Black Music Month: Inspiring Words From Famous Musicians

On June 7, 1979, then President Jimmy Carter declared that June would be the month of black music. Black Music Month honors the past, present and future musicians and producers in the industry. To pay homage this month, we look at not the lyrics that have touched our lives, but the words artists have spoken.

"Tomorrow is always another day to make things right. " – Lauryn Hill

"Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of every day life, as automatic as breathing." – Nina Simone

"I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me -- like food or water." – Ray Charles

"The blues was bleeding the same blood as me."- B.B. King

"Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them."- Louis Armstrong

"I think, as an artist, you have to have experienced some deep turmoil, some kind of pain, because that's what connects you with the world. That's what makes it juicy!"- Jill Scott

"Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It's transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It's uplifting, it's encouraging, it's strengthening."- Aretha Franklin

"Experience is a great teacher."- John Legend

"Music is my life, it is a reflection of what I go through." – Lenny Kravitz

"Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are." –Wynton Marsalis

"Some of us get a feeling when we hear music and we feel music, and you want to figure out how to continue to feel that."- Pharell

"Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more memories we have of it."- Stevie Wonder

"An artist must be like a sponge and absorb everything about life, use his senses to pick up and store experiences."- Marvin Gaye

"Hopefully my music is medicine, some type of antidote for something or some kind of explanation or just to feel good." –Erykah Badu

"The wise musicians are those who play what they can master."- Duke Ellington

"You are only as beautiful as the many beautiful things you do for others without expectation."- Janelle Monae

"Once a song's out there, it's no longer mine. And that's the whole purpose of music: to belong to people."- Sade Adu

"All I can tell you really is if you get to the point where someone is telling you that you are not great or not good enough, just follow your heart and don't let anybody crush your dream."- Patti LaBelle

"It doesn't matter how you travel it, it's the same road. It doesn't get any easier when you get bigger, it gets harder. And it will kill you if you let it." - James Brown

"If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow."- Beyonce

 "You can't just sit there and wait for people to give you that golden dream. You've got to get out there and make it happen for yourself."- Diana Ross

"My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts, me can say facts. My music will go on forever."- Bob Marley

"I put my emotions in my music and I want people to relate to that."- Jazmine Sullivan

"Music makes us want to live. You don't know how many times people have told me that they'd been down and depressed and just wanted to die. But then a special song caught their ear and that helped give them renewed strength. That's the power music has."- Mary J. Blige

"I like being a woman, even in a man's world. After all, men can't wear dresses, but we can wear the pants."- Whitney Houston