We didn't have music videos. You weren't an overnight sensation. You had to work at it and learn your craft: how to take care of your voice, how to pace your concerts, all that trial and error.
Aretha FranklinRead
In terms of helping people understand and know each other a little better, music is universal - universal and transporting.
Interpretation
Music serves as a universal language that connects people and facilitates understanding among them.
In this quote, Aretha Franklin emphasizes the power of music as a tool for connection and communication. She suggests that music transcends cultural and linguistic barriers, allowing individuals to understand and relate to one another on a deeper level, making it a vital aspect of human experience that can transport us emotionally and spiritually.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of cultural exchange in schools, I quoted Aretha Franklin to emphasize how music can bridge gaps.
We didn't have music videos. You weren't an overnight sensation. You had to work at it and learn your craft: how to take care of your voice, how to pace your concerts, all that trial and error.
Trying to grow up is hurting. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don't, it hurts even more.
My mentor was Clara Ward of the famous Ward gospel singers of Philadelphia. And my dad was my coach. He coached me. And just my natural love for music is what drove me.
It really is an honor if I can be inspirational to a younger singer or person. It means I've done my job.
Everybody wants respect. In their own way, three-year-olds would like respect, and acknowledgment, in their terms.
I think women and children and older people are the three least-respected groups in our society.
Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.
Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.
Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people' affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.
You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.
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