Archie Shepp

Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American…

— Archie Shepp

And when I met Cecil Taylor it was a complete transformation of musical identities. All the tenets that I had grown up…

— Archie Shepp

It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights…

— Archie Shepp

So, I was just a young guy, maybe with an idea, and Cecil Taylor, himself a rebel, would take a chance on…

— Archie Shepp

Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

— Archie Shepp

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

— Archie Shepp

In America, for a brief time, people who followed John Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The…

— Archie Shepp

You get a show where people are jumping up and dancing, but it's not a critical event in the sense of profound…

— Archie Shepp

I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty much race music: its about what happened to…

— Archie Shepp

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is…

— Archie Shepp

All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

— Archie Shepp

I find that here in the States, audiences are generally less knowledgeable, from the cognitive point of view, though they are emotionally…

— Archie Shepp

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of…

— Archie Shepp

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.

— Archie Shepp

Black music has become a commercial commodity. Live performances are not so accessible as they were previously. It use to be possible…

— Archie Shepp

So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it's a kind of blues element. It's physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you…

— Archie Shepp

Music is a language, and it's like a dictionary that has a lot of words, but if you limited yourself to a…

— Archie Shepp

To some degree, yeah, because I have to play a certain number of originals that might be considered avant-garde material. I realize…

— Archie Shepp

Today, music is visual.

— Archie Shepp