Read through the most famous quotes by topic #blues
For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall. ↗
She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is. ↗
I apply the warrior energy to the blues by tapping into the ancient job of the griot class.That wasn’t a job you did because someone said you had to do it;you did it because that’s what you did. It was your right as a person.In terms of warriorship,you had to stand up and do what was right,what you were born to do…… In warriorship you have to be very present,very aware of where you are,where you’ve been and where you’re going. Part of what a warrior does,the compassion and generosity of warriorship,is to get the door open and hold it open for other people to come through.That means the warrior is often out there alone. Sometimes the door closes behind you and you don’t know it happened.Then you have to stop,put the guitar down,go back and get a wedge,and get the door open again,so..people can hear the music. You can’t be afraid,no matter what’s going on.” Taj Mahal Autobiography of A Bluesman ↗
I hope I redeemed myself with the whole dancing-sex comparison.” “I suppose there were a couple of notable similarities,” I observed, holding a straight face. “A couple? What about attention to detail, heavy exertion, lots of sweat, and single-minded determinedness to get the job done and done well?” “Mostly I was thinking you just don’t talk during sex.” Mean perhaps, but I couldn’t resist. “Well, my mouth has better things to do.” I swallowed, my own mouth dry. “Are we still talking about dancing? ↗
...I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul, - and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion. ↗
