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.
To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
Motown will always be a heavy-duty part of my life because those are my roots
I'd like to think that all the old Beatle fans have grown up and they've got married and they've all got kids and they're all more responsible, but they still have a space in their hearts for us.
We'd like to think that our music will always be bigger than any one of our individual personalities.
When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.
The fans are the biggest reason we do what we do.
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