Albert Murray Quotes
11 quotes
in 217 categories
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The United States is not a nation of black and white people. Any fool can see that white people are not really white, and that…
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I am not an African. I am an American.
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When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the…
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The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.
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As any competent student of literary composition knows, the more natural and casual a voice sounds in print, the more likely it is to have…
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Effective stream-of-consciousness narration is the product of verbal precision, not just of literal documentation. It is decidedly not a matter of unedited free-association.
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Now, one can often get away with playing music by ear when it is not being recorded, but writing is another matter; its mistakes are…
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Jazz music, as is also the case with the old down-home spirituals, gospel and jubilee songs, jumps, shouts and moans, is essentially an American vernacular…
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A jazz tune, melody, or composition is usually based on either a traditional twelve-bar, eight-bar, or four-bar blues chorus or on the thirty-two-bar chorus of…
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The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected…
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The juke joint, the honky tonk, and the ballroom also represent one more thing, anthropologically speaking: a ceremonial context for the male-with-female-duet dance flirtation and…
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