Mitch Jayne

“I am a Southerner in mind and spirit still,” he said gravely, “for the South gave me my music and left me proud of what I had learned on my own. But I was American more than Southern and not put here just to learn the music of other countries or only secular parts of mine. I needed to find our own music and play it—I hoped—for this entire land.” There was a long pause. “I know that sounds high flung and boastful, but I could have done it too, or at least helped do it,” declared our ghost finally, “before this war came to destroy all kindness, all brotherhood, all the music of the inventive South, and replace it with drums and bugles and the noise of patriotism.”
― Mitch Jayne, Fiddler's Ghost