Blues Quotes from 'Democracy Matters'

As Ralph Ellison wrote in “Richard Wright’s Blues,” “The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience in alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.” This powerful blues sensibility – a black interpretation of tragicomic hope open to people of all colors – expresses righteous indignation with a smile and deep inner pain without bitterness or revenge.
As taken from ‘Democracy Matters’ by Cornel West.