Quote

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

Archie Shepp

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Archie Shepp
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 24
Composer
Jazz Musician
Musical Artist
Pianist
Recording Artist
Saxophonist
University Teacher
Fort Lauderdale
Florida
Archie Vernon Shepp
Idea
Negro
Culture
Existential
Music
Decade
Ideas
Innovative
Nothing
Threatened
Matter
Decades
Musical
Intrinsically
Sacred
Existentialism

More quotes by Archie Shepp

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I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty much race music: its about what happened to my father, to me, and what can happen to my kids.
Archie Shepp
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I find that here in the States, audiences are generally less knowledgeable, from the cognitive point of view, though they are emotionally more receptive.
Archie Shepp
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Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.
Archie Shepp
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All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.
Archie Shepp
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Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.
Archie Shepp
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In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.
Archie Shepp
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Black music has become a commercial commodity. Live performances are not so accessible as they were previously. It use to be possible to go to the bar on the corner and hear music. It was available for a fifteen cent beer.
Archie Shepp
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So, I was just a young guy, maybe with an idea, and Cecil Taylor, himself a rebel, would take a chance on a guy like me. It turned out to be a very symbiotic partnership. I learned a lot from him.
Archie Shepp
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To some degree, yeah, because I have to play a certain number of originals that might be considered avant-garde material. I realize though, that only a few people in the audience actually know what that music is, or understand it.
Archie Shepp