Archie Shepp Quotes

In America, for a brief time, people who followed Coltrane were studied and considered important, but it didn't last long. The result is that the kind of music I played in the '60's is completely dismissed in this country as a wrong turn, a suicidal effort.

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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.

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It was a particularly interesting and exciting time, and the European political and artistic establishment was turned on by the Civil Rights Movement and the artistic revolution that was becoming a part of jazz.

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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.

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

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Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

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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.

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