Folk Singers

"I still don't know why they banned me" she says. "I said to them, 'What did I do? I never killed anybody. I was never arrested for anything bad, so why can't I go home?."

"[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that."

"Girls are the future mothers of the , it is important we focus on their wellbeing."

"Her voice and her battles influenced the process of liberation and democratic rebirth in South Africa."

"Everywhere I performed in Brazil, I never saw black people. I only performed to white people. And they (the white people) said it's because they (the black people) can't afford to come here - it's too expensive. That is another form of keeping them from coming to where they can enjoy themselves together with white people. They keep them poor."

"The white man, where ever he is, whether he is in the majority or the minority, he rules. It just proves to everyone that we have to keep fighting."

"The truth shall never be covered by a lie."

"It is absurd to say that we Africans were not in Africa when white people first came. And secondly, The conqueror writes history. They came, they conquered and they wrote. Now, you don't expect people who came to invade us to write the truth about us. They will always write negative things about us. And they have to do that because they have to justify their invasions in all the countries."

"I didn’t have much, but I was always happy to share what I did have. It seemed like every African that came to New York City would show up at my apartment door at dinnertime, and I couldn’t turn them away. I wasn’t much older than any of them, but they started calling me ‘Mama Africa’ and the name stuck."

"We don't write our history. It has always been handed down to us orally by our elders."

"In New York I heard A Piece of Ground, written by a white South African, Jeremy Taylor. I modified it a little and sang it myself. That song is very special to me because it deals with the land question in southern Africa. We were dispossessed of our land."

"When I was young, I never bought records because my brother Joseph played saxophone and had a record player. I loved listening to his records: The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, all the big American jazz bands, and vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Ernestine Anderson, and Kitty White, a singer from the US who was a friend of Nina Simone. Nobody in America seems to know about her, but she was quite popular in South Africa."

"I will probably die singing."

"My concerts were canceled left and right. Speaking about South African Apartheid was fine, but they were suddenly afraid I might speak about American Apartheid, although I never did. Bookers told me that my shows would finance radical activities and [Reprise Records] told me they were not going to honor my recording contract. I didn’t say anything, but if I was married to a troublemaker, I must be a troublemaker. I’d already lived in exile for 10 years, and the world is free, even if some of the countries in it aren’t, so I packed my bags and left."

"African music, though very old, is always being rediscovered in the West."

"I always wanted to leave home. I never knew they were going to stop me from coming back. Maybe, if I knew, I never would have left. It is kind of painful to be away from everything that you've ever know. Nobody will know the pain of exile until you are in exile. No matter where you go, there are times when people show you kindness and love, and there are times when they make you know that you are with them but not of them. That's when it hurts."

"In those years, when I came to the States, people were always asking me why I didn’t sing anymore. I’d tell them, ‘I sing all around the world—Asia, Africa, Europe—but if you don’t sing in the US, then you haven’t really made it.’ That’s why I’ll always be grateful to Paul Simon. He allowed me to bring my music back to my friends in this country."

"The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer."

"The man at the desk took my passport. He did not speak to me. He took a rubber stamp and slammed it down. Then he walked away. I picked up my passport. It was stamped 'Invalid'. 'They have done it,' I told myself. 'They have exiled me. I am not permitted to go home — not now, maybe not ever. My family, my home. Everything that has gone into the making of myself, gone'."

"I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit."

"That was the only time my mother saw me on stage. At one point in the play I am strangled and my mother jumped from her seat and screamed: 'No. You will not get away with murder. You cannot do this to my daughter.' Friends explained to her that this was not for real — that we were acting. But she made such a fuss. Everyone was so embarrassed. On stage my heart sank."

"Today I can’t comment on what the problem is in China, Russia, or Africa without realizing again and again the Diamond Sutra, which says that we look at the world and see it as separate but in fact, this is an illusion, but the reality is that we are one shining being. Until this can be understood, I can’t see any change. But I see some change now. There is a world consciousness. In the "old" New Age, they talked about the Age of Aquarius being an age of enlightenment. And now when a man goes to the moon he sees the earth. Before when someone did meditation he or she could meditate on the earth and the moon but now a man and a woman can see that we are on one planet and that the water is polluted and that the air is dirty. So these are changes that are important. But when we spoke about these things in the 60s people said we were dreamers."

"I still carry with me the same themes as always — I'm still compelled to present mystic ideas..."

"I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and... I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children."

"Up to '67, the drugs were, uh, soft. Marijuana, and even LSD, I considered soft drugs then. But, then, after '67, needle drugs and the strong amphetamines came in, and that's when the Beatles and Donovan stood up and said, 'Try meditation instead.' And I still stick by that, of course. You've got to be very, very careful. I'm talking about naive days, before the drug barons and the dealers took over. It was once a small, bohemian event. But it was when millions started wanting to get high that it got bad. And when Haight-Asbury turned into Skid Row, the Beatles and me stood up and said, 'Give it a rest.' The answer is that each individual must face the problem by himself. And meditation is an alternative. Meditation is a lot better for you, and it's great to be straight."

"Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be."

"Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new: Hail Atlantis!"

"The most important of my achievements, if you want to call them that, was that I successfully introduced mystical ideas into pop culture, which was my obsession and my compulsion when I was 16 years old. So, behind all of this fame and fortune, there was a seeker, on a spiritual path — a young man who wanted to discover and share with others an alternative way of looking at the world. I wanted to save our culture from the stupidity and the bigotry and the ignorance that threatened it. And there was the Buddhist way, and the Celtic way."

"When I was 14 or 15 I wanted to be a protest singer like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. My father was a socialist and worked with the unions. I thought change was to change the government and to change from one system, capitalism, to socialism and to make the poor of the world happy. But when I opened the book The Way of Zen by Alan Watts and I opened up the Diamond Sutra, and Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, I realized that the problem of suffering was much deeper than governments and social problems. The problems were very deep. They were nothing short of changing the way we look at reality. Therefore I became a teacher, or a reflection of the teachings. Phil Ochs, the great protest singer, said I had given up protest, and Joan Baez said to Bob Dylan, “He’s given up protest.” But what I had given up was looking for the answer in social change. The change was to be a spiritual change. The suffering was coming from an erroneous view of reality..."

"Thrown like a star in my vast sleep I open my eyes to take a peep To find that I was by the sea Gazing with tranquillity. 'Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Came singing songs of love..."

"Lord, kiss me once more, fill me with song Allah, kiss me once more that I may, that I may Wear my love like heaven Wear my love like Wear my love like heaven."

"Histories of ages past Unenlightened shadows cast. Down through all eternity The crying of humanity. 'Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Comes singing songs of love..."

"Electrical banana Is gonna be a sudden craze Electrical banana Is bound to be the very next phase..."

"I'm just mad about Fourteen Fourteen's mad about me"

"Wear your love like heaven."

"The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture. The antediluvian kings colonised the world All the gods who play in the mythological dramas In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis. Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth. On board were the Twelve: The Poet, the Physician, the Farmer, the Scientist, The Magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends. Though gods they were —"

"We are one, we are all brothers and sisters, but the people of the world do not know this. So this was the teaching, but how do you teach it? As young people, John Lennon, George Harrison, myself, Carlos Santana and other spiritual seekers in pop music, we wanted to know the answer but we found a question: How do you convince the rest of the western world that they are ill, they are mentally ill, that they have a sickness and that they have lost the way? How do you teach that? You cannot teach that in the normal sense. You have to encourage a spiritual call, so we devoted ourselves to making songs which would have a spiritual call inside of them, hoping to awaken an awareness with this music. And other people in the arts felt the same..."

"I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind 'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine."

"I'll tell you right now Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find..."

"When I look out my window, Many sights to see. And when I look in my window, So many different people to be..."

"When rain has hung the leaves with tears I want you near to kill my fears, To help me to leave all my blues behind. For standin' in your heart Is where I want to be And long to be, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"For me to love you now Would be the sweetest thing, 'Twould make me sing, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"Sunshine came softly through my a-window today Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways It'll take time, I know it but in a while You're gonna be mine, I know it, we'll do it in style 'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine."

"You've got to pick up every stitch. Mmm... must be the season of the witch, Must be the season of the witch."

"We are magic. It is magic that we're walking around. It's fantastic magic. Some people would call it miracles; I like to call it magic. … Yes, I'm very aware of this. Yes, the more aware I get, the more I can understand how big it is, how big it will get. It'll be harder to comprehend; that's why I have to go along with it, 'cause its so vast. To say to somebody that God is everything that lives and ever has lived and ever will live, and you're never going to touch and see, smell and be everything that is God. Magic is very hard to comprehend."

"The magic that you hear in tales and things was all based around the Celtic mythology of England, which is Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. I just drain from that source. I just drain everything. So the magic is there."

"It seemed — in 1968 — the possibilities of peace and brotherhood could be realised that very year. We're still working on it."

"In the chilly hours and minutes Of uncertainty I want to be In the warm hold of your lovin' mind. To feel you all around me And to take your hand Along the sand, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"The softer you sing, the louder you're heard."

"I'm just mad about Saffron Saffron's mad about me I'm just mad about Saffron She's just mad about me."