Yasmine Hamdan Quotes

There's a misconception in my opinion... and it's that we Latinos have to go do an American album, an English album, an Anglo production, to cross over.

And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries, now it has changed to developing countries, it's much more polite.

In America, they don't need to look outside their country for anything, so they definitely don't need to look elsewhere for rappers with weird accents that they have to get accustomed to, which is like homework to them.

I don't try to just be a blues singer - I try to be an entertainer. That has kept me going.

When I was a girl, there wasn't anything in Spanish in the movies until you saw it on DVD.

The basic principle I have is that what is most Korean is what is the most international. I don't want to come here and act like I'm an American. I want to showcase the dynamic potential Korea has, and I want to prove that as an artist.

I hope the English-speaking world can see that I'm not only an Israeli actress.

I think it is a mistake to identify a movie according to its language, as if movies were literature.

I feel as if I can take Indian stories, make them mine and take them to the world.

One of the biggest problems is - you know, I've got some Hispanic friends - is that a lot of those folks that don't know English, is primarily because they don't even know Spanish. They don't even know their own language.

I am consciously not trying to bring in World Music elements. The ways that I work and feel are completely different in how they sound than someone playing the Kora in Africa would play it.

It's not easy for Chinese actors to do foreign films, and it's not easy for foreign actors to do Chinese films.

In America, music is more tightly categorized.

All over the world, the idea of creating an melange of international musics, it's a very healthy thing.

I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me.

The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.

It's so funny how it's impossible for an American actor to play an English part or an Australian part. But by all means, come and bastardize our accent as much as you want.

If I have to pretend to be anything else than French, then I know it's work for me. It's not that it scares me, but it's work. I cannot just pop up on the set and say 'Okay, today I'm Italian!'

We talk too much of black art when we should be talking about art, just art. Black composers must be free to write rondos and fugues, not only protest songs.

In my opinion, some of the hip-hop records that come out, people are willing to compromise. I'm not.

I talked with labels and they wouldn't help with my international career. They said, 'Saara, if you're in Finland you just have to sing in Finnish.' That led to this situation where I felt very lonely. I was really sad and still I was doing gigs all the time. I'd go onstage crying but I was still trying to sing.

That, to me, is the real crossover: a mainstream artist singing in Spanish.