August Wilson Quotes

American music culture is black culture.

The music [of America] must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies …. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are American.

All black art is always judged to illuminate our experience and prove that our stories and our history and our lives matter. And that goes back to Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston - take your pick.

As a child, I experienced black culture as many people did in America: on the TV, radio, and stages.

There is a distinctive African American culture that has roots in Africa and evolved on American soil.

Growing up as a product of the black civil-rights movement, I had a lot of different models for black weirdness, whether it's Richard Pryor or James Baldwin or Jimmy Walker.

I viewed black musicals before 'Jelly' as a form of cultural strip mining. The exterior remained, but all the culture that signified where the people had come from and their connection to the earth was absent.

Slaves and the descendants of slaves created world pop culture. Let's keep it real and be very respectful about that.

Black people have always loved the blues - they basically created the blues.

Black culture - we dance and sing. We're entertainers. James Brown said it best: the things we are make people want to be like us.

Harlem's streets lead backward, into history, straight to a work such as 'This Was Harlem.'

As Africans Americans we often think about the tragic stories associated with our lineage, but there are a lot of triumphs. Traveling helps you learn about other aspects of our history, like the story of Christ the Redeemer. It's empowering and inspiring.

You've got to appreciate the things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down.

My mother introduced me to more academic-minded writers, Cornel West and Skip Gates. In her library, I came across, when I was very young, Harold Cruse's 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,' which is like a bible of Negro intellectuals from Frederick Douglass to Amiri Baraka.

I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.

My work sometimes can be abstract and appear not to have a direct relationship to Afro-American concerns, but, in fact, it is based on that.

I don't think I'm really so unique. If every black person looked at their life they would quickly discover that they have been influenced by every type of music prevalent in America.

So when you enjoy the beats, the rock music - maybe even toned down with an orchestra - you are enjoying the spirit of the black race. And that's what I emphasize to the students.

As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs.

Jazz came to America three hundred years ago in chains.

Blacks in America want to forget about slavery - the stigma, the shame. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, and that is the blues.

I wanted to explore black culture, and I wanted that culture to be a revelation.

You have Vampire Weekend who have more African references musically than most African-American artists.

My biggest inspiration is black America and what they've done in the arts. I have always felt like an outsider in America, and what black Americans have done to add their chapter to this book called the American dream, and to be so unapologetic and true, and have added so much to art and culture in the world.

I think I was drawn to black culture by the same things that have been drawing the entire world to it since the days of Richard Wright, Josephine Baker and Louis Armstrong. This culture is original, potent and seductive.