I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.
Interpretation
Music is a powerful unifier that can bring people together regardless of their backgrounds.
Bernice Johnson Reagon emphasizes the importance of music as a means of unification among people, particularly within the Black community. She suggests that music transcends barriers and fosters a deep connection, and questions how true unity can be achieved without the influence of song, highlighting its vital role in communal bonding and shared experiences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the role of music in cultural events.
When the culture is strong, you've got this consistency where black people can grow up in these places with this voice just resonating about our special-ness in the universe. And I always say you're in trouble if you get too far away from that core that grounds you.
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life.
A guitar is like an old friend that is there with me.
I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14-to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids.
After all we did for Britain, selling that corduroy and making it swing, all we got was a bit of tin on a piece of leather.
A great song can make a terrible singer sound good, but a good singer - you put a great song on top of that, you're really in great shape!
When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I'd gotten that reaction. I'd had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.
There's a new hit rock group or singer every five minutes, but with country music, you have one hit and those people love you forever.
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