"Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way."

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I have come from France more firmly convinced than ever that Negros should write Negro music. We have our own racial feeling and if we try to copy whites we will make bad copies…We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others, and if we are to develop in America we must develop along our own lines.

— James Reese Europe