The great thing about the arts, and especially popular music, is that it really does cut across genres and races and classes.
Interpretation
The arts, particularly popular music, have the power to transcend social boundaries.
Bonnie Raitt highlights the unifying power of the arts, especially music, emphasizing how it connects people from diverse backgrounds regardless of their race, social status, or genre preference. This suggests that art serves as a universal language that fosters understanding and appreciation across different cultures and societal divides.
In practice
This quote can be used to introduce a discussion about the role of music in social movements at a conference.
I'm happy to say that at 62, I think I've reached that point where stuff doesn't bother me as much, and my gratitude level has gone way up, especially having gone through the loss that I've had, and losing so many of the great artists that I was close to. They taught me how to see it with a grain of salt and a lot of humor and perspective.
I'm just glad that I'm the musical equivalent of a character actress, because blues singers can keep singing and having an audience at 35, and someone like Madonna's gonna have to find something else to do, 'cos I don't care how pointy those bras are that she wears, they're still gonna look a little odd when she's 55!
Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person.
I think it's our job to write about what we're going through at the moment, and being 41, I'm not going to write about the same things I wrote about at 20. I don't think artists should be farmed out to pasture just because they're in rock n' roll.
Superficial pop will always exist - there've always been Fabians - but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there's a revolution going on in music.
Nobody taught me to play bottleneck. I just saw it and taught myself. I got an old bottle and steamed the label off, put it on the wrong finger, I basically did everything wrong until I met some of the Blues legends early in my career who taught me another way. I didn't have anyone to tell me women didn't play bottleneck.
People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.
I don't design clothes, I design dreams.
Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
Oh, I'm impressed with Lorraine Hansberry. She was a genius at whose feet I could sit.
Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.