Ludwig Goransson Quotes

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

When I was in south Sudan, people used to rap in my village. But the rapping was more in the mother tongue, Nuer.

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.

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.

There was always music in our home. My mom and my dad loved music. I remember when we were kids we would have these great parties at the house with congas and bongos and African drums, and it was amazing. It wasn't until years later that I found out that they were actually Black Panther meetings.

My name, Solange, means 'Angel of the sun,' and I'm completely enamored of my African history. The culture is so expressive.

I studied the Ghanaian drums and bongo drumming.

I was drawn to West Africa. I did listen to a bunch of different styles of African music, and there was something about the percussion and the drums of West Africa, and the energy, that felt so cinematic to me.

I'm playing deep African music.

I think hip hop allows us to talk about everything, and Africa is what I choose to talk about now. If people are not talking about Africa, that's them, that's cool, there's nothing wrong with that. But this is who I am, this is what I have to say, this is what I have to offer.

Strike up the drum and march courageously.

If you make a suggestion and [musicians] don't know what you mean, you have to be able to do it yourself. I often sit down on drums and show 'em just exactly what I want. And I do it and then say, "How do you do that?" It's because I know how it looks, I know what I want to hear, and I don't drop or rush any tempo. It ain't in my body, it ain't in my nephew's body.

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

I don't want to work, I want to bang on the drum all day.

When you do an album about Africa, you can't be too superficial.

You cannot sing African music in proper English

I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come to America.

The music of Africa is big sound: it's the sound of a community

I think of language as our first music.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Music is a kind of harmonious language.

Meow is like aloha - it can mean anything.

What I think is going on is that probably language was entertainment long before it was meaning. It's a kind of tuneless singing.

Storytelling is the game. It's what we all do.

Our language is the reflection of ourselves.