Dexter Gordon Quotes

I'm playing deep African music.

What's really good is African drum music.

White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.

Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.

The African people and tribal chiefs are hospitable, and African music and dances are invigorating.

I first heard African drum rhythms and chants at the movies. Then, when I had the opportunity to go to Africa and visit the villages, I heard the real, raw, true rhythms and realised the origins of the old Negro spirituals I grew up with in the South.

I'm a big fan of cultural music, and that's how I try to expand my playing, by listening to music that is not conventionally American.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I'd listen to Italian music.

I studied the Ghanaian drums and bongo drumming.

African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West.

When you have caught the rhythm of Africa, you find out that it is the same in all her music.

My CD collection has a lot of world music - lots of Indian, African, Portuguese, Greek, Italian music. Because of my husband, a lot of jazz, too.

My first memories of music were country music and Ronnie Milsap. Where I grew up, it was what you listened to. And anything else, you were somewhat out of place.

I don't have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.

You can see it on the Internet: There's an argument going on continually about, 'What is folk music?' And I don't really want to get involved in that. It's an endless argument, a 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' kind of argument.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

I grew up in a house full of music. Everything from reggae and afro-beat to Zook and pop.

What I'm trying to do, in my own small way, is trying to bring African and Afro-Cuban rhythms into rock.

I mean, the genuine roots of culture is folk music.

Folk music is a bunch of fat people.

There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics.

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

I was a big fan of Middle Eastern elements of music and experimental electronic and tribal sounds.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

Listening to the type of music I grew up with, like King Sunny Ade, Fela Kuti and experiencing different things and conditions and hardship, as well as the good times in Nigeria, has definitely carved me into who I am.