For me the bare feet are grounding. I'm connected to the Earth in a way that I cannot be any other way.
Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you.
In order to understand the history of the banjo, and the history of bluegrass music, we need to move beyond the narrative we've inherited, beyond generalizations that bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scotch-Irish tradition with influences from Africa. It is actually a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures.
American music is always best when it comes from a mixture of things.
There was such hostility to the idea of a banjo being a black instrument. It was co-opted by this white supremacist notion that old-time music was the inheritance of white America.
Well, you know, the original banjos were all handmade instruments. Gourd - it would be made with gourds and whatever, you know, materials would have been around. And, you know, first hundred years of its existence, the banjo's known as a plantation instrument, as a black instrument, you know?
I'm not an urban black person. I'm a country black person.
My dad's white, my mom's black, and I've struggled with being mixed race.
I used to subscribe to Nintendo Power. The first issue had 'Mario 2,' and it had all the characters rendered in clay. So I started making all of these characters out of clay.
I'm a North Carolina native. Grew up in North Carolina.
We have been fed so many false narratives, many of them racialized to deliberately feed a racist agenda. It's important to address and dig into that wherever you can.
Anybody who thinks the lute just came out of a vacuum doesn't know the history.
My life used to be record, tour, record, tour. You can never say no as a freelance musician. I was on the road 200 days a year.
I'm really taken with 'Calling Me Home' by Alice Gerrard.
When I do Gaelic music, I've learned about Gaelic culture; I've tried to learn the language. Whenever I do mouth music and there's Gaelic speakers in the audience, and they come up and go, 'Good job,' I'm always like, 'Phew.'
I keep starting supergroups, writing ballets and things like that.
I don't want to go on a talk show and talk about stuff I don't know about.
There is a black folk music audience. They're just very small.
When you sit at the feet of an elder, it changes you.
When you hear composer, you think, like, Beethoven: guy in a powdered wig, at a piano, furiously scribbling on manuscript paper. That's not the only image that a composer should bring up, you know. But that's kind of what we've said it is.
