To spread love, healing, peace, and joy is my mission in life - and so I speak up.
India Arie
Listening to 'Songs in the Key of Life' always puts me in a good mood.
There's a difference in being opinionated and judgmental; I'm still trying to figure out what that fine line is - I think we are all.
In this era, soul is not a sound or a color: it's an intention.
You need to take care of you and fortify yourself and then move out to take care of others.
The subconscious doesn't distinguish sarcasm and jokes. It just accepts what it hears. That's the power of words.
For me, the healing process starts with graciousness and forgiveness.
Just like the air you breathe or the water you drink, music shapes you. The trouble is, most people don't use it to spread love and healing. But I think music can make a social contribution if you're responsible with it.
For the first ten years of my career, I felt suffocated. People constantly stood over me while I tried to create. And in 2009, I hit rock bottom. I couldn't find myself because I was looking to be defined by the music industry or by being number one on the Billboard charts.
I was born in love with music. My mother is a singer. Many of my aunts and uncles on my mother's side are musical. My grandparents sang and played blues piano. It's literally in my blood.
What I love about Christmas music is it stays around every year and comes back.
Saying things on paper that I would never, ever say, and saying things to myself, admitting things to myself, about myself and my personality, just putting it on paper, is how I deal with emotional pain.
I always pray when I write songs that my spirit guides, or whoever is with me, inspiring me, would let me speak the truth.
Your soul is between you and God.
Between '06 and '09, I dealt with pain by eating. And I was like, 'Oh, crap, eating makes you gain weight!'
Our food choices show up on our body.
I like Brandy a lot. She's a vocal prodigy.
I'm kind of like a folk singer mixed with soul, but I feel like if you really are a lover of hip-hop music, make the beat banging as possible and then put the message in so that people get the honey with the medicine.
I didn't even listen to Bob Marley until I was 17.
Some people say, 'If she's so real, why does she call herself with a made-up name?' Well, India is my real name. Or they say, 'If she's so real, why does she wear makeup?' I didn't know there was anything wrong with makeup.
What I love about Stevie Wonder is the way he makes people feel. He's one of the best examples of how music can heal.
When it comes down to the song writing, I'm just very slow - very slow. Because the songs are about my life, so I'm doing emotional work on myself.
You deal with what comes to you. If it's something you don't like, you deal with it the best you can. If it's something that you love, you rise to the occasion.
I loved her music and the fact that she was a classically trained pianist and that her voice was so unique, but what made Nina Simone my hero is that I had never seen anyone in the public eye who looked anything like me at all, ever.
In Denver, all we really had was pop radio, so I grew up on all that late '70s pop stuff - Billy Joel, James Taylor, Lionel Richie, Elton John, Steve Miller and Toto. Great love songs and really hooky and melodic music - I have all of that stuff in my heart.
You wash your hands when you shake a bunch of hands. You have to wash your energy when you're around people. It's hard for me to say self-care is washing, although I think it is. So I made music for self-care. That's what it's for.
Could a person really make a social contribution through music consciously? I mean, beyond making a person happy to hear the song and more making a social contribution consciously through your music? For me, Stevie Wonder is the paragon of that. And I didn't want to be Stevie Wonder, but I did want to do what he does.
If we can just focus our attention where it matters, we can effect change.
Just to keep myself balanced, I do things like yoga and meditation.
Why not be a person who is loving towards humankind as a whole and people as individuals?
So many people have been abused. It's not rare; it's a very common human experience, and we survive.
When I was growing up, I only saw really brown people on 'The Cosby Show,' and they were rich, and their parents were doctors. It wasn't like my home.
Obviously, I've been heartbroken. We all know what that feels like.
At 16, I started really loving country music, and Collin Raye just had the most amazing ballads!
I always have something by Stevie Wonder in my CD player.
It's important to have a place where you can recharge. Everybody's is different, but I do think it should entail quiet because it needs to be where you hear your spirit most clearly. For me, that's the prayer room in my apartment. And since my home is 700 square feet, I mean the coat closet near the front door.
If I don't have the right clothes, I feel weird walking out; I don't feel comfortable in what I have on. I have different colors that I want to wear on different days because it makes me feel different.
Everything in my music has always been emotionally and spiritually motivated... But after I started doing yoga, the place where I came from changed drastically.
There's just something creatively fulfilling about watching a movie and writing a song for it because it helps you put on another pair of shoes.
I know the things I say go out of my own mouth and into my own ears.
I'm really judgmental, especially about things that I feel make my life harder.
I know that I pray a lot, and I take time for myself.
I want my music to be a contribution, and I want the people who love me on Earth and in Heaven to be proud of who I am, and I want to be proud of myself, and I don't want to look back and say, 'Oh God, why did I say that?'
Denying any person their humanity is a game we should all stop playing.
When someone is themselves through their music, it's soul music. James Taylor is soul music to me 'cause it's just him talking about him. It doesn't have anything to do with black or growing up in the church; it's where it comes from. It's just soul music.
Everybody has a spiritual body. Everybody has a physical body, and so your spiritual body is the stuff that holds all of your emotions like your body holds your organs, your food, your muscles, your water. Your spiritual body holds your emotional state and your mental state.
I want to always be classy and honest, and I always want to have fun with music, and if I can't really express who I am through my music, then it's not really fun anymore.
It's not my place to say how Zoe Saldana perceives herself, and I can't say how anybody else perceives her, either. I see her as a black person of Hispanic origin, but I don't even know what that really means, because I don't know anything about race and Hispanic culture.
Neo-soul is really less about a sound than it is about a look, in my opinion.
When I perform, I'm just very much just being myself.
