American Music Quotes

• 

  Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspirational, Music, Lonely

  Twitter post from Oct 02, 2015

  126 Copy quote

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• 

  If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

  Louis Armstrong

  Music, Jazz, Asks

  "Jazz Giants of the 20th Century/ Taglines". www.imdb.com. 2007.

  89 Copy quote

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• I'm weird - I don't really listen to American music while I'm writing. I do occasionally get an anthem song, but generally speaking, when I write, I only listen to Japanese and Hawaiian music.

  Violet Duke

  Song, Writing, Anthem

  Source: happyeverafter.usatoday.com

  7 Copy quote

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• It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives it most distinctive characteristics.

  James Weldon Johnson

  Music, May, Characteristics

  James Weldon Johnson “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

  Virgil Thomson

  Writing, Simple, Wish

  Quoted in Machlis Introduction to Contemporary Music (1963).

  20 Copy quote

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• I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.

  Terri Windling

  Music, Native American, Tunes

  3 Copy quote

• The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.

  Stanley Crouch

  Moving, Airplane, Light

  3 Copy quote

• African American music can't happen in Germany or in Italy or in Mumbai. If America disappeared off the face of the Earth today, the greatest single cultural loss would be blues, jazz, hip-hop, R&B, rock-and-roll.

  David Simon

  Loss, Rocks, Rock And Roll

  Source: progressive.org

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• I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.

  William Christopher Handy

  Thinking, America, Sprung

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• The blues are the roots and the other musics are the fruits. It's better keeping the roots alive, because it means better fruits from now on. The blues are the roots of all American music. As long as American music survives, so will the blues.

  Willie Dixon

  Music, Mean, Roots

  55 Copy quote

• Bill Monroe spoke of bringing 'ancient tones' into his music with echoes of British and Irish fiddle and bagpipe music, while also delving deeply into American blues, gospel, folk hymnody, and hill country dance music. To that gumbo, he added the invigorating rhythms and harmonies of hot jazz. It was a new kind of American music, named in honor of his band The Blue Grass Boys to be known, simply, as bluegrass.

  Paul Zollo

  Music, Country, Boys

  8 Copy quote

• I call this my church house trilogy. Souls' Chapel really was music from the Mississippi Delta, which to me is a church within itself. The Delta is the church of American Roots music. The Badlands is a cathedral without a top on it. And the Ryman has been called the Mother Church of Country Music, but to me it's the Mother Church of American Music. If you can think it up, it's been done there. In my mind, this is kind of a spiritual odyssey as much as anything else, and I had the settings of three churches to make it in.

  Marty Stuart

  Country, Mother, Spiritual

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• My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.

  Iggy Pop

  People, Palaces, Uptight

  Interview with Bret Gladstone, pitchfork.com. August 13, 2007.

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• I wanted a trumpet concerto that reflected Native American music because, well, there aren't any. I looked around for one but couldn't find anything. So it's a wide-open field.

  Christopher Moore

  Native American, Reflection, Fields

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• It's not just hip-hop that's dead. Mostly every form of American music is dead. It's been dead. R&B isn't really good.

  Nas

  Hip Hop, Hips, Form

  Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. December 6, 2006.

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• American music culture is black culture.

  Yelawolf

  Black, Culture, Music Culture

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• 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.

  Michael Tilson Thomas

  Diversity, Path, Recognition

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• New Orleans is of such key importance to American music because historical factors combined to make it the strongest center of African musical practice in the United States, and, cliches aside, that practice really did travel up the Mississippi and did spread overland.

  Ned Sublette

  Practice, Keys, New Orleans

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• There is a definite Chinese pop sound developing, but I was shocked at how influenced it is by American music.

  Paul Oakenfold

  Chinese, Sound, Pops

  "The Great Wall of Sound" by Paul Oakenfold, Tom Pattinson, www.theguardian.com. August 26, 2007.

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• The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization.

  Fredric Jameson

  Heart, Clothes, Culture

  Fredric Jameson (2009). “Valences of the Dialectic”, Verso Books

  58 Copy quote

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• Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.

  Taylor Hackford

  Rays, Way, Changed

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Patty Griffin is iconic, and there's no other word to really describe her. She is iconic for a lot of people - not only for me but for a lot of fans. Her voice is one of a kind, and she's such an important figure in the American music scene.

  Dierks Bentley

  Voice, People, Important

  3 Copy quote

• Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.

  Dan Auerbach

  Mean, Past, Thinking

  3 Copy quote

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

  Johnny Otis

  African American, Want, African American Music

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• Michael Jackson fundamentally altered the terms of the debate about African American music.

  Michael Eric Dyson

  African American, Debate, Term

  Source: www.pbs.org

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