Mahershala Ali Quotes

I think that Atlanta has this huge well of black culture and openness to share all the things that we have made there.

As long as black people preserve their culture in Harlem, Harlem will always be alive.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.

Black culture has been a huge influence in my life.

I had seen the photographs of Harlem in its glory days, stylish men in bespoke suits, women so well dressed that they'd put the models in 'Vogue' to shame. I knew that Harlemites loved to dance, to pray, and to eat.

I celebrate my blackness. I love the artistic vibrancy of the culture I was born to.

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.

So I feel now very much like a guardian. I'm standing in front of art. I'm standing in front of cinema. I'm standing in front of Black culture. I'm standing in front of the history of America, and I'm protecting it by making art, by protecting our art, and by promoting our art.

I was a kid who liked art and theater and dance and music, but if you lived in Harlem, high culture was somewhere else, and it wasn't black.

The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form-an ancient art form-that takes in the mythology of our people.

From politics and business to music and food to culture, African-Americans have helped to shape our state's colourful past and its future.

I think that hip-hop should be spelled with a capital "H," and as one word. It's the name of our black people culture, and it's the name of our identity and consciousness. I think hip-hop is not a product, but a culture. I think rap is a product, but when hip-hop becomes a product, that's slavery, because you're talking about people's souls. To me, that's the biggest problem.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

African Americans are one of the oldest ethnic groups in this country. We been here since the beginning. Before the beginning.

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature and help to shape our identity. The arts are not a frill and should not be treated as such.

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

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

The power of Haitian heritage and the strength of the Haitian people is tremendous. And Haiti holds a unique and rich role in the history of African Americans.

Silence marks time, saturates and shapes African-American art. Silences structure our music, fill the spaces - point, counterpoint - of rhythm, cadence, phrasing.

Harlem for me is Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C., in one place. You have very significant churches that have had national ramifications. At the same time, you have politics. On top of all that, you have entertainment because you have 70 years of music that came out of here, and if you scratch that, gangsterism happens.

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.

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.

The arts are so important not only to society but to ourselves as human beings. It keeps in touch with our own humanity. So access to the arts in any way, shape, or form is vital.