The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.
As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites.
I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.
Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.
Blacks in America want to forget about slavery - the stigma, the shame. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, and that is the blues.
Martin Luther King fought for blacks, and democratic whites were with him.
Rap or hip-hop music emerged in the West because of the atrocities against the Blacks. Their lyrics had a certain style of rebellion and it was quite personal.
We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.
We grow up in New Zealand from a young age getting up at 3am to watch the All Blacks play South Africa or England, it's part of who we are. So to be an All Black now is amazing.
When you lose for the All Blacks it's not a nice feeling. Expectations on us are pretty high. We have high standards and we know if we've let ourselves or let the jersey down.
