Top 100 Black Music Quotes
#1. Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop.
Mos Def
#2. Country music is the combination of African and European folk songs coming together and doing a little waltz right here in the American south. They came together at some cotillion, and somebody snuck a black person into the room, and he danced with a white lady, and music was born.
Ketch Secor
#3. [...] here "white" could be the way a person talked; "black," the music a person listened to. In Ghana you could only be what you were, what your skin announced to the world.
Yaa Gyasi
#4. I'm really inspired by the interplay of visual art and music, a total artistic environment where there's sound and visuals. When I think about that I get stimulated and excited. It's a feeling that you can't label with words.
Black Francis
#5. In films, I didn't crave the type of attention I had sort of stumbled into in my music career. And I do not audition well. I'm really not good at it. Early on, I did movies like 'Alpha Dog' and 'Black Snake Moan' because the directors didn't ask me to audition.
Justin Timberlake
#6. The reason why rappers are living in - you know, driving in Mercedes-Benz's and living in neighborhoods is because they're selling their music, not just to the black community, but to the white community.
Eric Bolling
#7. Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.
Johnny Cash
#8. Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!
Kelis
#9. You don't see a lot of black rock stars. The music industry tends to be segregated stylistically. It's hard for a black artist to cross over to rock music.
Lance Reddick
#10. For me the music community was always like a model for what could be. The way people would play together, just harmony and being - old guys and young guys, black guys and white guys. It was setting an example for what the rest of us could be.
Bill Frisell
#11. You've got the Wall Street situation, the sub-prime situation. You've got a black president. We've got wars. We've got unemployment. But the music doesn't reflect that. And I challenge anybody to show me a music that's on the radio that reflects that.
Ice-T
#12. As would-be songwriters, our interest was in black music and black music only. We wanted to write songs for black voices.
Mike Stoller
#13. I have had UFO experiences, and yet, at the same time, I can easily be convinced that none of it is true. It's hard to say whether or not you're a believer. I've been interested in that subject matter, like lots of people. Perhaps foolishly, I've allowed some of that stuff to creep into my music.
Frank Black
#14. Black people dance well because we start early - there's music being played everywhere. White people? They don't start dancing until they get to college, and by then, it's too late; the bottom don't move with the top no matter how hard they try.
Tracy Morgan
#16. One night I'll be in Los Angeles and it'll be a Latin crowd, and then another night I'll go to Fresno and it'll be an all-black crowd. To me, that's the beauty of the music.
Pitbull
#17. I was musically baptized by the black founding fathers of rock-and-roll, and like all real music lovers, the music changed, enriched, upgraded and fortified our lives forever.
Ted Nugent
#18. In 2010, aside from that niche of music that I have no interest in - Black Eyed Peas territory, disposable pop stuff - there's almost an incentive to go back to making music as adventurous and groundbreaking as you can, because nobody gets a big hit anymore.
Trent Reznor
#19. I never saw music in terms of men and women or black and white. There was just cool and uncool.
Bonnie Raitt
#21. Black music is a group music. That's why I don't like doing a solo saxophone thing: My feeling stems from rhythm, I really have to feel that rhythmic thing happening.
Jimmy Lyons
#22. When 'Raw Like Sushi' came out in the U.S., I wasn't considered to be black enough. They didn't really know where to put me. The music wasn't 'black black' sounding. It wasn't R&B; it wasn't straight up hip-hop, although obviously in that dimension and world.
Neneh Cherry
#23. To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
Nina Simone
#24. I never thought I was playing black music. I was just playing music, the stuff I liked. I sang blues at parties and things when I was a kid.
Mose Allison
#25. I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.
James Taylor
#26. Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar.
Shane Black
#27. Back in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect.
Ronnie Wood
#28. I don't do 'black music,' I don't do 'white music' ... I make fight music, for high school kids.
Eminem
#29. For me, the highlight was meeting all the Motown acts, as I adore black soul music. I met Stevie Wonder who I love, and Diana Ross And The Supremes. I also met The Carpenters. I was actually there in the studio when they recorded We've Only Just Begun.
Tony Blackburn
#30. Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community.
David Sanborn
#31. You know, I'm the 1st black solo MC from Detroit. I didn't do the 50 Cent sales but hey ... I got a long career, I'm still young and I'm trying to bring really good music.
Obie Trice
#32. Kansas City, I would say, did more for jazz music, black music, than any other influence at all. Almost all their joints that they had there, they used black bands. Most musicians who amounted to anything, they would flock to Kansas City because that's the place where jobs were plentiful.
Jesse Stone
#33. It's not very long ago that we were all singing country music. And country music is equally black as it is white and that's important to recognize.
Ketch Secor
#34. A woman drew her long black hair out tight, And fiddled whisper music on those strings, And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings, And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.
T. S. Eliot
#35. A song she heard
Of cold that gathers
Like winter's tongue
Among the shadows
It rose like blackness
In the sky
That on volcano's
Vomit rise
A Stone of ruin
From burn to chill
Like black moonrise
Her voice fell still ...
Robert Fanney
#36. I would like to involve myself in some black music. I would like to do some blues and some gospel music. I want to try stuff from other genres and try to widen my musical base.
Greg Lake
#37. I'm admitting that I don't know that to be true, but it does sound pretty good. So a big part of my childhood was affecting black culture and black accents and black music and anything black I was into.
Moshe Kasher
#39. First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.
Carlos Santana
#40. Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.
Michael Eric Dyson
#41. It is with great disappointment and regret that after having the privilege of writing and performing the music of The Black Crowes over the last 24 years, I find myself in the position of saying that the band has broken up.
Rich Robinson
#42. Frank was the BOSS and was not open to anything that was not from his head. There were no arguments about music because if you did, he would show you where the door was. Period.
Jimmy Carl Black
#43. The Bee Gees were always heavily influenced by black music. As a songwriter, it's never been difficult to pick up on the changing styles of music out there, and soul has always been my favourite genre.
Robin Gibb
#44. I listen to music mostly in the evening. I've come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
Jeannette Walls
#45. Reggae music don't really focus on one thing, you know. If reggae music is speaking about the struggle of people, and the suffering, it don't mean black people. It mean people in general.
Burning Spear
#46. Music is the very cement that has not just held the black community together but holds black selves together in a fundamental sense.
Cornel West
#47. Playing rock 'n' roll music, it's going to be integrated, but being black you didn't want to go into some neighborhood where you weren't wanted.
Gail Ann Dorsey
#48. Entertainment came out of this thing called a television, and it was gray. Most of the films that we saw at the cinema were black and white. It was a gray world. And music somehow was in color.
Pete Townshend
#49. I didn't like any British music before The Beatles. For me, it was all about black American music. But then I became a successful pop singer, even though the kind of music I liked was more elitist, which is what I'm trying to get back to.
Lulu
#51. Soul was the music made by and for black people. For most of the Sixties it was thoroughly divorced from white popular music, but by the end of the decade several artists with their roots firmly in both soul and R&B traditions had crossed over.
Jon Landau
#52. You're playing the creepy vibe a little hard," I said. "Might as well go for broke, put on a black top hat and pipe in some organ music.
Jim Butcher
#53. For the most basic assumption that dictated my early attempts to respond to creative music commentary was the mistaken belief that western journalists had some fundamental understanding of black creativity - or even western creativity - but this assumption was seriously in error.
Anthony Braxton
#54. In my music, my plays, my films, I want to carry always this central idea: to be African.
Paul Robeson
#55. I played, like, a year of piano until I learned the 'Pink Panther' theme. That was my goal. Once I was good enough, I quit. Now my music has to have some rock.
Jack Black
#56. People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.
Willis Earl Beal
#57. I'm proud to be white. I don't have anything against my color. But I don't think color matters, either. Just like I feel it doesn't matter that I'm a white dude doin' black music.
Mark Wahlberg
#58. If you really think back to the culture or just black America before rap music took off, New York could have been Paris.
Ice Cube
#59. A lot of people heard about gin and juice for the first time from Snoop Dogg, but it was nothing new in rap music, and it was nothing new in the black community.
Boots Riley
#60. America sometimes resembles, at least from the point of view of a black man, an exceedingly monotonous minstrel show; the same dances, same music, same jokes. One has done (or been) the show so long that one can do it in one's own sleep.
James A. Baldwin
#61. It was a haunting tune, unresigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind and say goodbye.
Kristin Cashore
#62. Apart from two periods of intense study, of music between the ages of 12 and 14 and of mathematics between the ages of 14 and 16, I coasted, daydreaming, through most of my school years.
James Black
#63. Because I see
A rainstorm in June
Just before the sun
The black of night
Just before the stars
And, girl, I see your ghost
Just before our dawn
Laura Miller
#64. The fact that we elected Obama was a sign that the black struggle inherent in the blues and so much of the music I have loved can triumph.
Jack White
#65. Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.
Petra Haden
#66. I come in with this rock 'n' roll-oriented music, and it's not black enough ... I've always had to deal with this black-white thing.
Lenny Kravitz
#67. They're a different generation, those kids; kids that are under the age of twelve. They're not that impressed by rock music, you know what I mean? They're like, it's cool and everything, but whatever. They're just as impressed by YouTube.
Frank Black
#68. There's more to life than listening to rock music.
Frank Black
#69. Music is not just the black dots on the white paper --
it's what happens when those black dots go into your heart, and come out again.
Phil Smith
#70. It was unlikely that anyone had ever heard a black person sing country music.
Charley Pride
#71. The best musicians in the world were raised on the same kind of music I was raised on and that is black, soulful, authoritative, ultra-tight, ferocious, uppity, defiant music that from the Howlin' Wolf, the Muddy Waters, the Lightnin' Hopkins, the Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and Little Richard.
Ted Nugent
#72. This is black superhero music right here, baby!
Jay-Z
#73. It is dark now. The snow is deep blue and the ocean nearly black. It is time for some music.
May Sarton
#74. The rest of the world was black and white, But we were in screaming color
Taylor Swift
#76. I was listening to a lot of Norwegian black metal and death metal. There's a great history to Norwegian black metal. That music is very dark and violent, but it's also beautiful.
Brie Larson
#77. So when you enjoy the beats, the rock music - maybe even toned down with an orchestra - you are enjoying the spirit of the black race. And that's what I emphasize to the students.
Warren Jeffs
#78. Without music, my life would be black and white.
Robin Sharma
#79. I definitely have a different perspective on music in general. But once I actually have a guitar in my hands, I think I disappear into the same black hole that I was disappearing into when I was 15.
Bill Orcutt
#80. Look at the piano. You'll notice that there are white notes and black notes. Figure out the difference between them and you'll be able to make whatever kind of music you want.
George Gershwin
#81. I like keeping music in front of people. I try to sell at shows as much as I can - setting up a distro table and bringing out crates of vinyl and some CDs. That's my favorite way to sell because you're actually face-to-face with the customer.
Chris Black
#82. In the music industry it's just you're either Black or white, and this is the box you get put in.
India.Arie
#83. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.
Jason Whitlock
#84. I was relatively isolated from people of color. My parents are too old to be Baby Boomers; they had me later in life. So we didn't listen to any black music at all in the house, not even Ben E. King.
Jess Row
#85. My father, a mining engineer and colliery manager, gave his brood many advantages, not least of which, for me, was his love of singing, which gave music a central place in our lives.
James Black
#86. For Black Music Month, I would definitely want to celebrate Isaac Hayes.
Juicy J
#87. It is comforting to know that there is at least one place where we can go and be confident that we will find an audience thirsting to find new music. Paste Magazine is that place. It's loss would create a very large black hole.
Wayne Coyne
#88. I loved pop music as a little kid. Things like the Black Eyed Peas. If it had a catchy chorus, I was into it.
James Bay
#89. My plays are for the kind of black people who relate to funk music, to Parliament-Funkadelic. When those guys get out of a spaceship - the idea that black people are from outer space, there's a poetic truth to that. We are this vast people.
Suzan-Lori Parks
#90. I thought that I would like to be affiliated with some school or institution. As time went on, I also decided on the subject that I wanted to get involved with in addition to music: it was Black Studies.
Donald Byrd
#91. Through the gaps in the books, Ryan could see someone in the next aisle over, moving slowly. Someone in black. Someone whistling. Ryan recognized the tune. It was the theme music to Harry Potter.
Derek Landy
#92. House Music isn't black or white.
It just is.
It feels good & it feels right.
Frankie Knuckles
#93. The movie Spinal Tap rocked my world. It's for rock what The Sound of Music was for hills. They really nailed how dumb rock can be.
Jack Black
#94. There were so many groups that I had in college, but I was always the solo singer. But what made it so unusual back in the day was that I was a black girl playing with all these white musicians, and I was also singing rock music on top of it.
Natalie Cole
#95. The problem is the following, black music is increasing encumbered by white elements, often pleasant but always superfluous, easily and advantageously replaced with black elements.
Boris Vian
#96. There's this misconception that comedy and music go together. They don't. Comedians can't compete with rock stars; they're just not on the same level. Rock stars will always be cooler. They will always get more girls.
Michael Ian Black
#97. up at him while the guitar pealed in the background, she rocked back and forward, totally out of sync with the music, but caught up in the warmth of the moment. His black hair flopped down over one eye and she reached up to push it away. With one hand, he took
Ella Frank
#98. We've come from the same history - 2000 years of persecution - we've just expressed our sufferings differently. Blacks developed the blues. Jews complained, we just never thought of putting it to music.
Jon Stewart
#99. I like Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. The black-and-white films. With music, I tend more toward the '70s stuff because I was at the shows for those, so they bring back memories.
Lisa Marie Presley
#100. It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.'
Joe Haldeman
