Donald Byrd Quotes

Art is a form of experience of the person, the place, the history of the people, and as black people, we are different. We hail from Africa to America, so the culture is mixed, from the African to the American. We can't drop that. It's reflected in the music, the dance, the poetry, and the art.

I can't remember a picture that has expressed black attitudes and personal relationships as vividly as we've done in 'Cadence.'

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.

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.

One of the reasons I paint black people is because I am a black person.

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.

There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.

Most of the more celebrated names among African-American authors, poets, and artists are known to the world because of their association with specific cultural arts movements.

In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.

American music culture is black culture.

If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

I think you learn a lot about a country from its art. To me, it's part of the drama of life. It teaches you that there are places, moments and incidents in other cultures that genuinely have a life of their own.

It's an incredible dilemma to be an artist of color and to always be in denial about that, saying, 'I'm a choreographer first and then I'm black,' when in fact, that's not the case. I'm black first and then I'm also a choreographer.

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

The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.

My particular lifetime, my individual profile, represents something very basic to African-American history and culture because I was a second generation immigrant, so to speak, from the South. My grandfather was born in South Carolina - well, both grandfathers were born in the South.

What basketball expresses is what jazz expresses. Certain cultural predispositions to make art. All African-American art has a substratum, or baseline, of improvisation and spontaneity. You find that in both basketball and jazz.

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

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.

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

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.

Tupac has always been somebody who represented a higher consciousness of what it means on both sides of the coin to be black in America. He and Prince were leaders who moved to the beat of their own drum, and I can only hope to follow in their footsteps.