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Odetta Quotes
Women's Voices: Quotations by Women
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis
Quotation: No one can dub you with dignity. That's yours to claim.
Quotation: (About the song "The Star-Spangled Banner") I'm living in the place they're singing about, but the description is not the place I live in.
Quotation: These songs come out of difficult times, and since the difficult times haven't been fixed, the songs are still here for us.
Quotation: School taught me how to count and taught me how to put a sentence together. But as far as the human spirit goes, I learned through folk music.
Quotation: I'm not a real folksinger.... I don't mind people calling me that, but I'm a musical historian. I'm a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I've been fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my propagandizing.
Quotation: When I cut my hair, it was called an Odetta. Until then, I had swallowed lock, stock and barrel the uptightness of this society -- feeling ashamed of 'Black,' 'fat,' 'ugly.' Looking back, the path to self was paying attention to my intuition, feelings and thoughts. I now include my needs along with what others need or want from me.
Quotation: Human beings have language skills other than just verbal: we read each other. When performing, there is true communication. I get energy from the audience, and they get energy from me.
Quotation: If your neighbor looks at you like they don't enjoy the key you're singing in, look right back, bless them, and keep on singing.
Quotation: I love the opposite forces I can create by singing a smooth melody line and hearing my rhythm playing churning away beneath it. I love those dramatics in music.
Quotation: When I play the guitar, I can be so deadly serious that even I've got to laugh.
Quotation: If a song is important enough for me to sing, I'll find a way to accompany myself on guitar. I would make up chords to fit the singing--I'm not a purist in any way, shape, or form.
Quotation: (Maya Angelou about Odetta) If only one could be sure that every fifty years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time.
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• Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection are © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2004. This is an informal collection -- if you need citations for the original source, I don't have those available unless they're listed with the quotes.
• To cite this page, use a format something like this, substituting this page's title and URL:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Elizabeth Cady Stanton Quotations." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/library/qu/blqustan.htm Date: [today]
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