Eunice Kathleen Waymon Quotes
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When a child is gifted, people try to help that child.
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I was reared in the church from the age of three. I've played piano since I was three. I performed at revivals and for my people around North Carolina for several years. People around town collected money to send me to school.
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Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
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Many times I feel different like a different person.
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We have ordered things so long in a certain way, we are numb. Nobody dares question it. This is what is wrong, symbolically, with America.
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If I want to take a particular form of blues somewhere else I have the equipment to do it but I never even thought of it.
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There are all kinds of things that can be done. You can change rhythms, you can change chords, you can change whole concepts. But it will only work, on a record or in a performance, if you can make the people buy it.
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I don't like to go to strange places. I was in Italy for about five hours on my way to Africa.
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Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage.
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You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.
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Desegregation is a joke.
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You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served.
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My people have very subtle slang, inflections and ways of saying things that has little to do with words. If you're from the same place, you'll feel the jargon and know exactly what's happening. Same with any neighborhood cat. What he sees and hears and feels and lives makes him what he is. That's what blues is.
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I demand perfection in what I do, and I practice very hard before I give a concert-sometimes three to six hours a day.
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My name sounds French but that's just a stage name.
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Through music you can become sad, joyful, loving, you can learn. You can learn mathematics, touch, pacing... Oh my God! Ooh... Wow... You can see colors through music. Anything!
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I don't like to go to strange places.
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I play piano, by ear. Yes, I write songs... and good ones.
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I do not believe in mixing of the races. You can quote me. I don't believe in it, and I never have. I've never changed. I've never changed my hair. I've never changed my color, I have always been proud of myself, and my fans are proud of me for remaining the way I've always been. I married a white man one time, but he was a creep.
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The allusion was that I was actually naked. I loved that. It always, kind of shocked people enough that they became mine immediately.
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I made wine from the lilac tree/Put my heart in its recipe/It makes me see what I want to see/And be what I want to be.
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As I got older though I wanted a life of my own. The classical training was very demanding and thorough. It was a very sheltered existence. Even though I heard blues and gospel on the radio sometimes, it was always back to the piano and study and give recitals.
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Tomorrow, I might be in a different mood and you wouldn't recognize my voice.
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I love the classics but there are many new ideas to be made into reality. I'd rather be concerned with my own thing. There are many masters of classical piano so I'll leave it to them.