The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The blues is the foundation for a lot of things. Things have branched off. It's cool how music grows, but the foundation is always there. It's not going anywhere. The blues is always going to be relevant.
When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.
The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.
The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable.
I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music.
I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.
The blues echoes right through into soul, R&B and hip hop. It's part of the make-up of modern music. You can't turn your back on the blues.
Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.
The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.
No opposing quotes found.