Sometimes I think I’m restrained by information — that I’m too focused on the finer points of things, too detail-minded, unable to free myself from t… - Questlove

On the plantations the slave owners would take their slaves’ drums away because they didn’t want them communicating with other slaves. They were afraid that the drum was some kind of magic signal system, a primal, coded language, which it was. And is. When the drums were taken away, other instruments were taken up — fifes and fiddles and the rest, and they were used for celebration and lamentation both, and a new kind of song sprung up, a work song, to document the labor in the fields, to pass the time, to pass on the content of the time, so that people would know what had happened.

What a shitty way to go through life, hiding your love for music so that people don’t think the wrong things about you.

If history doesn’t pass through to the people who occupy the highest offices, there’s bound to be trouble. A nation of ignorance holds us all back.