Santigold Quotes

It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.

People misinterpret my emotions towards Nirvana because I've said things about how something happened with grunge that took a little bit of fun out of things. It's no offense to Nirvana; they were one of the greats, obviously. But something died there, too, and we haven't quite gotten the groove back.

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

Not long ago, a hat was a conformist accessory. Then the 1960s came along, and young people didn't want to wear hats.

Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.

There's no single movement out there. It's not like in the '60s, when Revolver came out and that's just it for the next year.

From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.

So many big magazines just dissed the whole punk thing as nothing, but really, it was a big thing. It really changed, and that's what we wanted to do - change the system.

Cultural change always precedes political change.

When I was young in the 1960s, all the world watched the youth. Everywhere was the sensation of wanting to break the chains but to do something beautiful. It is my privilege to have beauty always near me.

Anyway, you know, when Richard Meltzer said rock and roll died in '68, what he means is Jefferson Airplane were no longer his buddies, that's what he really means. He means it in a political way: that was when the artists and the audience found themselves on different levels.

People are always asking me about the '60s, like I should be some sort of expert. It's like being in the middle of a hurricane, you can't describe it till it's over. Creativity was allowed to blossom, we were all allowed this marvelous freedom, there was money to do things.

PnB is like a movement, a whole movement is going on.

The '90s were indeed a great time to be alive. There was a sense of optimism that I never felt before that decade and I haven't felt since.

When fashion turns over it brings in little tiny creaks and cracks. This is the fascination and that is where you have to watch every step.

I think there's some great stuff coming. I do feel that. I think we have reached our Harlem Renaissance.

What I was talking about was, of course, very autobiographical - '68 was the moment when all the young people were incredibly excited, because when we were going to sleep, we knew we would wake up not tomorrow, but in the future. There was a sense of future that was the result of the mixture of politics, cinema, music, the first joints. And the movies were a very important part of that cocktail.

When politics is too slow, change has to come from culture.

What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.

I'm guessing that musicals didn't make sense anymore because of the changes in the political environment that began in the late Sixties, an era of self-awareness and social revolutions.

If I have called Cubism a new order, it is without any revolutionary ideas or any reactionary ideas... One cannot escape from one's own epoch, however revolutionary one may be.

In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse.

A movement election is a different type of election. It's an election where the people start moving into a direction because they think the country is failing or going down the tubes or the establishment has failed them.

There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square.

Often I'll do research just to get a time period correct, but I didn't have to for the '70s... I feel like I can close my eyes and still see it so clearly.