Music is the purest form of art... therefore true poets...seek to express the universe in terms of music. The singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside.
By music minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
. . . .
Warriors she fires with animated sounds.
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds.
Rock ’n roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners.
For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.
My people had used music to soothe slavery's torment or to propitiate God, or to describe the sweetness of love and the distress of lovelessness, but I knew no race could sing and dance its way to freedom.