Keinan Abdi Warsame Quotes
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Somalis really are very musically sophisticated, and they're about their own thing.
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From the stage, I can reach a large audience, and you learn from being on stage how much a song reaches, what extent of the crowd a song can reach. I write in a way that can reach most of the audience, but I also wanted to have truly intimate moments as well, many intimate moments, more so than the big moments.
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The poetry I grew up on is really an intense form of poetry; it's so pure and powerful.
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The problem is that rap is so often a caricature of its own image. Nobody comes to the table with the seriousness of the effect that it can have; nobody is prepared for that.
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I'm an optimist about other people. I'm not an optimist about myself.
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I learned to fire guns at the age of nine or so, but luckily was not out killing people. We zigzagged the streets to escape those trying to kill us. I guess it would have been a matter of time till I turned around with a gun myself, to go after those coming for us. But I was fortunate. The grenade incident was about an explosion which destroyed a section of my school, from a grenade that me and my cousin detonated by accident. We both lived to tell about it.
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It's better to light a candle than to curse the dark In the eyes of the youth, there are question marks
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I'm writing from a place of - a center of authenticity, somewhere that only I know how to write from.
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I wasn't making music consciously when I was younger. I was a musician, but that has its own stigmas. Anywhere on the planet, it's one of the more undervalued positions.
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It was not my dream to be an artist. How could it have been? I thought, artist, much like a leader, was something you either were or weren't. Never something you set out to be.
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I enjoy mediation. I think the artist's position is often to mend the things we feel are broken. Whether that's between two cultures or two thoughts. We're always trying to reach, trying to expand something.
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The people of Somalia just do not have a voice. They are to me the most forgotten people in the world.
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I am one of those people that's never been really cynical about life, you know.
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I faced quite a few challenging times, and in front of those, I was more positive than some people not facing those conditions. I'm actually of the belief now that it is that struggle that offers you that open-hearted hope.
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And any man who knows a thing, knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all...
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Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise.
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I'm not about trying to get and get and get. I feel good when I get, but I kind of feel better when I give.
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I don't feel political most of the time. Sometimes I'm placed in positions because no one else will go there.
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You want to reach people, but you also want to reach them in the most authentic way. You now have a mass market and an audience that's listening, but they're in love with a song that means absolutely nothing to you.
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The pirates are serving a purpose right now. They come from regions which have been completely ignored, and Westerners have tried to destroy these regions by their constant plundering of resources and by the illegal dumping of nuclear waste. The pirates really began in order to discourage these actions - initially. And then the business became lucrative.
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Hip-hop in Africa has been very often a duplication of an American experience, but in a context that's totally alien to it.
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You have to let the world speak to you and then you speak, you know, so I'm in that moment now where I'm finding the world's voice.
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My question about my art and my music has always been, 'Am I good, or am I good because?' I'm not the artist who wants to have the 'because' attached.
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The only way I see the world now is through coming out of and growing up and living in Somalia. In the time of war, everyone was basically trying to live and manage the best they could. But you also had another period which was not a hard time at all - it was just a beautiful time. I lived in both eras.