Taj Mahal Quotes

The blues is the foundation for a lot of things. Things have branched off. It's cool how music grows, but the foundation is always there. It's not going anywhere. The blues is always going to be relevant.

It's a wonderful thing to be able to see your music going from generation to generation.

I love traditional music. But in any culture around the world, there is the historic and cultural music and everything that's been passed down and passed down, and hopefully you take that, and then you take it, you know, the next distance, and then somebody else takes it the next distance.

Music's cyclical. There's always that next generation that always comes along.

We are so indebted to our ancestors, musically speaking, that they have left us 400 years of music.

I was raised on the Southside of Chicago, and my whole family was musically-inclined.

New music is absolutely integral to classical music.

Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.

If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

I'm very much a traditionalist, but I think it's important to know about tradition so that you can evolve the music you are deciding to make.

When I first heard the minstrel banjo - I played a gourd first - I almost lost my mind. I was like, Oh, my god. And then I went to Africa, to the Gambia, and studied the akonting, which is an ancestor of the banjo, and just that connection to me was just immense.

I have a very musical family from my Scottish roots.

Generational change within a genre is hard to parse while it's happening. Only in retrospect can the passing of the baton from ancestors to progeny be clearly discerned.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

I was born out of classical music.

My African heritage is a part of reggae music roots, and the concept is that the album, 'Revelation Part 1: The Root of Life' is a tribute to roots reggae music. The fruit is what blossoms into different colors and shades, but the root has to stand predominant.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

I've always been interested in any kind of great music, and African music is, I think, the source of it all.

I felt I had an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of great soul musicians of the past, who made a lot of social and political commentary through their music.

I didn't want to go out and change anything. I just wanted to make the music that was part of my background, which was rock and blues and hip-hop.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

I listen to many forms of music. And I come from a very particular style and tradition of music, which has certain elements that are absolutely unique and, therefore, important to the world.

Presenting the American songbook as a living, breathing entity that's expanding all the time is very important.

When you do something in music and see it happen again in the next generation, you know you're on the right wave length.