound is without limit. ~ Joseph Jarman

I like African music, and I'm a huge Ravi Shankar fan. ~ Serj Tankian

My first introduction to African music was by my mother, who bought the 'Pata Pata' album by the great Miriam Makeba when it came out. Now that is an album. What a voice. ~ Henry Rollins

When I was very little, I was into Michael Jackson. At six or seven, it was Madonna, but she's not what she used to be. I've been into everything from Edith Piaf to Joe Strummer to the Velvet Underground to Suicide to A Tribe Called Quest to African music. ~ Lykke Li

One of my dreams is to expand and make sure African music and Afro Beats music is really on the map. I would like to be a contribution to that success. ~ Ice Prince

The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope. ~ Nelson Mandela

I did not like that name "world music" in the beginning. I think that African music must get more respect than to be put in a ghetto like that. We have something to give to others. When you look to how African music is built, when you understand this kind of music, you can understand that a lot of all this modern music that you are hearing in the world has similarities to African music. It's like the origin of a lot of kinds of music. ~ Baaba Maal

I've always been interested in any kind of great music, and African music is, I think, the source of it all. ~ Jack Bruce

The basic success of the conga came from ... that basic principle of African music and dance: everybody participates. The conga eradicated the distinction between performer and audience, broke down the wall of the proscenium ... ~ Ned Sublette

You cannot sing African music in proper English ~ Fela Kuti

Music is always a reflection of what's going on in the hearts and minds of the culture. ~ Tori Amos

Maybe I'll have something out by Christmas, maybe not. I don't know, I'm really trying to take my time and do what feels right. (about the next step in her music career) ~ Jennifer Lopez

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else. ~ Barry McGuire

Life is beautiful, and terrible, and strange. ~ Johnette Napolitano

I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money. ~ Nat King Cole

It takes a lot of people hours to make music because they focus so much on one thing. I just do it, and I make something you can just vibe to. ~ Fetty Wap

I look in music magazines now and see things on Luther Allison, and my name's getting out there more, thanks to all the good people at Alligator Records and at my management company. ~ Luther Allison

I've never met someone who died.I mean someone who could actually talk to me about it.Was it all bright lights and Mormon Tabernacle Choir music?" She smiled in spite of her fear.She'd used this tactic before with victims in their first stages of shock to calm them down until help could get there."Well,I can't really be sure but I think I remember hearing Queen's 'Another One Bites The Dust',"she quipped.He snorted."Well, at least it wasn't ACDC's 'Highway to Hell'. ~ Terri Reid

Recipes are not assembly manuals. Recipes are guides and suggestions for a process that is infinitely nuanced. Recipes are sheet music. ~ Michael Ruhlman

I think one of the most wonderful things we can do as performers is to remind audiences that they can still relate to the emotions and feelings, as though the music had been written yesterday. ~ David Finckel

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone. ~ Steve Earle

I think Taylor Swift is a really good artist. I feel like her personality shines through everything she does, her music, her fashion, her style. She won Album of the Year, and she's a really good writer. I'm a song writer so I respect artists who write their own songs. She won Album of the Year when she was 18 or something like that so, I think she's dope. ~ Mike Posner

I have got other interests than just making music. I would like to follow those interests through. ~ George Michael

Of course, music is still a passion for me, and my new sort of career doing radio is also a passion, but definitely to be able to put a smile on someone's face. Or just waking up every day, trying to figure out how I can change a person's life for the better. ~ Raheem Devaughn

I'm releasing a single. It's called 'Live it Up.' It was based on my Euro trip. I only write my own music. I don't let other people write it at all. So I've been working on that a lot. There's three singles coming out. The producer of The Fray who did their double-platinum album 'How to Save a Life,' I'm working with him. He's producing me. ~ Alexander Ludwig

Yes; Jimmy Mundy!' she said. 'I am surprised at a man of your stamp having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they would have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message. He has come to save New York from itself; to force it - in his picturesque phrase - to hit the trail. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

There was a naive quality in 1982 around technology and the start of video games. And that's like the start of electronic music - there was this statement and, ideologically, these things to fight for. ~ Thomas Bangalter

I need to be able to play the music, and so I don't like to have intimidation be part of it. ~ Hilary Hahn

Once again, when you upgrade sensations from an addiction to a preference, you can enjoy things such as gourmet food and music, without having your happiness depend on them. ~ Ken Keyes Jr.

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto
or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers
show me yours
show me that it is possible
show me your achievement
and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. ~ Ayn Rand

You know, traditional country music is something that's going to be around forever. ~ George Strait

It's important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country. ~ Amelia Boynton Robinson

And the stars look very different today. ~ David Bowie

I come from a family of domestics. I think most African-Americans of my age do. They were trusted by their bosses. I have met so many white people that spent more time with their nannies than they have with their own parents. ~ Lee Daniels

We are in a position, as musicians, to touch the souls of those who listen. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Write about an empty birdcage"

Write about an empty birdcage. As in: write about your ribcage after
robbery. Use negative space to wind a song from the place on the
dresser where a music box isn't. Write about the corners where the two
of you used to meet. Draw the intersections, arrow to the sidewalk
where her shoes aren't near yours. Write about

an empty birdcage. As in: write about a hinged-open
jaw that is neither sigh nor scream. Use this to signify
EXIT. Make sure to describe the teeth, the glint of
metal deep down in the molars, the smell of breath after lack of
water. Make sure to draw this mouth a thirsty and human portrait of
what it means to be used up. Write about voice by writing

about how it feels when it's painful to swallow. If you must put noise
in the scene
make it the sound of bird wings flapping in a cardboard box. Show us
an empty cage and give us the sound of confinement. Take hope and fold
it small as seed, then suck on it. Slow and selfish. Write about an
empty birdcage. Birdcage can read: building, structure, abandoned or
adorned. As in:

loop and tighten a vine of nostalgia around the room
you currently brick yourself into. Recreate the sweet of jasmine, but
mortar the door so it will not seep through. Write about an empty
birdcage. Replay us the scene. As in: she presses her pale cheek
against the window, as he t ~ Elaina M. Ellis

There's so many different ways humans have used music to express the spiritual part of our nature and to connect us with the divine. So for me the pathway is through music. ~ Joan Osborne

I know my style of music is very eclectic. ~ Corbin Bleu

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away. ~ Chris Cornell

We're all affected by music. It has the power to inspire, uplift us, change our moods, and even alter consciousness. ~ Andrew Weil

They always want to sell me as a hard bopper. ~ Freddie Hubbard

Edible. But I still hated the shows and hated myself for hating them. The clubs were smoky, which hurt my eyes and made my clothes stink. The speakers were always turned up so high that the music blared, causing my ears to ring so ~ Gayle Forman

The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations. ~ Eric Hoffer

I'm not like my siblings, who are musical but can turn their hands to other professions! I'd always wanted to be involved in music - I'm a great believer in doing things that fulfil you. ~ Laura Mvula

There's a lot of creative music happening in the underground, which is a very hopeful kind of sign....[These initiators are] usually kind of outcasts--for the most part no one can relate to them. And it's all over the planet; you go and look in the alleys and under the doorways, in the coal mines--they're there, lurking in the
shadows; a significant amount of people in different parts of the planet who are genuinely creative. And I associate and attach myself to that. Usually when I go to any new place I try to find out from the musicians--they'll usually say 'this guy can't play,' or 'he's crazy,' 'he's not doing anything,' 'he's a sick, warped, demented
fool'--and immediately I try to find him. He's probably one of us. ~ Anthony Braxton

It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest that he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states. ~ Martin Luther King III

The artists are the most powerful ones, the creators, first are the painters, working without words, second are the music composers, and third are the writers. ~ Robert Black

She played a great deal better than either of the Miss Musgroves; but having no voice, no knowledge of the harp, and no fond parents to sit by and fancy themselves delighted, her performance was little thought of, only out of civility, or to refresh the others, as she was well aware. She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation: excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, know the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste. In music she had been always used to feel alone in the world; and Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove's fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total indifference to any other person's, gave her much more pleasure for their sakes, than mortification for her own. ~ Jane Austen

My life was over, finished, and I'd never seen Pearl Jam play live ~ Kristen Ashley

The heart that feels music will feel people ~ Shinichi Suzuki

Dan: Thats what I love about music.
Gretta: What?
Dan: One of the most banal scenes
is suddenly invested...
with so much meaning.
All these banalities.
Theyre suddenly turned into these...
these beautiful, effervescent pearls.
From music. ~ Begin Again

The people need to feel the music. ~ Ronnie Spector

I don't need music for the good times. I don't have that kind of need. Music doesn't serve me like that. ~ Henry Rollins

Math and music are intimately related. Not necessarily on a conscious level, but sure. ~ Stephen Sondheim