Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I couldn't stand the politics in opera.
African-American history is American history.
Music affects people in a way that bare facts can't.
I decided to study music my last year in high school.
When you sit at the feet of an elder, it changes you.
I hate genres. I think they're just marketing labels.
I'm a North Carolina native. Grew up in North Carolina.
I'm really taken with 'Calling Me Home' by Alice Gerrard.
Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you.
I'm not an urban black person. I'm a country black person.
Nobody can know what their legacy is going to be, you know?
I mean, my training at Oberlin has been absolutely valuable.
There is a black folk music audience. They're just very small.
My stuff lives in Nashville but I live wherever my children are.
The banjo is my chosen instrument - it's what I write my music on.
I keep starting supergroups, writing ballets and things like that.
American music is always best when it comes from a mixture of things.
I don't watch 'Game of Thrones.' I don't watch TV. I don't watch Hulu.
I'll talk about the banjo all day long and the history of minstrel shows.
My dad's white, my mom's black, and I've struggled with being mixed race.
People who put Europe in the center of the universe, they're very fragile.
I don't want to go on a talk show and talk about stuff I don't know about.
To learn the history of the banjo is to recover the actual history of America.
People seem ready for a more in-depth idea of folk music, culture and history.
Anybody who thinks the lute just came out of a vacuum doesn't know the history.
I would be thrilled with anybody who cites my work as something that inspired them.
I really got into Gaelic music and the whole sound of it, and I got to go to Scotland.
The best part of a MacArthur is having some pressure taken off from touring relentlessly.
I have to continue to work, and I have to be touring, because that's how I earn a living.
To sit in my concert and be uncomfortable is brave. Because you could always leave, you know?
I had this dream like years ago. I had this dream - I wanted to be in an all-black string band.
I stood on people's shoulders, so I want to be there for somebody else to take it even further.
If I want to support my family and my crew, we have to be on the road, and that's really tiring.
The truth, the real history, is way more interesting and representative of what America actually is.
I don't have a genre because I play lots of different music that people would say are different genres.
For me the bare feet are grounding. I'm connected to the Earth in a way that I cannot be any other way.
It's kind of remarkable, everything that's happened to me. It's been such a whirlwind, but in a good way.
Ibn Said's autobiography is an extraordinary work, and his story is one that's absolutely crucial to tell.
The question is not how do we get diversity into bluegrass, but how do we get diversity back into bluegrass?
Black women have historically had the most to lose and have therefore been the fiercest fighters for justice.
I wouldn't be out here touring constantly if I didn't hope that my music was going to do something to somebody.
We have to talk about the negativity, but we have to enjoy the beauty of what this country, culturally, has done.
It's really funny how I've come round to classical music around the back door with my banjo in my hand, and I love it.
What's really interesting to me is to have a connection to what was going on in the past, but to make it a living thing.
Each song has its own way that it likes to be done, but it can be more than one way. If you tap into it, you can feel it.
I've always liked women singers and appreciate a good story being told. That's what country music used to do on the radio.
My life used to be record, tour, record, tour. You can never say no as a freelance musician. I was on the road 200 days a year.
I love the U.K. folk scene. In the States, nobody knows what to do with me. There's still a very narrow definition of Americana.
I'm not gonna force something or fake something to try to get more black people at my shows. I'm not gonna do some big hip-hop crossover.
If I wasn't touring, I wasn't making money. When I got the MacArthur, I could get off that hamster wheel. It meant I didn't have to do anything.