African American Music Quotes

I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me - it resonated.

My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music, eventually I wanted to play an instrument.

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.

Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.

Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.

I think of people like Ray Charles, Otis Redding, and Isaac Hayes. They all came out of the South, and they followed a certain tradition and energy. That's no knock to groups like The Temptations or The Supremes, not at all, but they were way more polished in how they did things.

I grew up in Marcy Projects in Brooklyn, and my mom and pop had an extensive record collection, so Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and all of those sounds and souls of Motown filled the house.

You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz.

We are trying to prove that the blues lives on forever and anybody in this place can sing the blues.

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.

Jazz, and the history of jazz, is the history of America.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

Anybody under the age of forty knows hip-hop, gospel and R&B pretty well, and it's all a part of what we consider to be 'black music.' There is a natural synergy between the three.

You have Vampire Weekend who have more African references musically than most African-American artists.

In 1940 I came across a record by Jimmy Yancey. I can't say how important that record is. From then on, all I wanted to do was play the blues.

We forget that this music, music made by my brothers and sisters, is still a baby. It's just beginning. When I think of the possibilities, it makes me smile.

The music I was really listening to in 1968 was James Brown, the great guitar player Jimi Hendrix, and a new group... Sly and the Family Stone, led by Sly Stewart from San Francisco.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

I was always drawn to gospel music and the roots of African-American music. It's the foundation of rock and roll.

The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits

My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?

When we bemoan the lost golden age of music, it's worth remembering that mainstream radio listeners of the '60s and '70s, particularly in Canada, missed out on an outpouring of brilliant R&B music.

Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. ... This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.