Black Musician Quotes & Sayings

It's not as important what a woman is as what she's becoming — Linda Dillow

This didn't sound good. It sounded like the optimism was escaping from him. — S.A. Tawks

I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men. — Eric Clapton

Thought is the toil of the intelligence, revery its voluptuousness. To replace thought with revery is to confound a poison with a food. — Victor Hugo

I have always been a singer, a writer, and a musician, not as a prodigy or as in a trade handed to me by my parents, but because of an inner voice or maybe a command from beyond reality as it is usually defined. — Frank Black

There's a lot about New York that is unique, and there's always a culture and a subculture going on everywhere. — Phil Ramone

I am a black man dedicated to expression; expression of the joy and pride of blackness. I consider myself neither poet, composer, or musician. These are merely tools used by sensitive men to carve out a piece of beauty or truth that they hope may lead to peace and salvation. — Gil Scott-Heron

Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different. — Margaret Atwood

Not to be able to stop thinking is an affliction, but we don't realise this because almost everybody is suffering from it. — Eckhart Tolle

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself. — Mark Twain

I would spend my life on the road logging hundreds of thousands of miles and my story was always the same. . . man comes to town, detonates; man leaves town and drives off into the evening; fade to black. Just the way I like it. — Bruce Springsteen

I hold my time with the Black Crowes with the utmost respect and sincerest appreciation. It is a huge swath of my life's body of work, i couldn't be more proud of what we accomplished and deeply moved by the relationships people created and maintained with my music. That alone is the greatest honor of being a musician. — Rich Robinson

It is best to think of culture as a repertoire, like that of an actor,a musician, or a dancer. This image suggests that culture cultivates skills and habits in its users, so that one can be more or less good at the culture repertoire one performs,and that such cultured capacities may exist both as discrete skills,habits and orientations, and in larger assemblages, like the pieces a musician has mastered or the plays a actor has performed. It is in this sense that people have an array of cultural resources upon which they can draw. We can ask not only what pieces are in the repertoire but why some are performed at one time, some at another. — Karyn Lacy

As a journalist, I never critiqued anyone. I never review books. I've never felt qualified as a musician to say whether someone is a good musician or a bad musician. What happens with Black writers and Black artists is that if you're critiqued, for example, by a Black historian who wants to get his name on the cover of "The New York Times," and he says something, like, wacky, well, he'll get his name on the cover of "The New York Times" and he might get tenure, and your career suffers. — James McBride

Information costs are reduced by the existence of large numbers of buyers and sellers. Under these conditions, prices embody the same information that would require large search costs by individual buyers and sellers in the absence of an organized market. — Douglass North

Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records. — Frank Black

I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician. — Frank Black

It's the same old story. Nothing in this world happens unless white folks says it happens. And therein lies the problem of being a professional black storyteller - writer, musician, filmmaker. — James McBride

That was when they noticed that every musician on the stage was wearing mourning black. That was when they shut up. And when the conductor raised his arms, it was not a symphony that filled the cavernous space.
It was the Song of Eyllwe.
Then Song of Fenharrow. And Melisande. And Terrasen. Each nation that had people in those labour camps.
And finally, not for pomp or triumph, but to mourn what they had become, they played the Song of Adarlan.
When the final note finished, the conductor turned to the crowd, the musicians standing with him. As one, they looked to the boxes, to all those jewels bought with the blood of a continent. And without a word, without a bow or another gesture, they walked off the stage.
The next morning, by royal decree, the theatre was shut down.
No one saw those musicians or their conductor again. — Sarah J. Maas

On one occasion, someone asked a famous American musician, Ben Harper, this question: "We've heard you now have a new drummer in your band. Tell me something: is he black?" And Harper replied: "I don't know, I've never asked him. — Mia Couto

When we come to the place of impossibilities, it is the grandest place for us to see the possibilities of God. — Smith Wigglesworth

Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand. — Charles De Lint

Grigorii spared a single glance in his brother's direction. If looks were daggers, that one would've
sliced straight through the volhv's heart. "Here it comes. 'My oldest son . . .'"
"Is a doctor," Evdokia finished in a singsong voice. "And my daughter is an attorney."
Vasiliy raised his chin. "Jealousy is bad for you. Poisons the heart."
"Aha!" Evdokia slapped the table. "How about your youngest, the musician? How is he doing?"
"Yes, what is Vyacheslav doing lately?" Grigorii asked. "Didn't I see him with a black eye yesterday?
Did he whistle a tree onto himself?"
Oh boy.
Curran opened his mouth. Next to him Jim shook his head. His expression looked suspiciously like
fear.
"He is young," Vasiliy said.
"He is spoiled rotten," Evdokia barked. "He spends all his time trying to kill my cat. One child is a
doctor, the other is an attorney, the third is a serial killer in training. — Ilona Andrews

There's a fierceness about life that calls for a fierceness to not anxiously solve it but to allow it to transform you. — Adyashanti

I wish I were the type who could walk into a place and have everybody love me. But I'm not, and there's no use wishing. — Alan Ladd

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style. — Frank Black

For here lies the corner stone of all the injustices done woman, the wrong idea from which all other wrongs proceed. She is not acknowledged as mistress of herself. For her cradle to her grave she is another's. We do indeed need and demand the other rights of which I have spoken, but let us first obtain OURSELVES. — Ernestine Rose

This is our culture, and I don't care who the musician is, if he avoids black people, then he is scared of something. He doesn't have confidence in himself or else he doesn't believe in what he's doing. — Betty Carter

I'll swap you my dad," I said.
"Oh-oh," said my little sister. — Neil Gaiman