Women Musicians

"“Yeah. You know I was always drawn to the music. When I got into secondary school, which was my first opportunity to be able to make my own choices, I joined the choir at Queens College, and it was such a wonderful experience. I just carried on from there; it was a step after the other: taking solos, enjoying the whole scenario, and by the time I got to university, I was fortunate to be a part of a wonderful girl-(musical) group that enjoyed so much success on the Nigerian scene, Kush, and that was an amazing experience. And…you know…it just kept going from there until it got to a point where there was no turning back”."

"“You see because doing music was not about making it, those were not the considerations for me. It was about: oh my goodness, this is such a huge price, and am I ready to pay this price?”"

"By her own admission in the author’s note, the poems are designed to affirm, to confront the silence we so often feel comfortable with and to give voice to those things that have remained unspoken."

"One of its most talented and famous performers and teachers is Hope Masike, a 35-year-old woman from Harare, the country’s capital. Born into a large family of eight children, Hope devoted herself to studying the culture of her people, diving into a wide range of subjects from anthropology and ethnology to jurisprudence, never losing the love for her roots and the dream of an emancipated and peaceful Africa."

"Hope speaks out about the issues of womanhood in the rapidly changing Zimbabwean culture."

"Hope Masike is a Zimbabwean vocalist, mbira player, percussionist, songwriter, fashion designer, painter and dancer. She is known as The Princess of Mbira and her music has its roots both in traditional and modern African culture. She is also the lead singer for transnational band Monoswezi."

"Quite a lot of female musicians are talented and can write and sing their own songs, but some usually want to do so after fall­out with their employers. That is like using more emotions than your talent"

"We are a mere reflection of the society and the only difference is we are always on the spotlight and what we do comes out more than what any other ordinary person does"

"But some may have stopped singing for one or two reasons but like any other sectors it needs commitment and the will to reach the sky"

"It’s not bad being a backing vocalist, but it takes a lot of commitment to lead a band, hard work and the will to reach the greatness"

"We have quite a number of female musicians that have led bands in the country and sometimes it’s better to make a date with them and share their experiences"

"And that always put me under a lot of pressure to do much better every time when I am on stage"

"If you say female musicians are drunkards, society is full of drunkards. But that perception in my view is changing"

"Song of Solomon itself was the main inspiration. I read it properly for the first time and fell in love with it immediately. The poetry, the beautiful manner in which love and its complexities are expressed, and the mere belief in love that it’s based on, were all very inspirational to me"

"And so I found myself imagining such love and how beautifully we could all use the book’s words as a template for how to love"

"Gender imbalance. I was in Norway sometime and the only difference between males and females there is their biological make up. Otherwise they have equal opportunities and the women are just as aggressive as the men. You have a dream you go for it. There are no restrictions, on married women as they get as much support as that they give to their spouses. There are also equal opportunities at university where all sexes are admitted on equal merit. If I were to get a billion, I would like to empower women starting with the very young girls, who need a good education to build a better foundation for their lives."

"I hope Zimbabweans will write and tell our own stories, us musicians, poets, historians, all of us – we need to capture the true story of Zimbabwe and tell that to the world."

"I did these poems in a very ‘open-minded’ effort to find an often silent/silenced voice. There are things we do not ever say. There are things we don’t know how to say. There are things that have never been said."

"To the black woman in particular, your dark skin is very beautiful just as is. Be you, beautifully so. You are wonderfully made."

"There is a lovely story there. I believe this book was given to me as a very special gift because I wrote it in one sitting, in one day. It was a literal natural flow from my head to paper"

"When we are promoting a virtue such as respecting equality and the full recognition of everyone`s rights, what a better way to spread the message than through this universal language - music."

"May we all see the value in investing in love and our other halves; being respectful of love by holding it in high and sacred reverence; treasuring it, protecting it, and nurturing it"

"All women of the world, lets normalise being content with how God created us, proudly and loudly so enhancing our beauty is perfectly fine except when it’s to the detriment of our health, be it physically or emotionally."

"It also has to do with how you package your act, and I believe from day one the audience liked it, so the reception was good"

"when you’re writing, and I think when you’re creating, too, it’s a large part of that act of writing or — whether it’s music or stories or poetry or drawing, or any of the — it’s — a large part of it is listening."

"A poem can be like a pocket that can hold anything, almost anything. You can hold different kinds of time. It can hold grief, it can hold history, and it is often — a poem has come to me or through me, and it’s taught me what I needed to know."

"I think of poetry as a kind of lyricism. I think of poetry as a place beyond words, that we — you know, the paradox is, we use words to get there."

"Our class and our generation really shifted Native art, in the contemporary world art scene."

"it was that discipline of art which gave — you know, visioning is one way that — and the ability to vision and having tools for visioning — helps any of us out of almost impossible situations."

"It’s important that, I think, that everyone realizes that they have a connection with the natural world; it’s not something that just belongs to the Indigenous peoples. We might be closer, because we’ve been here longer, to particular elements of it, but, you know, this is something that is inherently part of the legacy of human beings."

"I’ve been around Natives all over the — all over the world, but there’s something about Oklahoma Natives, you know, something about a Southern kind of openness, which makes more holes for laughter to go through, or for the ironic to live."

"what happens in this country is that Natives are — our stories, our presence has basically been disappeared from the American story because if it’s true — if it’s true that we’re still here, and if it’s true that what did happen was, you know, was grand theft and massacre — then there’s something inherently broken with the story that needs to be repaired. The other thing, too, is that we are here. And yet, people expect us to be in our traditional outfits, if we’re recognized. They don’t recognize us unless we’re mascots or we’re wearing our traditional outfits."

"think about it — about half of our lives, we’re out gathering information that we may not bring forth consciously, and for some of us, it’s like it’s a library that we go to when we need to know something. It works in that way."

"we don’t live in a society, generally, that supports dreams as knowledge. And we’re not living in a place like that."

"I’m a great-grandmother now. I was a grandmother in my 30s and a teenage mother. And what that’s given me is a kind of a broader sense of the story field."

"I’ll be in a car or a bus or a van or whatever, looking at the houses and the windows and all the storefronts, and thinking about all the different realms, all the different story realms, and how many — every place, every window, every doorway is an opening to a life — a whole different life, a whole series of stories. And it’s multiplied hundreds and thousands of times. And some don’t overlap at all. Some are in their very private universes; other universes are more expansive."

"when I went to first grade, when we started to learn how to read, I was so thrilled about what happened with symbols and that suddenly it opened up a world to me. I read all of the books in the first grade classroom and was sent into the second grade, and it became like a hunger for me. I liked the sounds, of course, I like the sound that words make. I like the percussion, the percussive elements and the images and so on. Just like the same kind of thing I heard in my mother's song-making. But the more I read and the more the ability grew, the deeper I could read, the more stories and I could be transported in — much the same way that I could be in that kind of visionary dream world when I was younger. And when we get to about 7 — and I think this happens to a lot of us — we forsake those realms of knowing and understanding, and reading helped give that back."

"I remember at one point going out to do a story, just after the [1979] Church Rock uranium spill, and there were children out playing in the water and in the livestock and the Navajo speakers were saying, "We need a word." How do we come up with a word that will tell the people that even though you can't see it, there is something dangerous here that can harm you and you can't use these waters, when it was the only source of water for their livestock?"

"I think a lot of America, when they think back in history and see Natives, we were hiding out in the woods, wearing rags and so on, but we had huge societies. I have a great, great, great uncle who had the largest horse-racing establishment on the Eastern Seaboard, a Muscogee (Creek) man and half Irish. And they wanted that, they wanted what we had."

"President Andrew Jackson went against Congress to remove Southeastern Native peoples from the lands there into Indian territory, or what became known as Oklahoma. Of course, we did not go willingly. There were several scuffles and fights and even massacres against this illegal removal. But we were force-marched from our homelands. I think a lot of America thinks it was only the Cherokee — or the so-called "five civilized tribes," that included the Muscogee (Creek) — but these kind of removals or forced migration or marches happened all over the country."

"I've come to realize that what has motivated my art-making is really a strong need for justice, for "people" to be treated [with respect.] And then when I say people, I also mean animals and insects and the birds and the earth and the earth person that we are all part of — that there's a key element and that's respect. And my work has always been motivated by that need for respect."

"I think it’s easier to honor the male in our culture because it’s much more accepted. There are almost no truly powerful and sustained images of female power. None. Look at Marilyn Monroe? The Virgin Mary? And what images exist for Indian women? The big question is, How do we describe ourselves as women in this culture? It’s unclear."

"We talk about needing food, clothing and shelter, but ... that's bodily. But we also need to feed our spirits, and we need to feed our souls, and maybe we even feed history and grow it one way or the other. (2020)"

"There are many of us and we're not just poets. We're teachers. We're dancers. Essentially, we're human beings. And you would think that at this time we would not have to say that. But we still are in the position, strangely enough, that we still have to remind people and the public that: We're still here, we're still active. We have active, living cultures and we are human beings and we write poetry. (2020)"

"These fathers, boyfriends, and husbands were all men we loved, and were worthy of love. As peoples we had been broken. We were still in the bloody aftermath of a violent takeover of our lands. Within a few generations we had gone from being nearly one hundred percent of the population of this continent to less than one-half of one percent. (p158)"

"In the American mainstream imagination, warriors were always male and military, and when they were Indian warriors they were usually Plains Indian males with headdresses. What of contemporary warriors? And what of the wives, mothers, and daughters whose small daily acts of sacrifice and bravery were usually unrecognized or unrewarded? These acts were just as crucial to the safety and well-being of the people...For the true warriors of the world, fighting is the last resort to solving a conflict. Every effort is made to avoid bloodshed. (p150)"

"No one ever truly dies. The desires of our hearts make a path. We create legacy with our thoughts and dreams. This legacy either will give those who follow us joy on their road or will give them sorrow. (p149)"

"I believe that if you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned. (p135)"

"...I could hear my abandoned dreams making a racket in my soul. (p135)"

"A story matrix connects all of us. (p28)"