A. R. Rahman Quotes

I go stay a week in these little towns that don't have an art outlet and... go to the schools and play some of the old Texas music, sort of 'go through the Texas country roots' is what they call it.

I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.

The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.

Anybody who thinks the lute just came out of a vacuum doesn't know the history.

Traditional musical forms like 'Parai Isai' and 'Villupattu' are unique, and they need to be protected and nurtured.

People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.

We should train kids in the music and dance of our legends. That's how we can keep the traditions alive.

For me as a person who's in the arts and as someone who understands the magnitude of our contributions and the price that was paid to contribute to that, that we just have not gotten that together. I will do all that I can to get in front of our kids, to try to teach them, but at a certain point the people have to want it and come towards it.

Alan Lomax is the person who I think should be given major credit for what has been called the "Folk Song Revival." My father participated with him because my father was a musicologist and urged trained musicians to learn about "the vernacular."

Celtic music is part of the language in Scotland and Ireland, where every kid and grandparent knows those songs, music by the likes of Woody Guthrie and Hank Snow is getting entrenched here. They are part of our cultural language. It's part of a living treasure. It doesn't just belong to a museum.

No nation can survive without passing its heritage, language and, yes, faith to the next generation. A country must be built on something substantial and if the cultural elitists think it can be built on 'diversity,' that is a foundation of shifting sand.

These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well......I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more.

It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors.

Poetry is a serious business; literature is the apparatus through which the world tries to keep intact its important ideas and feelings.

Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.

We can teach about hip-hop history, we can teach about legends, hip-hop theory. It's been around so long that text books can be written about it. This is a perfect time to capitalize on and get kids excited about music education.

A lot of kids bought guitars and started playing rock'n'roll because of us.

I carry two traditional pipes and I sing my songs and pray that us as human beings treat each other with respect. So when it came to trying to portray a connection on screen, that's what you see.

I feel very positive about Newark's future, but I know we need a lot of help. I think that starts with the education of our kids and making the streets safer.

More and more, I see myself as a folk musician, and someone who values context.

What we're losing culturally the fastest, aside from natural resources and oil and the idea of democracy and social justice, is the ability to concentrate.

I got an amazing 10-CD set, it's the music that Alan Lomax recorded in Haiti in 1936. And what's incredible is how fantastic the drummers are and how off-the-grid they are. The liveliness is astonishing; they're just totally alive, these recordings. It's very interesting, to me, to be reminded of that, that there was a time when things were not that tight.

I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper.

I don't think the American government has a lot of respect for culture.

I think that's really important, that kids get exposed to music as soon as they can - not necessarily to become musicians, but at least have an outlet. It's an art form that's easily accessible to young ears.