Cornel West Quotes

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

Blues was made for the recessed.

I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

Soul music is pain - you can hear the slaves, the beatin' and the hurtin'.

Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith sinking Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand.

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 think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.

If nothing else, we grew up loving the old blues artists and Ray Charles.

Michael Jackson National African American Art Examiner Series

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.

Though I'd always known in an intellectual way that rock and roll was a 'black' form - the way I know that English breakfast tea is Indian - I had never felt this truth.

I mean, rock 'n' roll is based on the blues, whether people want to know that or not.

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

I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.

I am now satisfied that the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called negro melodies. This must be the real foundation of any serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States.

You have to understand being an actress, and being an African American actress of a certain hue, I think that you have to be bold with your choices. Even when you're not bold with your choices, have people see it as bold.

I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at a black America as something that not only can be mined in a very sort of cynical, cold way, but also embraced in a very personal, love-driven way; but also sort of critiqued.

Coming up in the African-American culture, we were taught that we belonged to the universe and society was wrong in the way it dealt with us. We had to learn to express and affirm values not from the winning position.

I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.

I think blues music is music of the soul. Of course, there are other forms. You could call some classical music blues music in that way.

Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it.

I think that we've got to come to see this. The Negro is an American.

I find that people today tend to use them interchangeably. I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.