West African Quotes

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

In West African and Caribbean folklores the role falls to Anansi, a spider who sometimes imparts knowledge or wisdom - and sometimes casts doubt or seeds confusion. Eshu, ~ Gabriella Coleman

The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school. ~ John McWhorter

Thom pulled nervously at his 'Kings' t-shirt. The Kings are a brutal West African gang that he follows onscreen. Such 'tourist shows', as I understand they are called, have become wildly popular in recent years, as global unrest makes actual travel less popular.

Armoured imaging teams, using tiny remote drone cameras known as 'flies', take the viewer inside the violent, gang-controlled regions of Nigeria and Cameroon. Using a touch screen, viewers (or 'zoners' as they are sometimes called) can follow the action from multiple angles while cheering on their favourite gang. ~ Paul Christensen

Few rappers realize the genre sprang from West African griots through Delta slave songs to jazz poetry and the comedic trash talk of 'the dozens.' ~ Quincy Jones

It was said that in the markets to the south of Taghaza salt was exchanged for its weight in gold, which was an exaggeration. The misconception comes from the West African style of silent barter noted by Herodotus and subsequently by many other Europeans. In the gold-producing regions of West Africa, a pile of gold would be set out, and a salt merchant would counter with a pile of salt, each side altering their piles until an agreement was reached. No words were exchanged during this process, which might take days. The salt merchants often arrived at night to adjust their piles and leave unseen. They were extremely secretive, not wanting to reveal the location of their deposits. From this it was reported in Europe that salt was exchanged in Africa for its weight in gold. But it is probable that the final agreed-upon two piles were never of equal weight. ~ Mark Kurlansky

My mum translated this in her head to "witchfinder," which was good because like most West Africans, she considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness. ~ Maya Angelou

When we rise in the morning ... at the table we drink coffee which is provided to us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African; before we leave for our jobs we are already beholden to more than half the world. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones. ~ Taiye Selasi

I never experimented with the hoddu like I wanted to do. Like on the song "Allah Addu," the hoddu and the voice is something that belongs to West African culture. When you go to the north of Mali, in the past it was just the singer and one instrument player. We never really did have that on our CDs. On some other songs, like "Laare Yoo," we have a whole section of hoddu, something like four of them playing together. ~ Baaba Maal

The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn't set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Everything is arranged," John Robertson told me.

Thank God."

I forgot to mention that we appear to have one small problem," he said.

Okay..."

Evidently it seems Winston Holder has already left this morning to the border and Gbarnga. He took a journalist in."

A journalist? Who?"

I don't know who. They thought it must be you."

But it wasn't me. I'm me," I said, though from the first hour in this country I'd begun to doubt it.

I have Lincoln Smythe's address. He'll put us right. Everything will be arranged promptly, and we'll work out your itinerary."

I thought everything was arranged," I said.

By the bare bulb hung above our straw beds I saw, far back in John Robertson's eyes, the eternal West African question: What is this guy going on about?

Naturally," he said, "but we just have to work out your itinerary."

Everything is arranged doesn't mean you should expect to get anywhere or accomplish anything. In fact, for sanity's sake, those two ideas have to be banished: the idea of getting somewhere and the idea of accomplishing something. Everything is arranged means that all is complete, the great plan of the universe is unfolding before our eyes. So eat, drink, sleep. Everything is arranged. ~ Denis Johnson

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

I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English. ~ William Golding

In the spring of 1931, West African natives in the Cameroons sent New York $3.77 for relief for the "starving"; that fall Amtorgs's new York office received 100,000 applications for job in Soviet Russia. On a single weekend in April, 1932, the 'Ile de france' and other transatlantic liner carried nearly 4,000 workingmen back to Europe; in June, 500 Rhode Island aliens departed for Mediterranean ports. ~ William E. Leuchtenburg

Nigeria is a West African nation of over 100 million energetic people. It is endowed with lots of natural resources but lacks human resources. ~ Philip Emeagwali

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom! ~ Christian Scott

According to a study conducted by the Oxford African American Studies Center, hip hop is part of and speaks to a long line of black American and African traditions. Many observers also make a connection between rap and West African griot tradition, the art of wandering storytellers known for their knowledge of local settings and their superior vocal skills. ~ Carlos Wallace

When I started at Freedman's, during orientation, a speaker who was an alumna and board member talked of sitting in economics class next to a shy young man with a thick West African accent. They struck up a friendship, she said, pausing to wink and nod, which I took as an insinuation of a more intimate relationship. The woman ended the story with his name, and I recognized it as the name of the warlord-turned-dictator-for-life of a small African republic. We were supposed to be impressed by the prominence of our alums, and at the same time we were encouraged to wonder what sort of world-shaker sat beside us. One day the dictator will be overthrown and executed or tried in The Hague for crimes against humanity. ~ Rion Amilcar Scott

My mum is West African, from Senegal; my dad is from Grenada. There was a huge controversy about them getting together. ~ Estelle

We black Southerners, through life, love, and labor, are the generators and architects of American music, narrative, language, capital, and morality. That belongs to us. Take away all those stolen West African girls and boys forced to find an oral culture to express, resist, and signify in the South, and we have no rich American idiom. ~ Kiese Laymon

British physician, West African Countries and Peoples Man's place is higher than the sky. Respect for man is the underlying spirit of civilization. ~ Muhammad Iqbal

In West African traditions, land belongs to the person who works it. Produce belongs to the person who grows it. Whatever is created belongs to the creators - not to the God that created them, and certainly not to the colonist or slavemaster. ~ Israel Morrow

Ishmael Beah was born and spent his childhood in Sierra Leone as that sad but beautiful West African country was ravaged by a civil war that left some 50,000 dead between 1991 and 2002. He was a child soldier for a while, then, through extraordinary circumstances, was set free of that life. ~ Carolyn See

I'll never forget the magic of our Saturday nights. Special moments carved in my mind by you the sculptor of my love. Let's dance the night away. Who needs music, when your heart already sings to me. ~ ~ Fidelis O Mkparu (2016), Author Of ‘Love’s Affliction’

a butterfly in a West African rain forest, by flitting to the left of a tree rather than to the right, possibly set into motion a chain of events that escalates into a hurricane striking coastal South Carolina a few weeks later? ~ Erik Larson

The industrial powerhouse of 1950 [Detroit] is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket-cases. ~ Mark Steyn

[To James Laughlin] It was pleasant to learn that you expected our correspondence to be read in the international salons and boudoirs of the future. Do you think they will be able to distinguish between the obfuscations, mystification, efforts at humor, and plain statement of fact? Will they recognize my primary feelings as a correspondent - the catacomb from which I write to you, seeking to secure some word from the real world, or at least news of the Far West - and sigh with compassion? Or will they just think I am nasty, an over-eager clown, gauche, awkward and bookish? Will they understand that I am always direct, open, friendly, simple and candid to the point of naïveté until the ways of the fiendish world infuriate me and I am poked to be devious, suspicious, calculating, not that it does me any good anyway? And for that matter, what will they make of your complex character? ~ Delmore Schwartz

Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence ~ Unknown

I certainly want to be involved in politics and help shape the transition. I am in contact with regime critics who had to leave for the West. One of them is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former businessman, who had to endure 10 years in a prison camp. ~ Garry Kasparov

In 1957, 'West Side Story' had introduced the musical to the reckless dark side of teen-age life; 'Bye Bye Birdie,' set in Sweet Apple, Ohio, where the citizens apparently dress mostly in chartreuse, mauve, orange, periwinkle, and turquoise, was a walk on the bright side. ~ John Lahr

China is, indeed, in so many ways, not like the West. It is not even primarily a nation state but a civilisation state. Whereas the West has primarily been shaped by its experience of nation, China has been moulded by its sense of civilisation. ~ Martin Jacques

Unfortunately there was one thing that the white South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, and incompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

My first novel, 'Leaving Atlanta,' took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead. ~ Tayari Jones

Don't look up at the mountain. Keep your head down, and take the next step. ~ Peter James West

Movement means freedom. That's what life's all about. ~ Collette West

Hope you two boys can dig. There'll be some digging to do." "Graves?" Eddie asked, not sure if he was joking or not. "Graves come later." Roland looked up at the sky, but the clouds had advanced out of the west and stolen the stars. "Just remember, it's the winners who dig them. ~ Stephen King

Images of people in the Middle East dressing like Westerners, spending like Westerners, that is what the voters watching TV here at home want to see. That is a visible sign that we really are winning the war of ideas - the struggle between consumption and economic growth, and religious tradition and economic stagnation.

I thought, why are those children coming onto the streets more and more often? It's not anything we have done, is it? It's not any speeches we have made, or countries we have invaded, or new constitutions we have written, or sweets we have handed out to children, or football matches between soldiers and the locals. It's because they, too, watch TV.

They watch TV and see how we live here in the West.

They see children their own age driving sports cars. They see teenagers like them, instead of living in monastic frustration until someone arranges their marriages, going out with lots of different girls, or boys. They see them in bed with lots of different girls and boys. They watch them in noisy bars, bottles of lager upended over their mouths, getting happy, enjoying the privilege of getting drunk. They watch them roaring out support or abuse at football matches. They see them getting on and off planes, flying from here to there without restriction and without fear, going on endless holidays, shopping, lying in the sun. Especially, they see them shopping: buying clothes and PlayStations, buying iPods, video phones, laptops, watch ~ Paul Torday

The Portrait of a Lady is entirely successful in giving one the sense of having met somebody far too radiantly good for this world. ~ Rebecca West

Maybe there are some traditional things, but they are more about the way the West packages the East. ~ Massimiliano Gioni

Housing programs designed to help young families and senior citizens purchase homes should be available to people of all races, including African Americans. ~ Loretta Lynch

Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double. ~ Chaka Fattah

Vashon is an island, accessible by ferry from Seattle, mainly populated by NIMBY-ish hippies, NIMBY-ish yuppies, boutique farmers, and wizards riding recumbent bicycles. A full quarter of the children in Vashon schools are unvaccinated. ~ Lindy West

Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. ~ African Proverb

For the last 40 years of my life I have broken my back, my fingernails, and sometimes my heart, in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation. ~ Vita Sackville-West

I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me. ~ Kwame Nkrumah

I think it looks hot," Duke says. "But that's just coming from the guy who hopes to play another role in your rebellion. ~ Kasie West

I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

You watch people and study them the way an alien would. ~ Billy West

We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed. ~ Cornel West

Being black has a lot to do with my ... ~ Willi Smith

Entering the foyer, Royale already decided that he would thank Shake once more for being by his side at Keena's recital. But she stunned him by eagerly waiting for him just like old times - on her knees wearing only a collar and a leash. ~ S.B. Redd

I can actually trace the moment I decided I couldn't be a doctor. It was in biology, they brought in these African crickets and we were supposed to dissect them - but there's no way I was touching those bugs. ~ Meg Rosoff

That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires. ~ Rush Limbaugh

Even if Zuma was to develop the authoritarian impulses of a Mugabe, he would be checked - not least by his own party, which set a continental precedent by ousting Thabo Mbeki in 2007, after it felt he had outstayed his welcome by seeking a third term as party president. The ANC appears to have set itself against that deathtrap of African democracy: the ruler for life. ~ Mark Gevisser

The West should be even more vocal in insisting that the Russians respect human rights. ~ Vladimir Sorokin

For isn't it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime? ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Gospel music rhythms are not African in origin, although I know that's what the jazz experts say. ~ Mahalia Jackson