singers-from-the-united-states

"I'm Jamaican, y'know."

"I am not a drag queen."

"Operatic music is a dominant component, but there’s a broader musical spectrum in Italy. There’s so much you can learn from everybody (it shouldn’t necessarily be a celebrity musician), that I find it really difficult to name someone in particular and overshadow the rest."

"My cultural roots have played a crucial role on my comprehensive perspective, not just artistic-wise. Since we’re talking about the influence of roots on music here, I’d like to mention Sicilian melodies that are hauntingly beautiful and its folk music delivering raw emotions stemming from everyday experiences. My inclination for it is quite obvious as it is innate. Religious music in the form of hymns, chants and a capellas have built the foundation of my music sense as a child. Heritage will be apparent in my English-language recordings that are scheduled for future release."

"Cultural descent plays a vital role in the display of every art form. Music is one such element that cannot escape this embodiment."

"If the Choice is to repudiate the brunt, no storm in the world can stop us. The graph varies generation and culture-wise. For Gen Z and millennial females, the school of thought lies in Women Empowerment."

"My ancestors have kept our cultural and religious traditions alive over the generations."

"Be the ambassador of your art and take pride in your work. Women today are at the forefront of their craft, the trend is changing across every sector and that’s indeed so inspiring."

"[On her mother's influence] She (Lorna Castelino) has played a pivotal role in every developmental phase that I’ve ever been through. Educational, emotional, psycho-social, and in every sense. I can keep enumerating only to add more. My father (Joseph Castelino) and she have been my pillars of support and guidance, throughout."

"Music has always been an integral part since childhood. I’d love engaging with anything belonging to that genre of art, and especially with singing."

"our collective relationship to the truth has become far more chaotic.”"

"When I reflect on it, I don’t remember being very upset about it. I remember feeling that I don’t give a flying f**k what these racist people think of me. I think bigots don’t really bother me"

"Whenever Black women have a point, they’re characterized as Angry Black Women, and therefore the thing they’re talking about is no longer of importance because they have to deal with them being overly emotional or something."

"you might say that culture has become more inclusive, that inequalities and prejudice seem to be slowly retreating, and that things which were once considered normal and acceptable are now deemed to be inappropriate"

"I recognize that people who respond negatively to what I have to say aren’t at a place yet where they are able to learn"

"But I’m not tired of talking about hair in the sense of it being an empowering thing. I know when I used to chemically straighten mine, I did it because I wasn’t comfortable with my natural hair. I thought it was too poofy, too kinky. So for me, personally, when I started wearing it natural, it felt like I was blossoming because I was letting go of all the dead hair and all the parts of me that had rejected my natural state."

"Now that I’m growing older, I find that my source of power comes from my identity and ethnicity"

"I think as a queer person, kind of everything I do in the public sphere is drag in some capacity"

"We have a unique voice because we grow up with the ability to empathize. We constantly have to do the work of placing ourselves in other people’s shoes"

"I noticed that whenever I was trying to talk about social justice and how Black women are framed in the media, quite ironically, I would be framed in a certain way that would demonize me and take away the value of my point"

"when people come to me and say, “I’m more comfortable in my identity because of you,” or “I feel like you’ve given me a voice,” that’s the most powerful thing ever."

"I feel like when I was younger—even though I may not have been conscious [of it]—I fought my hair and I fought who I was…to try to conform, or shy away from my Blackness"

"I thought a lot about the concept of cultural dysphoria, and how that can shape how people relate to the world,"

"Being an actor is one of the few professions where, as an adult, you get to play!"

"I often find myself in situations where I am the token black person"

"I’m not sure if social-media activism serves the cause in the long term"

"I think already, at age 12, I was like, Yeah, people are racist. Why are y’all surprised?"

"I have always had and continue to have a lot of disillusionment around social media, particularly now"

"The line between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange is always going to be blurry"

"feel really disheartened by the fact that there’s no infrastructure legislation to control and mitigate the amount of manipulation that is occurring toward the public by these private organizations and corporations who just want to make money off us and control our thoughts."

"A lot of my adolescence was defined by being here. I feel like the first time I really experienced freedom and autonomy was here, so I think I probably fell in love with New York and knew it was the place I wanted to live when I was 15 or 16. Then I had a series of unsuccessful attempts to move here that were thwarted by different things"

"I feel like the only way to fight that is to just be yourself on the most genuine level and to connect with other black girls who are awakening and realizing that they’ve been trying to conform"

"It wasn’t until I started living in other places that I realized that growing up with the backdrop of a mountainscape is not everyone’s experience"

"Social media really shaped me and my generation and our ability to organize or express our thoughts"

"I don’t think there’s ever been a moment where I’ve thought social media is not for me, because I’m obsessed with social media. I have three meme accounts!"

"I think that as a black girl you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn’t accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features, or that you shouldn’t have a voice, or that you aren’t smart"

"Now you can go on Instagram and you can see a girl who looks like you who is killing the game and expressing herself. Just being able to see that is so affirming"

"I don’t particularly like putting forward an image of myself that’s too true to reality"

"Though the intentions are generally excellent with respect to giving a voice to those who were too long silenced, the movements that came before us, in the past, perhaps had more weight"

""" as quoted by Annie Zaleski of ' (May 17, 2017)"

"A haven woven with warm colors A woolen place to rest your head And a light comes in Forms and binds you To mold and carry you this long way to go"

"I was gonna clean my room, until I got high I was gonna get up and find the broom, but then I got high My room is still messed up, and I know why: 'Cause I got high, because I got high, because I got high."

"The warrant said narcotics and kidnapping The warrant said narcotics and kidnapping Are you kidding? I make my money rapping Why does the warrant say narcotics — well, I know narcotics. But why kidnapping?"

"Between his many bands — from 2000s outfits Saosin, Circa Survive, and the Sound of Animals Fighting to his latest venture in the supergroup L.S. Dunes, plus his gut-wrenching solo material — Green is a versatile singer who’s able to adopt and blur multiple styles into his own unique vision. He also tackles addiction with fearlessness and empathy, letting others know they’re not alone through his striking lyricism."

"One of the special characters in music history. Collins got his first real shot at stardom while a member of James Brown’s famous backing band. He contributed to such Brown classics as "Sex Machine" and "Super Bad." From there, Collins took that soul background and his "space bass" with a funk vibe over to George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic. In addition to playing with those two juggernauts of sound, the Hall of Famer has collaborated with the likes of Talking Heads and Keith Richards. Collins has also taught the bass and has been featured in music videos and on television sitcoms."

"The master of the six-string bass, Thundercat, whose father Ronald Bruner played drums for The Temptations and The Supremes, first left his mark with thrash/punk favorites Suicidal Tendencies. However, he's also worked with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, with whom he won a Grammy Award, Erykah Badu, and the late Mac Miller. In addition, Thundercat has released four widely-acclaimed solo albums as of 2023. He won his second Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album for his 2020 release It Is What It Is."

"Dale had a super underrated drum sound, whether that was live or recorded — he was second to none."

"Angel, devil or both, Chet Baker is the stuff of jazz legend. By his mid-20s, the Oklahoma country boy was famous, leaping to stardom in 1953 with saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s trend-setting West Coast quartet and winning polls on trumpet. His reputation was no mere publicity bubble. After playing with Baker in his pre-Mulligan days, bebop pioneer Charlie Parker told his trumpet protégé Miles Davis, ‘There’s a little white cat out on the coast who’s going to eat you up.’"

"Dizzy Gillespie’s old friend, bassist Milt Hinton, used to say, ‘Chords are our love, but rhythm is our business,’ and that might have been Diz’s lifelong motto as well. Whether the group was large or small, the groove headlong swing or sizzling Afro-Cuban, a Gillespie band lifted you out of your seat with its sheer musical energy. And the crest of that wave was the leader’s fiery trumpet, which had revolutionised jazz brass in the ’40s. The young Gillespie could play higher and faster for longer than anybody before him, and his passionate, coruscating solos define the brave new world of bebop. Just as radical were his harmonies and rhythms – fusillades of notes tumbling over bar-lines, defying conventional chord structures. And this was not mere ‘subversion’, but a well-conceived creative strategy. Despite his madcap reputation, Dizzy Gillespie was one of the prime theoreticians of bop and a tireless teacher, demonstrating, encouraging, inspiring."

"[Carter's] influence on the development of country music really can't be overstated."