First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"Soul music is memories, it’s everyday life, it’s easy to consume. I think it’s that the soul, the spirit, resides in Africa so soul music here could also mean the beating of a drum because that’s how we invoke our soul."
"The processes are different for every album. Nothing is ever deliberate. Making art for me is one step in front of the next. You don’t begin with a full art work, you begin with one stroke and then you go. And you ask what else can I do until it’s a full picture."
"A love for the people, a love for country, and a love for justice. They form the basis for what the production is about using audio visual elements to stimulate imagination and explore history while moulding a new world."
"I always knew that there were people who sang better than me, I never thought I would make it to this level."
"All I noticed was that something would happen to people when I sang, I found that people noticed me more when I sang."
"People associate my work with their traditions and culture and maybe there isn't enough of that in the music industry. The music industry does sometimes become a little poppy and more about the accumulation of things. My work is about memories and identity"
"You cannot want to live in other people's expectations Your only intention should be to tell your story and tell it authentically. That is the only culture an artist should have. I don't have a desire for popularity or a desire for anything that people think identify you as a successful person. My success comes from finishing my work. So, as soon as I finish my work, I feel like I have succeeded. Anything that happens after that is out of my hands"
"I have a lot of band configurations. I have a jazz band. I have the band I have been playing with for 20 years"
"I saw army tanks while walking to school ensuring us natives were ‘well behaved.’ It was impossible to miss those things"
"I was interested in something different and followed radical pathways to making art"
"Music gave me a natural medium to express myself and all I was seeing"
"Struggle didn’t need to be a bad thing, so long as we knew what we were pushing towards"
"Having grown up so un-free, there was a euphoria hearing Nelson Mandela was being freed and that we could get an ID and be a true South African with the rights of any other citizen"
"We were kind of swept away by this idea of freedom"
"In spite of having a Black-led government, we quickly realized we still needed to struggle, protest, and fight"
"We were trying to wrap our minds around neocolonialism and the way power corrupts"
"Even as I sing in my own language about a South African experience,she says, I also see it as pan-Africanist music that speaks to the Diaspora as well. I create work that is interested in connecting us and bridging gaps"
"Money draws people in and takes away agency"
"Learn when to say no to the money, because it comes with so many complications and people who feel entitled to steering your career"
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.